WEEK 4 "Politics"

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Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde’s “Whose Community is it anyway” explained how the Vietnamese community in San Jose was disappointed, and called Madison a communist for not using “Little Saigon” as the name of a San Jose business district. Unfortunately there were other aspects that also lead to the Vietnamese community truly believing Madison was a communist because she married a Vietnamese International student, and during the time of the wedding the Vietnamese President was visiting America (Valverde).

Although Madison came to the U.S. as an infant and worked very hard to support workers and the Vietnamese community in politics, Madison got lots of complaints in return. Madison helped organize a concert called “Rock and Vote” in order to help Vietnamese people get involved in politics. During her college career she also went to public demonstrations to fight for worker’s rights. Madison really cared about her community (Valverde).

Madison makes a point that Asian Americans were all financially stable and lacking in politics, but she may be wrong. “New Report Charts Dramatic Asian American Population Growth, Electoral Implication" claims, " the Asian American population nationwide now numbers more than 17 million and is poised to influence next year's Presidential election". Although generally only a small percentage of Asian Americans usually vote, the Asian American population is increasing so much that there are going to be many political decisions made by the Asian American community from now on. Also, not all Asian American communities are financially stable. Hmong, Bangladeshi, and Cambodian American are one of the most poor communities in the U.S. 

“Transnational Migration and The Globalization” by Michael Peter Smith calls transnational forms of political organization, mobilization, and practice “transnational grassroots politics”. Smith argues that because people are moving out of their nation-state, culture and politics is going to be different from before. Smith mentions that the media is spreading the culture of one nation state to other nation-states, making the characteristics of the nation-states less unique. Smith also makes a point that “borderless people”, or people who do not have one particular nation state they stay in no longer follows the culture of their original nation-state. The “borderless people” are the leaders of a new mixed culture. Many people travel to different countries to find a better job and give their family back home remittances (Smith).

In “Democracy, culture and the politics of gate-keeping in Cambodia” Caroline Hughes talks about the trouble of Cambodians’ unification after the Cold war. The Khmers, or refugees who came back to Cambodia had to unify with the Cambodians. The role of women refugees was to keep their “Khmerness”. Cambodia does not have a very distinct identity because it has had trouble closing its borders in the past. People of Vietnam and Thailand have come to Cambodia to incorporate their culture, language, people, etc. Miscegenation was discouraged because of the seventeenth century Khmer king who married a Vietnamese princess and made Vietnamese more powerful by setting up the customs posts in Mekong delta. This resulted in a mass of Vietnamese coming into Cambodia (Hughes).

Questions:

1.)    When the naming of a business district did not end up being “Little Saigon” what did the people of the Vietnamese American community accuse Madison of being? 

2.)    When Madison ran for city council, what did she promise her ethnic community she would make sure happen if she was elected?

3.)     Democracy, culture and the politics of gate-keeping in Cambodia what were the motives of people in Cambodia after the Cold War.

4.)    What does “transnational grassroots politics” mean according to Michael Peter Smith?

5.)    According to Smith what does “borderless people” mean? What does “borderless people” cause?

Anonymous, . NEW REPORT CHARTS DRAMATIC ASIAN AMERICAN POPULATION GROWTH, ELECTORAL IMPLICATIONS. (2011, November 2). Hmong Times,p. 7.  Retrieved January 29, 2012, from Ethnic NewsWatch (ENW). (Document ID: 2516532541).

By Natsumi Moudry

Week 3 - "Transnationalism"

  (Source: https://www.msu.edu/~apaspec/conf09/apaconf09abstract.jpg)

          Transnationalism, in the context of globalization, is a notion where immigrants are being connected socially and economically to multiple nation-states, specifically between their countries of origin and a new settlement. For this week’s reading, we focused on the idea of transnational and its importance within Asian American studies and Asian American identities. Some of the key concepts you should know for this week are transnational racism, transmigrants, and transnation.


          In his article, “Asian American Studies in the Age of Transnationalism: Diaspora, Race, Community”, Okamura criticizes the attempt of other Asian American scholars to focus Asian American Study within the boundaries of United States. The transnational perspectives in Asian American Study, or AAS, have its root since the first day AAS was born. During the 1968, students from the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) sought to link the struggles of colonized Asia, Africa, and Latin America with people of color in United States for the common cause. Trying to focus only on the domestic perspectives, while exclude the transnational / diasporas perspectives, would fail to make Asian American Study as a whole. The transnational direction also helps situate AAS within the context of global capitalism, the transmigrants and their diasporas experiences unique to every groups, and the new challenges of transnational racism and exploitations. In the era of globalization, technologies enable communities to be more connected to their supposedly homelands. Transnational racism works by emphasize the individual’s Asian background, cultural, and political opinions with an Asia nation, while denying his American status and ultimately his civil rights, privileges, and loyalties. No longer protected by laws, he is subjected to exploitations not only by United States employers, but also by Asian and Asian American business owners. “The smugglers and employers of cheap, docile, often female Asian migrant labor,” as the author cite the note of Evelyn Hu-Dehart, “are typically Asians and Asian American themselves.”


