Week 5 Jennifer Nguyen Bernal ASA114

Jennifer Nguyen Bernal

Professor Valverde

ASA 114

In the reading “Whose community is it anyway?: Oversea Vietnamese Negotiating their cultural and Political Identity - The Case of Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen” by Kieu-Linh Valverde explain the controversial topic of naming the San Jose business district, something other than “Little Saigon”which cause a recall election of Madison Nguyen. Since Madison Nguyen was against the idea of calling the business district “Little Saigon,” some members of the Vietnamese Community accused her of corruption and that she has a connection with the communist party. Even when the Vietnam War ends, generations of Vietnamese Americans in America still have a strong feeling of anticommunism embedded in the Community. Valverde explains the cultural and political factors that the name Little Saigon affects members of the Vietnamese American Community.The community struggle keeping the connection to the homeland, adapting to the culture and ideas of America, and compromise new ideas within the Community. These ideas are causing friction within the Vietnamese Community since this reminds them of the Vietnam war, being anticommunist, and adapting to the ways of the host country. Vice- Mayor Madison Nguyen found herself against the Vietnamese Community since the silent majority spoke up of what they wanted for the Vietnamese Community. The idea of not naming “ Little Saigon” caused controversial decision factoring in the Vietnamese diaspora and politics behind the name. The Vietnamese Community expects the Community to have the same mindset to the issues that they deal with within the Community, but need to realize that difference in the Community is necessary. For the Vietnamese Community, there is a challenge for change and acceptance for cultural, traditional, and political ideas. Older members of the Vietnamese Community felt that Madison went against since she didn’t choose the name “ Little Saigon” for their Community.Despite what she fought and supported the Vietnamese Community, some members of the Community felt betrayed and accused her of being communism since “Little Saigon” holds a firm idea of communism to them due to the war. Madison clenched her ground by explaining, and being patient with her Community since it will benefit her Community. “Little Saigon advocates claimed that the name alone represented the refugee experience, freedom , democracy, and nationalism”( Valverde 123). Little Saigon advocates felt that without this name, they are supporting communism. There were members that did not feel the connection to Little Saigon, but sympathize with the older generation who didn’t understand institution in America. They think that Little Saigon connects them to other communities across America and connection to the homeland, the feeling of diaspora.Members of the Community have a strong pull to keep the community anticommunism, they have resorted to violence, and threats to those who are against them. Vice-mayor Madison is supporting the Vietnamese diaspora in San Jose by accepting the South Vietnamese flag as the official flag and other symbolism of diaspora that is important to the Vietnamese Community. She is part of the generation who focus on connecting and understanding with the older generation, but fighting for change to express their views and the respect that American never gave. The controversy of Little Saigon shows how Madison Nguyen overcame the idea of anticommunism within the Vietnamese Community, which change the politics for Vietnamese Americans. For her to reach this point, she had to overcome Vietnamese traditional norms,gender roles, and class . The Vietnamese American Community has different generations that are assimilating in different ways in the Community but does not acknowledge different ideology in America. 

Since the name Little Saigon offer a deep meaning to some members of the Vietamese community, how would naming the business district differently change for San Jose since popular cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco have Vietnamese communities represent themselves as “ Little Saigon”?How can the community of San Jose represent these other communities that also want to represent what is important to them and their identity?

Valverde, Kieu-Linh Caroline. Transnationalizing Viet Nam: Community, Culture, and Politics in

 the Diaspora. Temple University Press, 2013.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/05/judge-rules-san-jose-council-violated-brown-act-in-little-saigon-dispute/

   

