AN INTERDISCIPLINARY AND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ASIAN MIGRATIONS

Sunday, March 9, 2008

PACIFIC WORLDS IN MOTION I: VANCOUVER

An Interdisciplinary Conference on Asian Migrations
March 14-15, 2008
Green College/St. John's College

CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS: DAY 2, Green College

Session 4: Transpacific Migration Studies I (930am-1045am)
Title: Korea as a Node of Pacific Migrations
Discussant: Prof. Jennifer Chun, UBC Sociology

Negotiating National and Ethnic Identities of Korean Chinese Workers in South Korea
Sung Sook Lim / 林 聖淑, Anthropology, University of British Columbia

ABSTRACT
Korean Chinese, descendents of Koreans who mainly migrated to Northeast China during the Japanese colonial period (1910-45) and the Korean War (1950-53), have been working and residing in South Korea since 1992, when a diplomatic relationship was established between China and South Korea. The political and economical changes in China, such as China’s new economical reforms, post Cold War political easiness in Northeast Aisa, and global capitalism, have had a significant impact on the Korean Chinese community in China. Such rapid changes have caused a number of them to leave their ‘home’ (China) and seek work in their ‘homeland’ (South Korea). It is against this economic background that the Korean Chinese enter South Korea as labors and are treated as ‘poorly paid undocumented (illegal) workers’ even though they regard themselves as being the same as other Koreans in their homeland. Consequently, they came to be recognized as a new ethnic minority group in South Korea. In 2002, their population was estimated at roughly 100,000, comprising mostly “unskilled” and undocumented workers.
The lives of Korean Chinese transmigrate labors are significantly shaped by their particular situations as Korean ethnic members and Chinese citizens. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between April 2003 and March 2004 in Ansan city, one of the largest industrial areas in South Korea, I will present how Korean Chinese workers negotiate their ethnicity and nationality in everyday life as living “undocumented workers” in their so called “homeland”. I consider the everyday lives of the Korean Chinese as important socio-economical contexts in which their ethnic identities are played out, uncovering and examining each aspect of the dynamic lives in South Korea.

I will present that Korean Chinese workers reproduce their ethnic identities in a variety of ways, such as by interacting with each other, by reinterpreting their colonial and modern history, and by manipulating symbols and symbolic actions. In doing so, they negotiate the ethnic boundaries between themselves and others, boundaries that exist even internally, resulting in a sense of detachment from China. In order to adapt to these circumstances, they re-establish their ethnic identities by producing, crossing, and underemphasizing these boundaries.
Moreover, depending on their social and personal situation, they represent differently who they are and what their ‘homeland’ means to them. Not only do they use their Korean ethnicity for practical advantages in living in South Korea, they are also sentimentally attached to it. The ways in which they rethink and re-establish their ethnicity shows that ethnic identities are not static, but are fluid, dynamic, and situational.

KEYWORDS : ethnicity, nationality, identity, migrant labor, Korean Chinese, and homeland

Hui-Jung Kim, Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Marriage Migration and Changing Gender-Nation Relations in South Korea

ABSTRACT
Female marriage migration from less developed to relatively more developed parts of Asia is becoming more prevalent. Building upon the feminist insights that women are biological reproducers of the nation as well as instruments of national development (Puri 2005; Yuval-Davis, 1997; Yuval-Davis et al 1998), this paper examines the cause and consequences of marriage migration in Asia through a lens of gender, nation, and state relations.
Empirically, this paper focuses on the roles of state in formulating the relationships between gender and nation in contemporary South Korea. From the late 1960s until recently, Korean women participated in the national development process as cheap docile laborers in the export-oriented, labor-intensive sectors such as the garment industry (Bauer 2001). To facilitate the women’s participation in the state-initiated economic development project, the Korean state had encouraged rural women to migrate to cities and women in general to have fewer children, initially to limit the number of children to three in 1960s, to two in 1970s, and finally to only one in 1980s.
This national development project through controlling of women’s roles was successful but resulted in two unintended consequences, which influenced the inflow of certain types of immigrants in recent years. First, the export-oriented economic development facilitated rural-urban migration, creating detrimental impact on the economic and living conditions of the rural areas. This has caused rural bachelors serious problems in finding spouses and resulted in international migration of Southeast Asian women to Korea as “foreign wives” (Ablemann and Kim 2005; Freeman 2005). Second, Korean women’s fertility rate is now one of the lowest among OECD countries (Lee and Park 2003). Facing below-replacement level fertility rate, the Korean state shifted its family planning policies from fertility discouragement to fertility encouragement in the 1990s.