          Transmigrants, as defined by Nina Glick Schiller, are immigrants whose daily lives depend on multiple and constant interconnections across international borders and whose public identities are configured in relationship to more than one nation-state. Transmigrant, or transnational immigrants, is a new type of immigration in the era of globalization, different from the usually assumed immigrants as uprooted and has no ties with their homelands. There are three forces that cause individual to live transmigrant life. First, the restructuring of capital that destroyed selected economy of certain area, forcing them to leave for a better place in order to survive. Capital investment in only one part of the country, while structural readjustment programs strip away areas that were used for self- sustains lives. People leaves their homeland to settle in more developed countries for comparatively higher incomes, while investing in properties and provide support for families in their country of origin, thus created a transnational family. Second, the discriminations and racism in U.S and Europes make people feel isolated, therefore they seeks connections and support from families and other communities in their homeland or other areas. Lastly, Nations find ways to encourage immigrants’ loyalties to their respective nations and their “new home”. U.S required citizens to swear undivided loyalty to the nation and their identity politic to be within nation’s border, while Philippines, for example, considers every Filipinos to be part of the country even when they live permanently abroad.

           The growing interests of Asian American students, under the influence of globalization, cause Asian American Study to further explore the transnational / diasporas perspectives. Recent trend in ethnic study, along with explosion in scholar discussions suggests transnationalism is a renew turn for the field. Diasporas, as defined by Ien Ang, are transnational, spatially and temporary sociocultural formation of people, creating imagined communities who blurred and fluctuating boundaries are sustainted by real and/or symbolic ties to some original ‘homeland’. Recent scholarship on transnationalism and disaporas has show the instability of the term “Asian American”. It is necessary then to rethinking the concepts of Asian American Study and Asian American role in the global economy. The diasporas experiences of female Asian Americans and queer communities, for examples, have not yet fully understood and included. In a way, the exclusion of gender issues and queer identity help reinforced the hetero-normative and oriental stereotypes that were used as a tool for discrimination. In addition, reshaping our focus on transnational / diasporas perspective offers a way to disrupt U.S centric nationalism and boundaries, an old strategy of divide-and-rule politic in order to oppress and exploit Asian American population. Students in AAS are now more transnational than ever. Failure to address diasporas in the age of globalization is an inadequately representation of the community being studied.


          In the article, “Is There a Transnation? Migrancy and the National Homeland among Overseas Filipinos,” Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr. examines two categories of migrant groups in the context of transnationalism in order to explain the different viewpoints of transnationalism. Anderson explains that the notion of transalization does not form or erase the need for authentic identities. Transnationalism creates identities manifested in the connection of nations. Aguilar explains the possibility of different transnational identity due to modern technology. Technology has created access points for people to be connected to different nations in terms of culture, politics, and/or economics. He then describes the differences between first and second generation migrants. The first generation of migrants can be depicting as the basic definition of transnational. This idea that people are interconnected to different nation sates. Their identity is manifested in the terms of diaspora. Their bond with the Asian homeland is as important as their current nation state. There is a sense of loyalty to both nations by the means of economical, political, or another means of connections. The second generation of migrants, transnational is a route to a new “multicultural societies.” Aguilar claims that this second generation migrants forms a new nationalism with a nation that is not of their parents’ homeland. The identity create by the second groups is one that cannot fully fit into their parents’ homeland culture. Second generation migrants claim a different path compare to the first. Therefore, the concept of transnationalism can be seen in different ways. The idea of transnational is not bounded by the idea that Asian Americans are connected to only to their Asian homeland. Asian Americans connection to another nation other than their Asia homeland can be strength due to the new advancements. This opens the doors to new understanding of Asian American transnationalism.



Questions:
1)  How does transnational racism work to effectively exclude a group of individuals from their rights? Can you provide an example as study in previous Asian American courses? (Jonathan Y. Okamura)

2)  What are the three main reasons for Transnational migration? (Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr.)

3)  Can you provide one example showed in Schiller’s article that support one of the three main points in Transmigrants? (Hints: transnational family)(Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr.)

4)  In what way would the inclusion of Queer Asian American’s perspective help expand Asian American experience? (Crhistopher Lee)

5)  According to the reading by Aguilar, why would the Philippine state label migrant works as the “new hero”? (Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr.)