Week 5_Melanie Manuel_ASA 114

Melanie Manuel

ASA 114 001

31 January 2020

One of the topics that Michael Peter Smith’s “Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroots Politics” discusses is “deterritorialization,” which I understood to be a breaking of boundaries in the simplest of terms. Smith explains through Appadurai that this poses an issue for community research because of the following two reasons: 1) “the loosening of the ties between wealth, population, and territory ‘fundamentally alters the basis for cultural reproduction’” and 2) “ethnographers of deterritorialized peoples are increasingly finding that the ‘there,’ or ‘homeland,’ of transnational migrants, exiles, and refugees…” (18) This part later goes into Benedict Anderson’s concept about the “imagined community,” which seems to be a thought pervading the back of deterritorialized people’s minds. This notion of deterritorialization seems to imply a blurring of lines, reminding me very much of the pan-ethnic term, “Asian-American” in the way that it serves as an identifier for those fighting for a particular social justice, whether that be to alter social class hierarchies or even the very concept of race, because this creates a sense of camaraderie in being an outlier. I find that migrants play an interesting role in the United States demographic makeup, because they’re positioned, just as people of color are, as people that live in the in-between. But for migrants, there seems to be an additional layer to this in-betweenness that gives them a kind of advantage when thinking about how to give back to their communities or even just thinking of diaspora, because they are folks that make up a good fraction of it, who are trying to evolve what it means to be a migrant in the United States. 
 

I incorporated this image of Yuji Ichioka, the man who coined the term “Asian American” as a way of forming solidarity in the Asian American community, not to subsume problems within the other, but to remind us that are problems are quite similar in the grand scheme of white hegemony. 

Works Cited

Smith, Michael Peter. 1994. “Can You Imagine? Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroots Politics.” Social Text, No. 39 (Summer, 1994), pp. 15-33.

Image Used

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4671187/user-clip-yuji-ichioka

Week 5 - Douglas Tran - ASA 114

I felt that this week’s reading had common themes with this week’s topics in my communication class. In my communication class, we talked about the difference between an ego network and a global network. An ego network is the web of social relationships that stems from an individual whereas a global network is how social relationships connect everybody. In the article, Smith talks about how the migration of different populations has created this global network. I think this idea of a global network has close ties with transnationalism and the growth of globalization.  As certain populations of people continue to exist in two different places at once, they are able to network with an exponentially greater amount of people thus expanding their global network. Another idea from the reading that stood out to me is the slogan “Think Globally/Act Locally” and “Thinking Locally and Acting Globally.” In my opinion, this slogan embodies the idea of grassroots politics. With grassroots movements, they typically have no backing from high profile organizations or investors. They are started by students/people who want to make some kind of change.  When a movement “thinks globally and acts locally,” that reminds me of the Hong Kong protest at UC Davis. This organization of people aims to project a message about an issue overseas to their own small (in relation) group of students. Transversely, when an organization “thinks locally and acts globally,” they take their immediate population to work on a project that reaches further than our own nation’s borders. For example, I think of Engineers without borders, each branch works with its local organization with the aims of going across seas to help a developing country. Is delocalization and the loss of borders and territory necessarily a bad thing? I realize that people need to have their sense of community but is the gradual expansion of transnationalism going to lead to worldly acceptance of different cultures as different diasporas create different hybrid cultures? 



Works Mentioned

Michael Peter Smith. “Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroots Politics.”

https://www.sampsoniaway.org/sw-daily/2017/07/07/cartoon-fading-borders/

Week5_Vanesa Guillen_ASA114

The reading called Whose Community is it Anyway? Overseas Vietnamese Negotiating their Cultural and Political Identity: The Case of Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen by Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde first states how the Vietnamese American community is dealing with challenges to form a community. According to the reader, a community is formally established following the "community-building process" (Valverde, p.115), although it is complicated to form a successful community. The author demonstrates how the diaspora community is involved politically and culturally. She gives an example of a council member named Madison Nguyen who was being exposed to corruption or accused of being a communist by the Vietnamese American community with her decision of the labeling of "Little Saigon" (Valverde, p.114). With that example, Valverde further explains how the Vietnamese American community has different views and understandings of their home country after the Vietnam War. The aftermath of the war and settlement into America gives them an idea of "imagined communities", a complex understanding of its history and strives for political and cultural representation in America (Valverde, p.114).

In this time, are there more political leaders in America that are taking political action for a more beneficial representation of the Vietnamese American community?

Kieu-Linh Valverde. “Whose Community Is It Anyway?: Overseas Vietnamese Negotiating their Cultural and Political Identity –The Case of Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen.” ​Transnationalizing Viet Nam.