Just as the earlier antinatalist policies were nationalistic (having less children can contribute to the rapid national development), the current pronatalist policies are also nationalistic (to sustain national growth, Korean women should produce more children). Women are encouraged to bear fewer/more children for the Korean nation. What is different between the earlier antinatialist and the present pronatalist approaches is the addition of an “ethnic” dimension due to the increasing number of foreign wives. Women are not only biological but also cultural reproducers of the nation. Thus, to reproduce “Korean” children, the present pronatalist policies not only include conventional measures such as tax incentives and child allowances but also, explicit assimilation policies to assist foreign wives to produce and rare “Korean” children.
The Korean case highlights the role of state in regulating particular forms of migration. That is, the Korean state’s gendered economic development policies induced, if not intentionally, the ‘need’ for spousal migrants (Robinson 2007). This gendered inflow of migrants, in turn, led the Korean state to merge assimilation policies into family planning policies.

KEYWORDS: Marriage migration, Gender, Nation, Population policies, Feminism, South Korea

A Comparative study of Immigration Policies in Japan and Korea: From a Perspective of Historical Institutionalism
Byoungha Lee, Political Science, Rutgers University

ABSTRACT
This paper will examine the variance of immigration policies between Japan and Korea. As latecomers to immigration, both countries have some similarity in formulating immigration policies. Two countries have faced a structurally embedded demand for foreign labor such as aging population and low birth-rate, and labor shortage in dirty, dangerous, and difficult sectors. Japan and Korea had shared almost the same policies against the inflow of foreign workers until 2004. Japan claims that unskilled foreign workers are officially not allowed, while the government utilizes the trainee programs and imports ethnic Japanese from Latin America as side-door mechanisms. In 1991 following the Japanese model, Korea launched the similar program. However, Korea adopted a new system in 2004, and it acted to allow migrant workers to work legally with a status of worker, and to prevent human rights violation. The debut of the new program signals Korea switched the position from side-door mechanism to front-door one. This research tries to figure out the puzzle why Japan is still maintaining the restrictive policies to import the foreign workers, yet Korea is moving toward more open policy even though Korea began with a carbon copy of the Japanese policy.

To explain the puzzle, I will focus on institutional arrangements developed throughout history. Within the literature of comparative migration studies, many scholars take group interests and international human rights norms as main analytical tools. However, I will argue that the two approaches ignore how the politics of immigration policies are mediated by institutional ordering. Interest-based approach regards state as a passive, monolithic umpire, thus misses degree of state autonomy, intra-governmental competition, and role of political coalition between bureaucrats and social actors. Norm-based approach also failed to reveal the different impacts of international norms on domestic policies because it does not consider domestic institutional arrangement such as dynamic interactions among states, NGOs, and international norms. Thus, I will try to explain the variance of immigration policies between Japan and Korea focusing on how politics of immigration in two countries have been conditioned by distinct state-society relations from a perspective of historical institutionalism.

KEYWORDS: foreign workers, foreign labor policy, Korea-migration, Japan-migration, state-society relation, civil activism


Effect of Social Capital on Migrant Workers: the Case of Korea
Jeaah Jung, Sociology, University of Oxford

ABSTRACT
This paper tries to answer why so many migrant workers in Korea choose to end up utilizing their own ethnic ties rather than receiving benefits from institutionalized system that support labor market i.e. social insurance and housing provision. A country’s labor market policy governs foreign workers eligibility to benefits regardless of their intention to work or living needs. Korea’s labor policy which provides insufficient coverage of insurance scheme drove out foreign workers from government supervised legal status. Moreover, migrant workers fallout from legal status was accelerated by higher wages in illegal employment due to policy measure to support small to medium sized firms which suffered from employee shortage, which is legalized industrial trainee program; low wages and unsafe working environment.

KEYWORDS: Social capital, ethnic capital, ethnicity, migrant workers, labor market, Korea

Session 5: Transpacific Migration Studies II (1045am-1200nn)
Title: Comparative Pacific Migrations Across Global Regions
Discussant: Prof. Henry Yu, UBC History

Tracing the Chinese Diaspora in North America, Australasia, Latin America and Europe
Judy Maxwell, History, Australian National University

ABSTRACT
Back in the early 1800s, China’s deteriorating political and economic conditions compelled hundreds of thousands of men to leave their birthplace of south China for better prospects elsewhere, and they dispersed worldwide. The history of the Chinese in North America has been very well documented, but only recently has the history of the Chinese in other continents been explored. It is fascinating that many of these migratory experiences around the world are strikingly parallel: gold rushes, railroad building, coolie labour, work in agriculture, merchant establishments, and so on. Common experiences of cultural adjustment, sacrifice, survival and identity are explored in this paper.

