Week 4_Anna Pak_ASA114

The E in economics is for exploitation! Just kidding, unless…? In the case of the foreign teachers brought over to America, the joke is not that far off from the truth. Hiring educators from abroad is an ongoing phenomenon in America as a result of low wages for domestic teachers and tax cuts for funding education. Similar to the Taiwanese OCW (Overseas Contract Worker) in Lan’s chapter, teachers from the Philippines pay placement agencies and accrue “debt shackles” (Parreñas & Siu 262), but there is no cost to the school hiring them. In addition, these teachers usually do not gain citizenship, deemed by the host nation as “guest workers” (Parreñas & Siu 272) without civil rights. However, Lan argues we should rethink policies beyond “conventional” membership/sovereignty ideas (Parreñas & Siu 273) to allow these workers basic human rights and avoid the contractual slavery suffered by the OCW. Dirlik also argues we rethink of Asian American identity/consciousness as a “necessity of meaningful political action” (Dirlik 3). In order to support local communities, Dirlik pushes for a view of “trans-Pacific panethnicity” that opposes “transnational capitalism” (Dirlik 17). On a side note, I wonder what they mean by “developmentalism” (Dirlik 17)?

Image Source: Noel Que teaching high school biology/biotechnology in Arizona after teaching 30 years in the US after migrating from the Philippines.

Works Cited

Parreñas Rhacel Salazar., and Lok C. D. Siu, editors. Asian Diasporas: New Formations, New Conceptions. Stanford University Press, 2007.

Arif Dirlik. “Asians on the Rim: Transnational Capital and Local Community in the Making of Contemporary Asian America.” Amerasia Journal, 22(3), 1-24.