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/15116056/2010/12/madison-nguyen.jpg?w=420

Week5_Colleen Cruz_ASA114

In Michael Peter Smith’s “Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroots Politics,” he discusses two main topics of transnationalism and its impact on grassroot activism. Transnationalism has blurred the physical and social borders that have previously existed. It also complicates economic and cultural production. Smith (1994) presents a new term called deterritorialization and reterritorialization which relates to the conception of homeland and transnational borders (18). Moreover, Smith explores how activism manifests with the rise of globalization. He (1994) champions the idea of “think globally, act locally” (25). This encourages grassroot efforts to provide aid or support in countries experiencing social, cultural, political, or economic issues. It is also a way to practice solidarity. In my eyes, this is one of the strengths that comes out of transnationalism. For example, I have seen people in my community mobilize to gather funds and resources to send to the communities in the Philippines affected by the Taal volcanic eruption.  

Question: What are some challenges that may arise with a transnational social movement? Is it harder to organize a united movement/people power?

Works Cited

Image: 

https://www.facebook.com/wearedissenters/photos/a.107338734092039/124430839049495/?type=3&theater

Smith, Michael Peter. 1994. “Can You Imagine? Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroots Politics.” Social Text, No. 39 (Summer, 1994), pp. 15-33

Week 4_Anna Yang__ASA114

After reading "Asians on the Rim: Transnational Capital and Local Community in the Making of Contemporary Asia America", it explains being Asian in America is changing throughout time. It also explains how through history, this term is being coined differently and transcending the way of life through the perspective of Asians living in America. However as this term is constantly evolving, it involves many stereotypes of what it means to be this minority in America. There is an assumption that has came to term that many Asian-Americans are high academic achieving scholars building on the model minority myth and therefore giving many pressures to asian americans and their generations as being told to be successful and have a high status job that pays well.


Question: Within this asian diaspora, how can we defeat the stereotypes of model minority issues and begin to see asians as individualized people and not grouped into being one thing?

Anthony Tran, ASA 114, Week 4

Arif Dirlik’s article, “ Asian on the Rim: Transitional Capitol and Local Community and the Making of Contemporary Asian America,” they made an interesting argument about racism and interethnic conflicts that go beyond that of interracial conflicts. Especially the theory presented on the inventions of Orientalism “used against one another(‘s Asian ethnic group) in perpetuating their exploitation and oppression, a tactic employed by white capitol” (Dirlik 4), there is so much racism that creates this hierarchical dynamic, putting whites at the top and anybody of color under them. A major example is U.S. as a government of white folk controlling everyone else that is living in the country. During the times of Japanese internment, we see that there were serious institutional consequences that pushed everyone to want to dissociate from the Japanese. With hegemonic discourse coming from histories of oppression, there is a basis of ignorance instead of the actual experiences and self-image being used to define and shape. The Asian American Movement that is highlighted points out how we have separate struggles in history, but we need to band together with this united front showing how those struggles can and do make us a united community. These counter stories or counter culture movements developed during the student, civil rights, women and ethnic movements were crucial as they fighting started to reverse some deeply rooted eurocentric ideas and prejudice damage.

Question: With the U.S. war on Vietnam, can you expand on the type of “kinship with the Vietnamese” that the Asian Americans felt?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NExfbX7E42o

Week 4: Neil Castro - ASA 114

In Pei-Chia Lan article "Legal Servitude and Free Illegality: Migrant "Guest" Workers in Taiwan", the author talks about the use of OCWs or overseas contract workers going to other countries for work. It talked about how these workers were were doing these dirty, dangerous and difficult jobs (referred as the 3 D's in the article) as they paid more than what they had in their home country. The author talked about how workers are indebted because they were tied to the contract that they signed in order to come to the country to attain the job. This leads to some worker fleeing from the job because they were mistreated or abused when they were working for the employer. I honestly see this as a direct comparison to OFWs or overseas Filipino workers as their conditions resemble the style of OCWs in Taiwan. They had to find a job outside the country in order to support their loved one back home with the use of remittances. However, I did not know that this was another way of citizenship because these "guest workers" in the article can flee within their country. In America, this would have never happened because of the quota system being enforced strictly yet it is still surprising that the can flee with the right set of circumstances. It feels like it is a benefit for the country as they regain money from these workers as they are exporting them out and attaining the gross capital from this commodity,

So why is there like a divide between other OCWs and Filipinos? Is it because Filipino workers are commonplace and they can be hired cheaply? Why the cultural divide? 