In Latin America, for example, few Mexicans have any knowledge of this history, including many Chinese descendants. And although the history of Northern Mexico has been well-documented – largely because of its shared border with the U.S. – there has been little interest in investigating and recording the valuable histories of the Chinese in southern Mexico. Much of this history has been expunged, conveniently ignored and forgotten. However, now that China is an important player in the global economy and politics, there is precedence for Mexico to recover this missing history in order to forge a beneficial alliance with China. What could have a greater influence on a country’s connection to China than to reclaim its Chinese history and complete its national narrative?

This is the case worldwide: the forgotten and ‘irrelevant’ existence of Chinese in many of these nation-states has not been important, until now. It is valuable to uncover and compare the histories of these countries, then contextualize them with the larger issue of Chinese immigration and exclusion worldwide.

KEYWORDS: immigration, borders, discrimination, ethnicity, identity, nation-state and community formation, multiculturalism.

Transnational Feminism from Living Forced Migration, Marginalization, and Social Transformation: Perspectives of Filipino Women Activists in Three Continents
Marilou Carrillo, Women’s and Gender Studies, University of British Columbia

ABSTRACT
Filipino women’s forced migration from the Philippines, and marginalization in host countries, are changing the experience and understanding of transnational communities and women’s activism. Of the 3,000 estimated Overseas Foreign Workers (OFWs) leaving daily, 60-70% are women, resulting in the feminization of migration. The “women’s sector” in the Philippines extends to include women living and working in more than 190 countries. The boundaries of what is a Filipino “community” are shifting and widening. For those living abroad, actions to change their situations are linked to those of the Philippines.

Women from the Philippines, the Netherlands, and Canada were interviewed to examine the impact of forced migration, ensuing massive displacement, and ongoing marginalization on women’s social and political identity and activism. Pushed to leave by poverty and pulled by industrialized countries’ need for cheap labour, they share the impact of globalization on their daily lives. Being the major “export” of the Philippine government’s Labour Export Policy (LEP), immigration policies in Canada have made Filipinos the fourth largest immigrant group. Whether living “at home” or abroad, actions for social transformation have become necessary and linked globally. Thus, Filipino women activists contribute to the (re-) conceptualization of transnationalism, particularly transnational feminism for social transformation.

Most Filipino migrant workers come to Canada through the Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP). There is an increased number of youth and men sponsored by the women through the LCP. Thus we see an increase of Filipinos in our cities in Canada. An understanding of this history of migration can assist us in analyzing and changing gender, race, and class policies and practices that marginalize Filipino migrants/immigrants, particularly women domestic workers. This discussion assists in analyzing policy implications and proposing actions that can empower this marginalized community to actively participate in a multicultural Canada. They can then bring about change in what they consider unjust policies and practices by the State towards a community becoming more and more an integral part of Canadian society. The Filipino community can continue to be marginalized, or begin to assert participation, depending on how we in Canada engage in analyzing these policies that affect both “mainstream” and “marginalized” sectors of Canadian society. From these women’s perspectives, the liberation of Filipino women contributes or ultimately leads to the liberation of diverse women and men in Canada.

KEYWORDS: social transformation,
feminist praxis and national liberation, gender and nation, transitional feminism, feminization of migration and public policy.

Mainland-to-Hong Kong Migration and Hong Kong Identity
Kenneth Ho, Asian Studies, The University of Hong Kong

ABSTRACT
To Canadians, Hong Kong is well-known as a source of immigration. However, Hong Kong is also a destination for immigration, perhaps more so than Canada – while Canada’s foreign-born population constitutes approximately 1/5 of its total population, Hong Kong’s mainland China-born population alone forms approximately 1/3 of its total population. Though Hong Kong has owed its rapid economic growth to immigration from mainland China for more than 160 years, immigration will prove ever more vital to Hong Kong’s economic and social stability now that Hong Kong is an ageing society with the world’s lowest birthrate and sixth highest life expectancy. In order to maintain its position as a leading financial, banking, and trading centre and an aviation and shipping hub, Hong Kong especially needs a steady supply of well-trained, highly-educated workers. As it happens, the pool of qualified workers in mainland China has been growing due to educational reforms in the past decade and the rapid growth and diversification of China’s economy in the past three decades. Though a number of highly-qualified workers have been settling in Hong Kong in recent years, some of them recruited through government-led initiatives such as the “Quality Migrants Scheme”, Hong Kong is failing to attract a sufficient number of immigrants. Because the most highly-qualified, most sought-after workers are also the most highly-mobile, and because the world’s most developed economies are also recruiting the same kind of workers, Hong Kong will have to identify and address the obstacles to attracting and retaining this valuable human capital. The frosty reception that mainland Chinese people face in Hong Kong is one such obstacle.