By Tien Mai and Wingsze Lam

WEEK2 Contexts - "Globalization"

(Source: http://www.mcmcapital.com/2011/04/globalization-shapes-u-s-manufacturing-and-mcm-investment-strategy/)

The emphasis of Globalization is elaborated through the usage of diaspora, transnationalism, Ethnic studies, and global commodity networks. Globalization certainly helps move the world move on with the help of other nations helping other nations though trade and exchanging of ideas through education. Robin Cohen’s “Diaspora in the Age Globalization” chapter in Global Diasporas explains about the engine of globalization and how it works. The five factors in which globalizations work are the world economy, the forms of international migration, the development of global cities, the creation of cosmopolitan and local cultures, and the deterritorialization of social identity. Even though globalization should be helping us decrease the levels of racism, sexism, and other forms of social exclusivism; globalization increases these ideas, because of the many diasporas interacting with each other throughout the world. Meaning there will be more tension everywhere regardless. (Cohen 1997)

Due to transnationalism, there has been a globalization of capitalism that leaves destabilizing effects on less industrialized countries, a technological revolution in transportation and communication, global political transformations in terms of decolonization and the universalization of human rights, and the expansion of social networks that direct the remaking of transnational migration, economic organization and politics. In “The Locations of Transnationalism,” There is a distinction shown between the Hmong cultural brokers and the Miao in China about how the Hmong are below the standards of transnational action and the Miao are above it. Showing destabilizing effects on the Hmong cultural brokers. (Guarnizo and Smith 1999)

Ethnic nationalism can be shown from an Asian American with a position of power that displays achievements in the so called motherland, but with self conflicting ideals of identity can prove to be a problem. The question of being a certain ethnic race, or an ethnic race with the addition of American, or just being only American have all been jumbled up between all Asians in America. I believe that any Asian in America is Asian American due to the fact that we all do have a certain connection to Asia through blood, and we are in America for a reason, which is to move upward in mobility.  Asian Americans are “best positioned” to break down “cultural barriers” standing in the way of U.S. – Asian political and business relations. There is a problem in the business relations between the U.S. and Asia, because there are still sweatshops with Asians working to death in them. Another problem is the disaggregated data about Asian Americans in America that disregard the Southeast Asian refugees, because they are traumatized immigrants that did not arrive in America with families intact, and they do not come armed with social skills and human capital that can be readily adapted to modern American society. This certainly stabs into the false thought of the model minority theory. (Hu-Dehart 1999)

Ethnic studies certainly have been a factor of globalization. With the struggles through world events, ethnic studies strive for survival due to the fact that hate has spread from these world events such as 9/11. Hate towards South Asians have been uncontrollable with the assumptions of terrorism. Being in ethnic studies is to defend the persons being discriminated upon, which means forming student coalitions to counteract the hate being brought upon us here in America. Student coalitions will be used to educate the people. (San Juan Jr. 2005)

Global commodity networks are certainly factors of globalization. With this article’s example about the leather footwear industry and its partnership between Argentina’s leather and Brazil’s manufacturing companies prove to show that these partnerships generate a domestic political economy. Argentina sells their cheaper leather to other countries for the same price they sell their fine leather to Brazil. With Brazil having exclusive rights to Argentina’s fine leather, both parties are making profit, but Brazil has the better end of the deal since they are selling their products to America. This three way network certainly brings a high demand since there is a good quality of products sold to America. (Korzeniewicz 1992)

This week's topic of "Globalism" is an all-encompassing theme of the 21st century. Whether it be in the context of this classroom or around the world, most people in the world have had their lives directly (or indirectly) affected by the forces of globalization. Relating to current day global issues, this article (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/world/asia/us-presses-south-korea-to-reduce-oil-imports-from-iran.html?_r=1&ref=asia) reflects growing concern over tensions in the Middle East involving nuclear power. Through globalization and global interdependence, countries such as the United States have extended their influence across borders to countries like Iran and South Korea.

This article relates to the topic of globalism amidst growing concerns over a World War thought to develop later in Iran and the Middle East. The United States is flexing its influence over South Korea in its efforts to contain Iran from developing nuclear power. Due to globalization, the lives of people in nations across the world can potentially be affected if tensions spill-over, resulting in conflict worldwide.

1. What are the four specific factors that help explain the complexity of transnationalism?
2. What are the some of the counter tendencies to globalization (forms of social exclusivism) mentioned in "Diasporas in the Age of Globalism"?
3. Why does E. San Juan Jr. state Ethnic Studies is paradoxical?
4. Why are Asian Americans best positioned to break down cultural barriers standing in the way of U.S. and Asian political interests?
5. How do global commodities positively impact relations between countries?