Image: An infographic of overseas workers that predicts the growth of workers until 2022 by PhilJobNet, the Philippine government's official web-based labor market information and job search, matching, and referral portal

Works Cited

Pei-Chia Lan, “Legal Servitude and Free Illegality: Migrant “Guest” Workers in Taiwan.” Asian Diasporas.

Week 4_Kelly Wang_ASA 114

Alif Dirlik's reading, "Asians on the Rim: Transnational Capital and Local Community in the Making of Contemporary Asian America", focuses on how the term and meaning behind Asian American is evolving with recent times, however we cannot forget the past history of how Asian American came to be. Dirlik highlights how "While the most visible effect may be the elevation in Asian American status vis-a-vis other minority groups, the transformation has not put an end to earlier problems in the conceptualization of Asian America which persist in recon-figured forms, as introduced new burdens on being Asian American, and has complicated the very notion of Asian America to the point where it may break apart under the fore of its contradictions" (p.3). The transformation mentioned that introduced new burdens on being Asian American reminded me of the model minority myth. The burden of the model minority myth is that it generalizes all Asian Americans and silences the untold stories of those that do not fall under the model minority narrative. Not only does the model minority myth misrepresent Asian Americans as a whole, but it also gives the assumption that Asian Americans are no longer in need of additional resources and tools in order to succeed as well as de-minoritizes Asian Americans. 

Pei-Chia Lan's chapter in Asian Diasporas, “Legal Servitude and Free Illegality: Migrant “Guest” Workers in Taiwan.” discusses the issue of how migrant contract workers, or overseas contract workers (OCW), have less freedom in their "legal servitude" while undocumented workers have more freedom as well as higher pay. In regards to border control and state regulation, Lan makes an example of Taiwan's government legalizing foreigners to work on a national construction project: "This policy emerged primarily as a response to a labor shortage, or more exactly, a lack of cheap labor for low-skilled positions not in high favor by locals" (p.257). This exploitation of the lower class in need of labor is what is stopping us from progressing forward as a united front. We need to tackle the issues that are coming from the dominant group, not working against one another. Minority groups working against each other is what is giving the dominant group their control. The concept of "Illegal on Paper, Free in Market" (p.266) should not be something a migrant worker has to choose: being an OCW with low pay under a legal servitude, or become an undocumented worker with higher pay but lose basic legal protection such as health insurance. 

Question: The problems with undocumented labor are still present today and are not just found within the Asian community. What steps can be taken towards not exploiting those in need of employment and how can we move forward in solidarity with other minority groups?

https://www.cityonahillpress.com/2018/02/22/distorting-asian-american-identities/

Week 4 - Mimi Le ASA 114

Arif Dirlik’s “Asians on the Rim: Transnational Capital and Local Community in the Making of Contemporary Asian American” describes the process of Asian American make their mark in American industries with their roots. John Liui describes that rising in the political and economics community, the goal is to “be successful in their struggles if they developed an alternative way of seeing and living along with their political demand” (Dirlik 6). By taking up space in society, Asian Americans faces criticism amongst their rise in the global market. This reading relates to globalization to those Asians who immigrated to America and faces pay inequality and poor work conditions in order to make ends meet. Seeing how minorities group struggle, they join in solidarity to raise awareness to the struggles that they face when having to leave their beloved home in order to construct a better future within their families as well as community.

Question: What was the triggering factor that causes Immigration law to change allowing more

 immigrants into the United States?  With the drastic number of immigrants increasing in 1970, I thought it was interesting how many immigrants were highly educated in order to have a voice and create a platform within the Asian American community to avoid discrimination. 

Work Cited: 

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/immigrant-population-over-time

Dirlik, A. “Asians on the Rim: Transnational Capital and Local Community in the Making of Contemporary Asian America.”