This study will examine how the attitudes of local or ‘localised’ Hong Kong people towards immigrants (or potential immigrants) from mainland China affects the immigration of the highly-qualified immigrants so desired by Hong Kong policy planners. The distinct Hong Kong identity that developed from the 1970’s to the 1990’s has caused Hong Kong people to distinguish themselves from mainland Chinese people, and despite strong ethnic, cultural, kinship, and linguistic ties between Hong Kong people and their mainland Chinese counterparts, deeply entrenched stereotypes and prejudicial views endure. This researcher has conducted preliminary investigations on the experiences of postgraduate students from mainland China already studying at universities in Hong Kong.

KEYWORDS: Hong Kong, Mainland China, immigration, discrimination, identity, ageing population

Session 6: Transpacific Migration Studies III (200pm-315pm)
Title: Class, Gender and Labor Migrations in Southeast Asia
Discussant: Prof. Jim Glassman, UBC Geography


Multiple identities in a Transnational Workplace:
The case of Singapore’s Financial Sector
Junjia Ye, Geography, University of British Columbia

ABSTRACT
The flow of diverse peoples into the global workplace is embedded with particular notions of the “ideal” cosmopolitan worker – notions that serve to reproduce inequalities in workplace access. This paper uses the example of Singapore’s financial sector to expound on the issues of access to the professional classes in financial work. I argue that the performance of a particular cosmopolitan identity is crucial for accessing the professional financial classes both through institutional and daily, mundane processes. I investigate how certain characteristics of gender, ethnicity and race limit entry into this class of globally-connected and well-paid individuals. Referring to Bourdieu, I conceptualize “class” as an on-going symbolic struggle sustained by attributing bodies in the workplace with difference. In the process of creating the “ideal” workers for the financial sector, the notion of “cosmopolitanism” is used as a powerful filter that limits access to certain performative kinds of work.

KEYWORDS: Singapore, cosmopolitanism, class, global workplace, financial sector

“Phua Farang” (Foreign Husband) Phenomenon: Transnational Marriages and the Transformation of Rural Life in Thailand’s Northeastern Villages
Sirijit Sunanta, Women’s and Gender Studies, University of British Columbia

ABSTRACT
In 2003-2004, Thailand’s National Economic and Development Board (NESDB) conducted a survey in Thailand’s Northeastern Provinces, revealing that as many as 15,000 women are married to foreign men, mainly from Western European countries and the U.S. After migrating to their husbands’ countries, the women send remittances of approximately 1,464 million baht (US$ 40,000,000) a year in total to their families in Thailand, and spend a further 77,200 baht (US$ 2,100) per month with their husbands during their yearly visit in Thailand. In the most deprived region of Thailand, marriages to foreign men and access to foreign currencies enhance the economic status of Northeastern Thai women and their natal families. This paper seeks to explore the social and cultural explanation of the phenomenon at the village or the community level and examine the transformation that takes place in villages as a result of cross-cultural marriages. It addresses the question of how women’s out migration and transnational flows of money, objects, and ideas resulting from transnational marriages disrupt, transform, and/or reinforce established gender relations, social stratifications, and family and kinship patterns.

I utilize the “transnationalism” framework in analyzing the rising transnational marriage phenomenon in two rural farming villages in Northeastern Thailand. Transnationalism studies and its emphasis on transmigrants tend to overlook those who stay behind. While those who migrate are exposed to transnational experiences that change their lives, those who stay behind also undergo a complex transformation. Unlike most studies on cross-border marriages that focus on transnational married couples, their motivations, and the women’s conditions in a receiving country, this study pays particular attention to the effects on the sending community.

The paper is a result of a village-based ethnographic study in which I spent 6 months in Ban Karawek and Ban Sri Udon (pseudonyms) villages in Udonthani province, from October 2006 to March 2007. Ban Karawek and Ban Sri Udon are neighboring villages that are approximately 3 kilometers away from each other. Approximately 70 women in Ban Karawek and 30 women in Ban Sri Udon are married to foreign husbands. The data for the study are from my participant observation, casual conversations with members of the villages, and semi-structured interviews with six groups of people: (1) 10 prominent community members such as the District Chief, village heads, a senior Buddhist monk, a school principal, a spiritual leader, and elderly people; (2) 10 members of the families of women who have married foreign husbands; (3) 10 village women who are married to foreign men; (4) 10 foreign husbands; (5) 5 to 10 local males; (6) 5 to 10 local females.
Primary findings show that cross-border marriages between village women and foreign men generate new patterns of migration and family arrangements. The phenomenon is grounded on existing gender ideologies related to family responsibility and obligations, yet at the same time this transnational activity causes potential changes in local marriage patterns and marital dynamics. Transnational marriages spur the possibility of “global mobility” physically, socially, and economically among people who are in disadvantageous social positions.

