Week 1_Joyce Vea_ ASA114

In Wanni Anderson and Robert Lee’s “Asian American Displacement”, they discuss how the globalization of labor and continuous restructuring of the capitalist economy has caused Asians in America to constantly negotiate their political, social, and cultural standing in American society. In other words, they remain in a constant state of displacement, creating multiple “homes”— both in the homeland and in the United States. Displacement, defined as the estrangement of a group of people from their native culture, is thus an inevitably tied to diaspora. Furthermore, Anderson and Lee discuss that Asian displacement is extremelycomplex; different Asian ethnic groups arrived to the United States under different circumstances, leading to vastly different socioeconomic outcomes. From the 1960s to 1980s, many Asian immigrants were professionally trained and highly skilled, who were fiscally drawn to America rather than for survival. However, the end of the war in 1975 in Southeast Asia also resulted into a large influx of Southeast Asian refugees. As Anderson and Lee write, “[m]any have fled threats to their lives from war and revolution, others have been displaced by economic and social upheaval, and still others have been recruited to meet the demands of new labor markets or seek opportunities to invest their human or financial capital,” (p. 5). Thus, there is a distinct, yet shared and similar, experience within Asian American displacement as a result of capitalism, globalization, and American imperialism. 

Source: Permanent Alien, a comic anthology by Rhode Island School of Design artists Hannah Cha, Mariel Rodriguez, Jean Wei, and Michelle Zhuang  (https://permanentalien.tumblr.com/)

Question: Is ‘displacement’ experienced differently between different ethnic groups within the Asian diaspora depending on their circumstances? How difficult is it for members of the Asian American diaspora to create multiple “homes”, especially if socioeconomic standing is considered?

Works Cited
Anderson, Wanni Wibulswasdi, and Robert G. Lee, eds. Displacements and diasporas: Asians in the Americas. Rutgers University Press, 2005.