Week 4_Leng Vang_ASA114

Migrant workers have to endure harsh and improper treatment overseas.  They do "dirty, dangerous, and difficult" jobs that others would not want to do.  States goverments in these countries that help export labors have created agencies to help with the flow of labor into overseas countries and disregarding the ill-treatment of their people for the monetary benefit that the State can gain from them.  A State is supposed to look out for their people and protect them from harm, however, in the case of migrant workers, the State seems to promote their people into being in harms way.

With the ill-treatment of migrant workers overseas, sometimes racist degrading treatment, why do State government not advocate more for the rights of their people? Do they not care that the treatment of their people stems from racial prejudice and that such prejudice falls on the country as a whole, or do the people in power in State government sees themselves as not part of the same people that migrant workers are part of?






Work Cited:
Lin, Pei-Chia. "Legal Servitude and Free Illegality." Asian Diasporas: New Formations, New Conceptions, by Parrenas Rhacel Salazar. et al., Standford University Press, 2007, pp. 253-275.

Image:
https://money.cnn.com/2010/07/07/news/economy/farm_worker_jobs/index.htm

Wfa

Week4_EmmanuelCapua_ASA114

Asians on the Rim: Transnational Capital and Local Community in the Making of Contemporary Asian America, written by Arif Dirlik argues that “Asian America seem irrelevant under current circumstances and have come under criticism for being outdated… We need to rethink earlier conceptualizations because they no longer seems to be capable of containing the changes either within Asian America or in its relationship to its local and global environments” (Dirlik, 1996, p. 3). 

One of the points that stood out occurred when Dirlik stated, “The historicism of the new discourse was expressed at the most fundamental level in ‘claiming America’ by rooting Asian Americanness in the ground of U.S History” (Dirlik, 1996, p. 5). In other words, Dirlik is stating that Asians have been a part of the makeup of U.S history for a very long time. However, their stories were suppressed and the only way to reclaim those stories and their identities within American makeup was to bring up key points in American history and find themselves within that narrative. 

In order to make clear that they aren’t necessarily trying to erase American history rather discover and help explain their lost identities, Dirlik further states, “our roots go deep into the history of the United States and they can do much to explain who we are and became this way” (Dirlik, 1996, p. 6). This cooperates with a lot of the work that folks fighting for Ethnic Studies is continuing to reinforce and reiterate that they are not trying to erase history, but rather discover their lost identities within the American narratives. 

Question: Dirlik refers to a new transformation is occurring where a “process of constructing new ethnicities that are no longer containable within the national framework.” Is he essentially referring to the blending of ethnicities or the increasing prevalence of mixed children? 

Photo Source: https://youtu.be/2tl0xxmqwuc (Thumbnail)

Source: 

Dirlik, Arif. “Asians on the Rim: Transnational Capital and Local Community in the Making of 

Contemporary Asian America.” Amerasia Journal, vol. 22, no. 3, 1996, pp. 1–24., doi:10.17953/amer.22.3.626172n811343982.

Week 4_Joyce_Vea_ASA114

Pei Chia Lan's chapter "Legal Servitude and Free Illegality: Migrant Guest Workers in Taiwan" explores the plights of Asian overseas contract workers (OCWs) under the legal subjugation of nations, who are more interested in migrants' labor and economic utility. Under an exploitative regime of labor migration, migrants are contractually deprived of economic and civil liberties. In the example provided in this chapter, Priscilla, a migrant worker, was paid very poorly and only allowed two days a month. After "running away" and becoming undocumented, she begins to enjoy more personal and economic freedoms, living separately from her employers and having more autonomy over her income.

I thought this reading was particularly interesting because as a Filipino, I grew up around the common misconception/belief that exploitative labor systems/abusive employers like this exist solely outside the United States (mostly in Asian and Middle Eastern countries) — because the U.S. supposedly has great labor protection rights. However, it is widely known that migrant workers in the United States enjoy far less protections than American citizens, leaving them vulnerable to powerful entities like Walmart and Amazon. I now see that these contracts and policies are only meant to serve employers and the nation state, seeking only the labor of migrants without seeing them as human with needs for protection.

Question: How have the presence of "runaway" migrant workers changed the political, cultural, and social landscapes of their host countries? How can OCWs fight back against an exploitative labor regime?