KEYWORDS: transnational marriage, Thai women, transnationalism, gender relations, Thailand, rural community


How do Skill formation regimes influence occupational destination of Filipino contract workers?
Seok Hyeon Choi, Social Policy, University of Oxford

ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to examine in which skill formation regime affect migrant workers’ occupational mobility. Much of fresh attention has been drawn on one nation’s institution configuration and skill formation’s relationships recently since the emergence of Varieties of Capitalism School. Especially, its interests on complementary relationships between skill formation and social protection provide us with meaningful implications on the generation of labor market inequalities in various social groups within each different skill formation regime.
With that in mind, this paper focuses on occupational attainment disparities among Filipino contract workers in different skill formation regime. First made adjustment according to Varieties of Capitalism typology of skill formation regime based on social protection level then classified 22 OECD member countries into five categories. Lowest social protection to highest level of protection has been regrouped into general skill regime to specific skill regime. Once typing is complete, occupational attainment of Filipino contract workers, one of world’s representatives of short term migrant group that show discrepancies within the five category groups has been statistically analyzed.

The result of the analysis shows that regardless of the target group general tendency of downward mobility has been detected. Further, it has been found out that general skill regime had its migrant workers overall trend of downward occupational attainments evenly in all sectors whereas the closer a country moves toward specific regime showed dissimilar mobility between sectors. This implies that skill formation regime determines recognition of migrant workers’ skill and subsequently affects occupational mobility. This study based on the result confirmed that Varieties of Capitalism, which has been far too relatively neglected school of thoughts, can provide an analytic framework in the field of migrant study that migrant workers integration to labor market.

KEYWORDS:


Session 7: Transpacific Migration Studies IV (330-445pm)
Philippine Imagine-Nations: Filipina/o Global Migrations and the Media
Discussant: Prof. Nora Angeles, UBC Community and Regional Planning and Women’s Studies

Pinoy Postings: Young Filipino Professionals Blog Posts in Singapore
Jason Cabanes, Communication, Ateneo de Manila University

ABSTRACT
Perhaps because of the diaspora’s experience of being “both here and
elsewhere” (Clifford, 1992) or even “here, there, and everywhere” (Ollier, 2005), their identities are often marked by ambivalence. Indeed, those of them who attempt to make sense of their cultural identity find themselves having to negotiate and re-negotiate with their roots, i.e., the multiple images of their ever-changing homeland (Ignacio, 2005), and their routes, i.e., the constantly evolving material conditions of their host country (Kennedy & Roudometof, 2002). Driven by my own situation of being in constant contact with my migrant parents and diasporic academic friends and colleagues—all of whom are part of the estimated eight million Filipinos living outside the country—I wanted to unpack how these processes unfolded in the online cultural identity re-presentations of the Filipino diaspora. In this paper then, I appropriated (a) the theory of mediation (Madianou, 2005), (b) virtual ethnography (Hine, 2001; Ignacio, 2005), and (c) the everyday life approach (Edensor, 2002) to see how young Filipino professionals in Singapore negotiated with the enabling/disabling traits of blogs as regards their performances of patriotic pride and cosmopolitanism as strategies to re-present their cultural identity.

KEYWORDS: diaspora, cultural identity, mediation, virtual ethnography, everyday life approach, blog.

Being Filipino-Indian: Diasporic Ethnic Identities, Class and the Media
Jozon Lorenzana, Communication, Ateneo de Manila University

ABSTRACT
Studies on diaspora and migration tend to focus on migrant populations from ‘developing’ countries in ‘developed’ societies (e.g., Australia, Canada, UK, US), where race and ethnicity are the usual tropes of identity and inquiry. This paper shifts attention to diasporas in developing/non-Western societies like the Philippines. What axes of difference operate in such context? To address this question, I examine how young people of the Indian diaspora in Manila describe and position their identities in autobiographical narratives and through talk about their experiences with local, global and transnational media. It draws on studies (e.g., Gillespie, 1995) that conceptualise diasporic identities as complex and a positioning in context (Hall, 1996), and media as a symbolic space where meanings of nation, ethnicity and belonging are contested and negotiated (Madianou, 2005). Data were gathered using depth interviews with a purposive sample of second generation Punjabis, Sindhis and Filipinos with one Indian parent and content analysis of their personal web pages. Initial findings suggest that, among participants, class constitutes meanings of ethnic and national belonging. Participants from the different ethnic groups position themselves based on class distinctions that tend to conflate ethnicity with class categories. Talk about representations of Indians and India in news and Filipino entertainment media reveal attitudes towards racial differences in Philippine society. Participants, regardless of ethnic affiliation, use the discourse of national pride (India as an emerging economic power) and cultural superiority (Indians as rich in cultural heritage) to contest such representations. This study extends our understanding of how Indian diasporas construct and negotiate their identities in a non-Western context.

