exam 3
According to Espiritu, the war never ends for many subsequent generations of Vietnamese Americans. If this is the case, where does the afterlife of war reside? Use the film, Refugee, to support your answer.
Although it is many years after the war, the Vietnamese refugees still have no real place in the US. In the film it shows how Michael and his friends and family live in a poor, ghetto town. Afterlife of war resides in postmemories and in lives of subsequent generations. The impacts of war tears their families aparts and has led to poor infrastructure and third-world everyday lifestyle. Today, many Vietnamese people continue to not "belong." They continue to face discrimination, poverty, and for some, lack of education.
According to Bonnie Honig, American democracy is founded not only on immigration but also: (name two other factors/events).
American democracy is founded not only on immigration but also conquest, slavery, expansion, and annexation. -Conquest: Native Americans -Slavery: The forced importation of African slave labor -Expansion: the acquisition of Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, and more -Annexation: French settlements in Illinois, St. Louis and New Orleans as well as a significant Spanish speaking population in the Southwest as a result of the war with Mexico
Identify three significant differences of the second wave (post 1965) of mass migration to the U.S. in comparison to the first wave.
As the Hart-Celler Act abolished the earlier quota system based on national origin during the first wave and led to increasing number of immigrant families in the US whereas the first wave consisted of mostly men and singles. The first wave of immigrants were mostly uneducated unskilled laborers, while because of economic development and globalization during the second wave, many immigrants of the second wave were highly desired skilled laborers such as engineers. Mass migration of Southeast Asian refugees from the Refugee Act of 1980 while the first wave was mostly Chinese and Japanese.
According to Bonnie Honig, what problems do foreigner/immigrants 'solve' for the U.S.?
Bonnie Honig proposes that foreigners may solve problems for regimes by legitimizing the law, resolving the paradox of democratic power, providing a nation's choice-worthiness and enacting consent. However these contributions are ambivalent because they can also challenge and undermine the nations which they have potential of strengthening. Foreigners can strengthen the democratic politics of a nation as well as encourage the "de-nationalization" of democracy. Also, narratives from foreigner/immigrant perspectives shed light on gaps in our own US history that we may have not uncovered in our own ethnocentric historical narrative/perspective.
Define 'complex personhood'. Apply this concept to one of the three main characters in Refugee - what does his 'complex personhood' look like?
Complex personhood is when people remember and forget, are beset by contradiction, and recognize and misrecognize themselves and others; considering the multi-dimension and complexity of a person. It's a critique of "good refugee," which sees refugee as a source of problems in a singular way and not sees people as people. David lives a normal life in America but a part of him wants to know deeper family history that make up a part of his identity. However, he doesn't want to acknowledge the tragedy and originally doesn't want to reunite with family in Vietnam because he doesn't want to be disappointed and cry. He changes his mind and decides to meet his uncle later on. Mike is troubled by unanswered questions regarding the nature of his family and yearn to meet his father. When meeting his father, complications arise because Mike's dad was forced to make the decision to separate from Mike's family to save them, but Mike can't fully comprehend this and sees it as an act of dishonesty and pride in his father.
Model Minority Myth
Def: AA are perceived to achieve a higher degree of socioeconomic success than other minorities based on the measure of income, education, public benefit utilization rate. Sig: AA' success constitutes a direct critique of African Americans and civil rights movement. It marks the turning point of the public perception of AA, and it emphasizes the idea that people with hard work and good morality can overcome equity, illness, poverty, and even structural discrimination. The MM myth disregards the fact that Asian Americans at the time were also marginalized and racially segregated in America thus they also represented lower economic levels and faced many social issues just as other racial and ethnic minorities.
Critical Refugee Studies
Def: Conceptualizes the "refugee" not as an object of investigation, but rather as a paradigm whose function is to establish and make intelligible a wider set of problems. The study humanized refugee experiences and focused on their narratives and perspectives, considering complexity of a person. Sig: It allows us to see refugees more than one dimension mean as it allows for more than one narrative and also allows us to understand their experience as a larger part of history. It conceptualizes that refugee life experiences show the interconnections of colonization, war, and global social change.
Militarized Refugee
Def: Exposes hidden violence behind humanitarian term "refuge" Sig: Challenges the powerful narrative of American rescue and care for displaced Vietnamese refugees that erases the role that US foreign policy and war played in inducing the refugee crisis in the first place
scriptorial landscapes
Def: Publicly visible inscriptions such as signs, banners, graffiti, and street names that contribute to the cultural production of the past. It's an attempt to remember historical figures and combat organized forgetting. Sig: The retelling of the past often happens in and through these places and landscapes (scriptorial landscapes). Recent literature in geography conceptualizes streets as important cultural and political arenas, and street naming as. Functioned as important social and cultural indicators despite their seemingly ordinal nature and utilitarian function. Example: Postwar Vietnam tried to erase South Vietnam history by renaming streets with unfamiliar North Vietnamese associated names: Saigon renamed Ho Chi Minh City; daily reminder of who is in power.