Works Cited:
Lan, Pei-Chia. "Legal Servitude and Free Illegality: Migrant" Guest" Workers in Taiwan i Pei-Chia Lan." Asian Diasporas: New Formations, New Conceptions: 253.

Week 4_Julie Guan_ASA114

Arif Dirlik’s “Asians on the Rim: Transnational Capital and Local Community in the Making of Contemporary Asian American” argues that the perception of the Asian American identity has changed from that of the past but regardless, we cannot ignore the lessons that history has taught us. Due to the rise of new global economic powers at the Pacific Rim, the power dynamics shifted, affecting society’s image of Asian Americans and their perceptions of self as the “community ideal” which was taken away when Asian Americans identified as “Rim people” (Dirlik 3). In the past, the western perspective dominated because of their desire to “rule the world”, thus painting those that were from Asian as “forever foreign” and needed to be civilized (Dirlik 4). A pan-Asian identity and community were then born out of the common experience of discrimination and exploitation that was inflicted on Asian Americans. This all changed when the Pacific-Asian countries rose into power, dominating the global markets, paving the way for the rise of transnationalism and a trans-Pacific professional-managerial class. Furthermore, Dirlik conveys that this led to harm to the Asian American community because it influenced the “model minority myth” as well as the movement of people back and forth between countries. The development of a dual identity allowed for the rejection of Americanness and the acceptance of Asianess, shifting the cultural dynamic and by-passing spatial boundaries. The reading relates to this week's topic of economics because economic prosperity drove transnationalism, which led to consequences that can be seen as negative. The harm of transnationalism can be shown through the concept of gentrification in places such as, San Francisco’s Chinatown pushing out many of the poorer immigrants that have lived there for generations and making room for the higher more skilled class of tech workers with university degrees working at major corporations, many of them being newer immigrants. 

Question: Lan's piece covers an OCW that works in Taiwan that's being exploited for her labor, why did Dirlik not mention workers like Priscilla when he criticized transnationalism? Instead, he solely focuses on those that are highly skilled rather than those being exploited, like those before the economic boom. 

Works Cited: 

https://www.internations.org/expat-insider/2016/working-in-the-tiger-states

Arif Dirlik."Asians on the Rim: Transnational Capital and Local Community in the Making of

Contemporary Asian American."

Pei-Chia Lan, "Legal Servitude and Free Illegality: Migrant "Guest" Workers in Taiwan." Asian Diasporas. 

Week 4_Esther Lai_ASA 114

Esther Lai

ASA 114

Week 4

    In Arif Dirlik’s piece, “Asians on the Rim: Transnational Capital and Local Community in the Making of Contemporary Asian America,” the question of what “Asian America” means, according to the past, current, and future histories of Asians in America, is presented. Dirlik argues that understandings of past Asian American history is more crucial now than ever as it is a circular reaction with orientalism and what is being Asian American. A good example of this is Gary Okihiro’s argument on model minority and yellow peril, “[m]oving in one direction along the circle, the model minority mitigates the alleged danger of the yellow peril, whereas reversing direction, the model minority, if taken too far, can become the yellow peril” (Dirlik 14). With technology and transportation condensing space and time for the contemporary world, the migration patterns of Asian people from their home countries to places like the United States has changed drastically since its earlier conception of Asian migration in the mid-late twentieth century. What it means to be part of Asian America and what it is to be a powerful Pacific Rim economy is interconnected now with transnational travels and economic, political, and social changes between these countries. With Asian companies like Alibaba continuing to grow globally, it makes it difficult for the United States to ignore the economic power that is increasingly dominating global economics, making a case for local Asian America to be determined by its global “Asian America” presence.

Question: With the circular cycle of old and new concepts constantly recurring, how can anyone in the Asian American diaspora combat the orientalist lens of the West in present contemporary time without conflicting with their local and global communities?

Sources Cited:

Dirlik, Arif. 1996. “Asians on the Rim: Transnational Capital and Local Community in the Making of Contemporary Asian America.” Amerasian Journal, 22(3), 1-24
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV-JwSC7Jts