KEYWORDS: Indian diaspora, ethnic identities, autobiographical narratives, media representations, class, post-colonial Philippines

Watching the Nation, Singing the Nation: How Filipino Migrants in London Construct Their Identity in the Media Rituals of News Reception and Karaoke
Jonathan Corpus Ong, Sociology, University of Cambridge

ABSTRACT
This study explores the processes of identity construction of London-based Filipinos within and across the media rituals of news reception and karaoke. While news reception studies among diasporic audiences have been popular (e.g., Madianou 2005; Matar 2005), few research have been made on the use of karaoke, and fewer still examine both practices side-by-side. While news reception has been recognized as a site of boundary-making, of inclusion and exclusion, across national imaginaries, I argue in this research that the seemingly innocent social practice of singing involves a similar negotiation of (imagined) national boundaries. As national identities are constantly flagged in daily life (Billig 1995), I examine here how Filipino audiences negotiate their multiple attachments in both rituals. From participant observation and qualitative interviews, I discover that news reception generally enables both banal nationalism and banal transnationalism, while karaoke functions more as a homeland-directed “high holiday.” Analyzing how audiences relate to both media in terms of their technology, content, and context, I also argue that individuals are enabled and disabled to weave in and out of self-presentations of Filipino-ness, British-ness, and cosmopolitanism according to particular situations. Crucially, this project highlights how media rituals do not simply facilitate social cohesion but also serve as contexts where contradictory social scripts converge and collide in the third space of diaspora.

KEYWORDS: Filipino diaspora, UK, identity, media and everyday life, news, karaoke.


Mark Lawrence Santiago, Geography, University of British Columbia
Who Cares? Global Nursing Shortage and the Politico-Cultural Economy of Philippine Nurse Migrations

In this presentation, I attempt to briefly describe the history, culture and political economy of the Philippines through the lens of global migration. Migration has defined this country of 7,101+ islands, 170+ languages, and almost 90 million people, 10 million of whom are spread across the globe as workers. This phenomenon led one sociologist to call Filipino/as to be the "servants of globalization."

My talk focuses on just one flow of migration from the Philippines: healthcare workers, particularly nurses. This flow is multidirectional, but the main destinations remain to be "Western countries" such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada followed by "Western Asian countries" (Middle East) such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. So far, my research has looked into the impacts of healthcare worker migration to Philippine "development," especially on its public education and healthcare sectors. However, it has become clear to me that the shortage of healthcare workers is not
only a problem in "developing" countries but also a crisis that "developed" countries such as Canada face. The shortage of healthcare workers is therefore a global phenomenon that cannot be easily solved and quickly sorted out by looking at migration in terms of "brain drain" or in this case, "care drain." In my view, this leads us to serious questions of global ethics respecting the individual agency of migrants' decisions to move while seriously considering the universality of the healthcare crisis.

KEYWORDS: Philippines, global migration, health, development, nursing, migration ethics

CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS: DAY 1, St. John's College

Session 1: Asian Canadian Studies I (945am-1030am)
Title: Asian Canadian Art and Media Representation/s
Discussant: Prof. Chris Lee, UBC English

The Hui Brothers and the 1970s Young Hongkonger Man:
Re-thinking the Astronaut in Context of 1970s Heterosexual Masculine Desire
Justin Tse, Geography, University of British Columbia

ABSTRACT
This paper proposes a research agenda that connects the transnational astronaut of the 1980s and 1990s with young Hongkonger men in the 1970s. Indeed, the Hong Kong astronauts in the 1980s and 1990s were the young Hongkonger men in the 1970s. This paper thus attempts to understand the astronaut by understanding the dominant discourse of what it meant to be a young Hongkonger man in 1970s Hong Kong. It taps into this discourse through the medium of film, specifically the films of Michael and Sam Hui in the 1970s (Games Gamblers Play, The Last Message, The Private Eyes, and The Contract). Michael and Sam Hui's films between 1974-1978 represented a shift in the Golden Harvest Company's film-making industry from an emphasis on the kung-fu movies of Bruce Lee to the comic realism of the Hui Brothers. These films expresseD heterosexual masculine desires that need to be understood within the 1970s Hong Kong historical framework. This paper argues from the Hui Brothers' 1970s films that this heterosexually masculine desire had three components. The first component was that these desires were framed in a generational framework: young men's father figures (be it their blood relatives, older brothers, or bosses) were hierarchically superior to the young men because they pulled their economic strings. The second component deals with how these masculinities were then practical as young men tried to work their way out of the generational framework to establish their own economic status: young men became masters of improvisation in everyday situations, particularly by forming male partnerships known in Cantonese as pak dong to attempt to becom heads of their own families. The third component shows that these practical masculinities ultimately worked toward these young men establishing playboy masculinities: young Hongkonger men wanted to become heads of their own families so that they could live secret lives of playboy luxury. The paper thus concludes by suggesting that the astronauts of the 1980s and 1990s must be understood in the context of generational, pragmatic, and playboy masculinities that young men found Themselves engaged with in the 1970s.