SFSU Strike (1968)
Def: SFSU students, SFSU faculty, and some anonymous community activists demanded for open admission, community control of education, ethnic studies, and self-determination. Sig: First campus uprising with Asian Americans as a collective force. Asian Americans became active participants in the making of history, reversing standard accounts that had treated Asian Americans as marginal objects. It provided a new way of looking at communities. Activists believed that ordinary people could make their own history by learning how historical forces operated and by transforming this knowledge into a material force to change these lives.
"Good Refugee"
Def: Term formed during the Vietnam War based off of what it meant to assimilate under the American dream. It refers to the idea that Vietnamese assimilation and economic adaptation are ways to attain "American dream." (ex. Mike in the file Refugee) Sig: This description is flattening a complex personhood, as it depicted Vietnamese as "model minority" that was used to delegitimize black and brown movements for economic equity and civil rights. The US creates this narrative of "good refugee" to not only turn the Vietnam War into a "good war" which is ultimately necessary, just, and moral war but also confirm that only following the American middle-class way of life can be visible in the society.
"We-win-even-when-we-lose"
Def: The US propaganda that twisted the public viewpoints on the Vietnam War from the failure into the US acting as saviors to the Vietnamese people, in order to keep faith in the US military Sig: It painted the US military as liberators who "save" the Vietnamese people from communism and justified appropriateness of their intervention. Empowered the U.S. militarism by showing Vietnam's "collateral damage" as necessary for the progression of freedom and democracy - that even in losing the war the US is better off. This tactic ultimately was a form of strategic forgetting. Made Vietnam War a "good war" that was successful, just, and moral despite the fact that the US lost badly.
High tech industry
Def: The high-tech industry in the US trained people to take specific jobs and created labor market of Americans to recruit from. Sig: It figures into contemporary AA as it contributes to stereotypes and is associated with the model minority myth. Special visas were created for "high skilled" immigrants It also contributes to the stereotype that Asian Americans are smart and feeds into the model minority myth since a large amount of people from India work in high-tech industry.
Refugee Act of 1980
Def: The legislation established for admission and resettlement of "special concern" refugees after the Vietnam War Sig: Changed the definition of "refugee" to a person with a "well-founded fear or persecution". The act led to significant increase in the number of refugees entering the US. It creates the racialized idea that the Vietnamese refugees as out-of-place victims and the US as the ultimate provider of human welfare; allowed Americans to remake themselves from military aggressors to benevolent rescuers.
postmemories
Def: The postwar generation Vietnamese Americans mediated their own memories of a war by stringing together bits and pieces of public images, narratives, familial knowledge. Does not recall but rather imagines, projects, and creates the past with the same effective force as actual memories Sig: Even they were separated in time and space from the war, they can still remember and feel it. Postmemories of the postwar Vietnamese generation reflect the grip of the bequeathed trauma that is manifested (physically, materially, and mentally) in the lives of young Vietnamese Americans. The postmemories signify that the Vietnam war didn't start and end for refugees in the same way it did for the US.
Amerasian Homecoming Act
Def: This act enabled Vietnamese children fathered by American soldiers to immigrate to the US, led to increase Vietnamese immigration to the US Sig: The first federal law that substantially eased the immigration of Amerasian children born during the Vietnam War. This act shows how US represented themselves as rescuers and saviors and it reflects a racialized belief that US can provide a better life for children.
Operation Babylift
Def: US emergency initiative that airlifted orphaned children to "save them" and bring them to America without proper planning Sig: Using innocent children as propaganda. What's ironic was that the US used the same aircraft delivering war material that caused their displacement in the first place. Some children were taken from families unwillingly. Reflects racialized belief that US is safer and a better home compared to Vietnam. Arrival of Babylift children symbolized America as loving parents of colored children. This justified US benevolence as rescuers and caretakers of the displaced Vietnamese.
Vincent Chin
Def: Young Chinese American beaten to death by 2 men after a bachelor party who mistook him for being Japanese Sig: His death brought together AA across ethnic lines to advocate for change and civil rights. Wakeup call to address anti-Asian bias and racial intolerance
Differential Inclusion
Def: a process by which a group is deemed integral (to society and economy) only, or precisely, because of their subordinate standing. Example: Bracero program, model minority myth, internal colonialism; these people are important but not included because they are not whites Sig: taking advantage of their labor
According to Espiritu, what is the role of the "good refugee" in constructing a "good war?"
In order to restore the reputation of the U.S. and to undermine their failure in the war, it was necessary to create the narrative of the "good refugee." Not only did they forcibly displaced many people during the Vietnam war, but the U.S. also executed operations to ultimately represent the Southeast Asian refugees as the white man's burden and the U.S. as the rescuers. Those who fled to the U.S. or were held in refugee camps were forced to live up to the values of an average, middle-class American family and to adopt American codes and conduct. By constructing 'good refugees' who are grateful for the U.S. efforts and well assimilated contributes to the narrative of the "good war" and distorts history even more.
