Week 8 Group Presentation

Vanesa Guillen

Leng Vang

Anna Yang

Neil Bryan Castro

Displacements

              From K. Scott Wong’s “Diasporas, Displacements, and the Construction of Transnational Identities,” Wong discusses the notion of the diasporas and the transnational identities that people have created. Wong starts off with the mention of Randolph S. Bourne’ essay he argues against the notion that immigrants were required to mix into the “melting pot” of America and leave behind their cultures.  Bourne wrote how America is becoming a transnationational country that connects with various other countries. His work was some of the first in what is now “transnationalism” (Wong, 41). Although his essay was in response to the growing European immigrants after WWI, it still applies to the Asian diasporas. Because of the Asian diasporas that have come since the 1700s, it is important to see how these groups have persisted in keeping their cultures alive while adjusting to the new life in America and other countries.

Wong points out how the importance of American influence in the Pacific region.  With the overthrow of Hawaii’s monarchy in 1893 and the conquest of the Philippines in 1903, the United States ensures its dominance in the Pacific region.  This is important in that because of American imperialism, they conquered two countries to expand their trading power and in doing so subjugated various groups of Hawaiian and Filipinos into servitude.  U.S. dominance ensured the export of labor from Asian countries that helped to build the backbone of American infrastructure. 

The readings delve into three specific diaspora groups: Chinese in the West Indies, Japanese in Brazil, and Afro-Amerasian children born because of wars in Asia.  Each of these groups has faced the struggles of their identity but have come to show how their identity has transcend nations as their identity is a transnational identity with which shows the blurring of national borders.  Chinese in the West Indies whose identity and interactions change with the various classes and people. Japanese in Brazil and their identity of being non-white and non-black and how they navigate this to come into the social and political power in Brazil.  Afro-Amerasians and their struggles against colorism and how Asian American Studies and African American Studies are interrelated.

Transnational identities are not fixed to any place but to ensure the accumulation of needed social, economic, cultural, education and political capital (Wong 49).  Transnational identity has become a tool that people can use to navigate society and it can be used to their advantage or disadvantages. 

According to the reading called When Minorities Migrate: The Racialization of the Japanese Brazilians in Brazil and Japan by Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda, analyzes how a racialized group such the Brazilian Japanese can change their ethnic identity due to social and cultural pressures. Tsuda’s analysis and observations were conducted in twenty-two-month research that used fieldwork and participant observation methods in Japan and Brazil (Tsuda, p.227). He observed how the Brazilian Japanese would de-essentialize their ethnicity in Brazil and when they went through “return migration” (Tsuda, p.225) to Japan. At the beginning of the reader, Tsuda states that “ethnic identity” is “primarily identified based on social contexts rather than your nationality background or “shared descent” (Tsuda, p.225). In other words, ethnicity is not just based on your nationality or similarities of “cultural and racial characteristics”, rather it is “a response to varying social contexts” (Tsuda, p.225).

First, Tsuda states that due to “push factors” in 1908 from Japan's “overpopulation, declining agricultural prices, increasing debt and unemployment and harsh climatic conditions” (Tsuda, p.227), the Japanese farm workers decided to emigrate to Brazil's pull factor in their coffee plantation economy (Tsuda, p.227). After settling for many years, the Japanese population still struggled to be defined as the Brazilian national because of their phenotypic characteristics and the Brazilian community still insists to idealize them as ethnically differentiated (Tsuda, p. 226). As a result, the Brazilian Japanese accepted and embraced their ethnicity as Japanese because of Japan’s successful global order as an economic superpower (Tsuda, p.233). Their ethnic minority status is accepted and admired by the Brazilian community and is also supported by their Japanese Brazilian community (Tsuda, p.233). 

On the other hand, the Brazilian Japanese community resisted the ethnic identity as Japanese when they emigrated to Japan and instead wanted to be racialized as Brazilian. After Brazil’s economic crisis, the Japanese Brazilian return-migrated back to Japan with the government’s Nikkeijin immigration policy (Tsuda, p. 226). The Japanese officials expected for the Nikkeijins to assimilate smoothly into Japan’s homogeneity of cultural contexts and language. Although the Japanese Brazilians resisted the cultural demands and showed their Brazilian racialization by doing certain performances (Tsuda, p.240). To differentiate from the Japanese ethnic identity, their Brazilianess was represented through their cultural dances such as the “samba parades' ', ritual performances and national symbols in their clothing and names, language, greetings and behavior (Tsuda, p.241).

In conclusion, Tsuda states that ethnicity is an “ongoing negotiation between individuals and the constantly changing racial ideologies and sociocultural forces in which they are embedded” (Tsuda, p.245). He further states, that through transnational migration its harder to maintain an ethnic identity in an area that will introduce new social contexts about them and will challenge them to renegotiate their identity (Tsuda, p.247). From the reading, I am personally able to relate as a Chicana. Because I am the first generation, I try to renegotiate my ethnic identity as a Chicana in the U.S. to avoid stereotypical ideologies that were pushed by political agendas. Since there are negative connotations about my Mexican community, I challenge my identity to steer away from the limited label.