KEYWORDS: masculinity, comedy, Hong Kong, astronaut,
pragmatic, playboy.

The Research and Creation of a Graphic Novel:
Comic Art Narrating Migration Experiences
Joanne Joe Yan Hui, Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, Concordia University

ABSTRACT
With the recent commitment of small presses to produce high quality comic books, the comic form is in the midst of an exciting transformation from comic books as popular culture to comic books conceptualized as art and literature. Imparted in this reinvention are fresh approaches to narrative autobiographic practices. The juggling of text and image in comic art is particularly effective in telling life stories of individuals subjected to social and political traumas. The graphic novel as a memoir lends effectively nuanced approaches for showing and telling traumatic experiences that in many instances can be too direct to express in text alone. My project investigates concepts of identity in comic art, taking it into a new arena of scholarship that looks at works of graphic arts addressing culturally-specific and historical conditions of migration.
More routinely, we find objects of cross-fertilization in film, literature, design, and art, owing to an increase of China’s trading capacity, an increase of immigration of Asians into the West, and an increase of professionals working overseas. We are currently witness to an extensive cross-fertilization between Asian mangua and manhua and Western comic culture. Graphic novelists, such as Gene Luen Yang American Born Chinese (2006), Derek Kirk Kim, Same Difference and other stories (2003), and Adrian Tomine, Summer Blonde (2003), deal with issues of race and identity through stories that are short exposures of ordinary people’s lives.

My paper focuses on authorship and narrative strategies of comic artists in both North America and China and explores how these two streams of creative production have shared key historic moments of influence. A selection of 100 graphic images, including editorial and propaganda cartoons, comic strips, graphic novels, and art media, will constitute the main unit of analysis.

The selected works will represent a range of different authorial approaches to the representation of the Chinese subject. The outcome of my research will be in the form of a comprehensive critical essay and a graphic novel. In the Pacific Worlds in Motion conference I would like to present the current stages of my research and creation. The specific corpus to be included in my paper will include close cultural readings of relevant sampling of the ‘Chinese subject’ within graphic arts since the first instances of Chinese immigration, in 1850, to the present day situation of Chinese Canadian artists concerned with issues of identity. At the same time I weigh in the artistic production of Chinese Canadian visual artists as figures who offer redemption and new visions to a history of racial discrimination and subsequent internalized feelings of racial melancholia.
My paper will address the questions: how has the representation of Chinese and Chinese-Canadians in visual culture evolved from the first instances of Canadian immigration to the present? And how have the issues of immigration and cultural integration been addressed over this time within visual culture?

KEYWORDS: graphic novels, racial trauma, research and creation, immigration experiences, autobiographic practices and life writing, visual studies, pictorial cartoons, comics, Chinese representation and identity.

Session 2: Asian Canadian Studies II (1045am-1200nn)
Title: Race, Ethnicity and Migration in Asian Canada
Discussant: Prof. Renisa Mawani, UBC Sociology

Sanzida Z Habib, Women’s and Gender Studies, University of British Columbia
Race, Ethnic Diversity, Culture, and Multiculturalism: A Feminist Antiracist Examination of South Asian Canadian Women’s Utilization of Cancer Screening Services

A number of studies on cancer screening behaviour among women in Canada reveal that South Asian immigrant women are less likely to have either a Mammogram or a Pap- smear. A lot of them tend to focus on these women’s beliefs and knowledge about and attitudes towards breast cancer, breast self-examination, mammogram, and/or cervical cancer and Pap smear, which are believed to originate from their culture, and to prevent them from engaging in cancer detection practices. Thus for improved accessibility, most of these studies recommend culturally sensitive service delivery, or awareness about minority cultures among health professionals. Culturally sensitive or cross-cultural care, informed and shaped by the state multicultural policy, is a popular approach to addressing the needs of ethnic minority peoples, or ‘multicultural others’ and managing ethnic or cultural diversity within the Canadian health care system. Drawing the antiracist critiques of multiculturalism in the area of South Asian women’s use of Pap-smear and Mammogram, this paper will reveal that multicultural discourse has effectively removed the attention away from racism and other systemic barriers in the Canadian society while attributing the problem of inequitable access to the culture of these women. In the multicultural paradigm the structural and material differences or inequities among population are reduced to the issue of ethnic and cultural diversity. Through the discourse of diversity the power differences are neutralized and explained in merely cultural terms whereas culture along with ethnicity and community is constructed as pre-given, static, and independent of the social, historical, economic and structural forces. This paper will also reinforce the importance of antiracist and postcolonial feminist scholarship in understanding South Asian women’s experience of health disparities and underutilization of cancer screening services.