How did U.S. foreign capital investments in the 1970s and 80s affect migration flows to the U.S.?
In the 1970s-80s, the US invested more money into worldwide areas for higher profits which created a higher demand for migrant labor because it was cheaper and migrant workers were more willing to take on these jobs. The destabilized market economy leads to internal mobility, encouraging companies to move; therefore, people are moving for better opportunities throughout the US. The economic development in the US shift towards consumerism which creates greater expectations of living such as transportation. As a result of this, the migration network steadily expanded.
Political philosophers define refugees as a contradiction or an aberration for the nation. How can this be?
Political philosophers define refugees as a contradiction or an aberration for the nation because refugees are already seen as people who have lost all rights. In a nation that that promises universal individual rights and freedom, they are simultaneously categorizing refugees as the "other" who are not seen as equal as a white, assimilated American. They are considered an aberration to the nation because the U.S.'s efforts to limit the assimilation process of Vietnamese refugees has created a divergence between what is deemed as "normal" and "American" and what is considered "foreign" and "alien". The solutions to fixing the refugee crisis that the nation states created themselves were: repatriation, integration into the first-asylum countries, or resettlement in a third country. These solutions all reaffirm that the refugees represent an aberration of categories in the national order of things.
What are two main differences for those migrating as refugees as opposed to immigrants?
Refugees are forced to flee their home country because of persecution, violence, or war whereas immigrants voluntarily leave for economic reasons or wanting to be with families. Refugees can't be sent back to their countries even if they aren't legal refugees, while immigrants can be deported if they don't have legal documentations. Refugees are sent to refugee camps while immigrants can find a home in their new country.
How do those in conditions of rightlessness enact their political existence?
Refugees do not politically exist because they aren't considered a member of states. Nonetheless, they engage in politics by exercising rights that they don't have; by doing so, they're turning their bare life into a political life. They acted as if they had rights to begin with and to engage in. An example of this is when refugees would riot and protest by waving banners and chanting slogans about freedom and democracy and when they would create self governed structures of government within their camps. They also set boats on fire to avoid being transferred to offshore detention centers.
How are postmemories different from regular memories? Using the film, Refugee, discuss how Mike's postmemory differs from his younger brother, Nang?
Regular memories is what a person recall his or her experience, whereas for postmemories the person does not experience/recall, but rather imagines, projects, and creates the past with the same effective force as actual memories. Mike's sources of postmemories are his mother, photographs of his mom, dad's journals, but Nang's postmemories is mostly from his aunt whose memory filled with guilt/sadness.
Espiritu argues that we have "memory practices" that retell the story of the past. Provide an example of such a practice and how it works.
Scriptorial landscapes like street naming that combat organized forgetting. For example, they names streets in the Eden center after ARVN soldiers. Street naming is a highly contested and politicized practice that retained the honor and history of the Republic of Vietnam and remembered generals who fought the communists. These memory practices serve as a reminder of urban southern Vietnam and it permanently inscribed these locations invokes feelings, questions, stories, and thus memories of the past.
What is Critical Refugee Studies' central critique of nation-states?
The Critical Refugee Studies' central critique of nation-states is that they questions the sovereignty of liberal democratic nation-states. Refugees are rightless and stateless, which is contradictory to "nation-state", and they are viewed as a problem because "they make visible 'a transgression of the social contract between a state and its citizen.'" If refugees aren't naturalized nor repatriated, they would be held in detention camps with their liberties suspended, which goes against the ideals of the nation-state.
What was the main goal of the SFSU Strike?
The main goal was education reform, including the creation of ethnic studies, in order to retell American history as if AA matter. In addition, it introduces the idea that AA as active participants in making history, introducing the idea of Asian American activism.
Under what historical conditions was the myth of the model minority formed?
The myth of the model minority formed as partially a response to the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, when African Americans fought for equal rights and the discontinuation of racial segregation in the United States. In a backlash to the movement, white America presented and used Asian Americans to argue that African Americans could raise up their communities by focusing on education and accepting and conforming to racial segregation and the institutional racism and discrimination of the time period, as Asian Americans have arguably done.
Identify three major global factors that contributed to the transformation of contemporary Asian America.
US military involvement in Southeast Asia led to displacement of high number of refugees, which transformed the racial composition of immigration coming to the US. US legislations created employment-based visas and its high-tech labor demand led to mass migration of "skilled labor" US foreign capital investments led to shifted labor market overseas for lower costs -shifted movements of financial sectors, hospitals, and universities -business also shifted towards these areas b/c it was more densely populated -led to rural-urban migration
Intentionalized beings
"who possess and enact their own politics as they emerge out of the ruins of war and its aftermath"