By Michael Nguyen and Ricky Lai

WEEK1 Introduction - "Asian Diasporas and Multilingualism"

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a brunch hosted by film makers, Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider, of the informative documentary, Speaking in Tongues. The film documents the lives of young students involved in language immersion schools in the San Francisco School district. Coincidentally, I am also searching for a Spanish immersion school for when my two year old turns three. I considered Vietnamese immersion schools too but none exist where we live.

Why the interest in a bilingual education for my children? Aside from seeing the value and academic rigor of such an education, having gone through some years in an international school in Yemen learning both French and English, I found myself now confronting questions that people in diaspora, or even more generally, people living in our current times ask. That is, how does and how will my family engage with the world in the Age of Globalization? 

When thinking about bilingualism, I factored in issues of cultural preservation as well as interest in the culture of the second (or more like third) language my children will learn. Friends chimed in with practical reasons for choosing certain languages over others. "French sounds nice but Mandarin is crucial for jobs in the future. China will be a leading economic power," one friend argued.

The authors of the first week of readings in my Diaspora class also tackle such topics, albeit on a more theoretical level. In the context of the U.S., all agree the importance of centering diaspora as a framework to discuss immigrant populations and their experiences. Robin Cohen's introductory chapter in Global Diasporas describes diverse diasporic populations that were created through varying circumstances from imperialism to trade, while reminding us that diasporas have existed for centuries. Cohen presents the classic example of diaspora using the Jewish model -- characterized by endured persecution, expulsion, dispersement, and ultimate lost of homeland (Cohen 1997).

Like the Jewish diaspora, Asians have been leaving their homelands for other parts of the world for centuries now. Evelyn Hu-Dehart's “The Great Diaspora: Where Would Asian Americans Be Without the Lengthy History of Asians On the Go?” speaks to this history of emigration that resulted in diverse resettlements. Communities formed but memories of "home" remained, in part by choice, but also because of inherent racism and exclusion in the host country (Hu-Dehart). 

The increase in the immigration population post 1965 compounded with the rise of globalization has scholars, particularly in the areas of Ethnic Studies, Areas Studies, Cultural Studies to (re)consider "diaspora." But, as Braziel and Mannur forward in their chapter, “Nation, Migration, Globalization: Points of Contention in Diaspora Studies” in Theorizing Diasporas, with new diasporic formations, there is a need to properly attack slippery terms related to the diaspora and even "diaspora' itself. Particularly, they want to know what terms will rise when discussing how diasporic groups will relate to the culture of their  "home" and "host" countries and how they will consider geography in their identity formation (Mannur and Braziel 2003). 

Anderson and Lee attempted to tackle the term diaspora in their chapter “Asian American Displacements” in Displacements. They convincingly define diaspora as those that are displaced. This displacement range from physical/spatial displacement to having multiple ideas of home and choice or lack of choice of home. Their nine types of displacements make one wonder if they were too inclusive in their definition. If leaving a country is enough to make one displaced, should everyone that emigrate be considered a part of a diaspora? Of course Lee and Anderson do not suggest everyone can be studied as a diaspora but they do make a good case that it can be done for at least Asians in the Americas (Anderson and Lee 2005).

With the growing number of Asians in the U.S. and some very obvious connections they have with the homeland, Parrenas and Siu suggests looking at these groups using Asian and Asian American Studies perspectives. They make this connection by surveying multiple locations while recognizing the tensions that exists between diasporic subjects and their home/host country as well as with other diasporic Asian groups. They approach their study of diaspora as "ethnographically grounded research that is historically informed" (Parrenas and Siu 2007). 

All these scholars recognize the urgency and need to think of Asians in the Americas and elsewhere differently. They believe using diaspora as a framework serves as an effective strategy to do this. I tend to agree since so much of my own personal decision making, such as picking bilingual schools for my children, also take into account the condition of our times and how I relate to the world, locally and globally, as a diasporic subject. 


Questions:
1. Has globalization and racial unease in the U.S. mean all Asians here are diasporic?
2. What of people who partake in international or cross-cultural practices other than their own. They don't have that homeward gaze. Are they diasporic?
3. Sometimes it appears the definition for "diaspora" is too inclusive leaving a rather loose framework to discuss Asians in the U.S. and elsewhere. So, how else can we tighten it up?
4. Is it useful to distinguish "old diaporas" like the Jewish or Armenian models to "new diasporas" like the Vietnamese?
5. What types of tensions in the home and host countries that motivate diasporic formations?


By Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde

Welcome Asian Diasporas Students!

http://www.oberlin.edu/stuorg/APAConference/contact.html