Invoking “Japaneseness”: The Utilization of ethnic resources among new Japanese immigrants in Canada.
Eisuke Shimo, Anthropology, Hokkaido University

ABSTRACT
After the revision of immigration law in 1967, a large number of people from all over Asia, known as “new immigrants,” crossed the Pacific Ocean and came to Canada. Since then, approximately 1,000 Japanese have continued to immigrate to Canada every year. Unlike the “old immigrants” who left Japan for economic reasons before WWII, the new immigrants come for cultural and social reasons, which are usually based on their dissatisfaction with Japanese society. These range from age and sex discrimination to the over-emphasis on academic background to the intense social and cultural pressures to conform to the Japanese status quo. Furthermore, most of these new immigrants possess the same cultural capital as Canadians, as shown by their specialist skills and proficiency in English language and technology. Along these lines, reports in recent years highlight “quality of life,” “self fulfillment” and “taking on new challenges” as reasons for new immigrants choosing to leave Japan. Under such circumstances, being Japanese is not as important as the other aspects in their social lives.

In this light, ethnicity is no longer the primary source of identity for new immigrants. Rather, ethnicity is located outside of them, regarded as an object or commodity that can be used as “resources.” For instance, although ethnic festivals have the function of cultural preservation, they are also sites where immigrants “sell” their culture. Immigrants in the business world treat their ethnic features as valuable resources for entrepreneurship. What is it that prompts ethnicity to be used as resources in this manner? I suggest that one of the factors is Canadian nationalism. Despite the nation’s multicultural policy, a real “Canadian” is expected to have what Mackey (2002) calls “core Western culture.” As a result, the meaning of ethnicity has been interpreted as an attempt to avoid being absorbed into “Canadian culture.” Another related factor is race. In the 1980s, multiculturalism met with criticisms from the white majority who regarded the policy as a reverse discrimination. This backlash was fueled by the competition for limited resources between a segment of Canada’s white population and new immigrants who have been perceived by some as having “invaded” Canadian society. Consequently, there are cases in which Japanese nationals with advanced graduate degrees acquired in Canada cannot get a job directly related to their specialty. This fact suggests that ethnic and racial minorities continue to be subjected to social constraints because of race and that their Asian backgrounds can be a liability. As a result, immigrants have no choice but to utilize their ethnicity as resources. In this presentation, I intend to consider these issues in demonstrating the dynamics of ethnic resource utilization.

KEYWORDS: Japanese Canadian, new immigrant, ethnicity, cultural resource, race, nationalism


Sannie Tang, Nursing, University of British Columbia
Critical conceptualization of immigrants as a ‘social group’: Possibilities for challenging social inequities and historical injustice

ABSTRACT
‘Immigrants’ is perhaps one of the most politically charged and contesting identities in contemporary social world. On the one hand, most newcomers to a country are eager to feel accepted as legitimate citizens by becoming ‘one of the mainstream’, thus often resisting the label as an ‘immigrant’ (read ‘outsider’). On the other hand, despite their desire to participate fully in the social and economic life of their new country, many immigrants do not have equal access to the life chances that ‘non-immigrants’ are able to enjoy. Instead, as ‘evidence’ from various statistical and social studies indicate, recent immigrants to Canada are emerging as an underclass who are subject to experiencing the consequence of social and economic inequities including chronic low income, un-employment and under-employment. In other words, the notion of ‘immigrants’ is not merely ‘fictional’ but is real in the sense that the social location as ‘immigrant’ has real implications for the everyday life of people who have come to Canada from somewhere else.

In this paper, I argue that in order to understand how social inequalities are structured for immigrants, it is strategically important not to erase the category of ‘immigrants’ from our actions and dialogue (just as some might argue that the social category of ‘race’ will cease to exist if we stop talking about it), but to use it as a critical entry point for explicating the complex processes that enter immigrants into the relations of social formation in their ‘host country’. To do this, I propose that we conceptualize immigrants as a ‘social group’, the existence and being of which expresses those race/class/gender relations that define the ideological boundary of group identification as well as structure and organize the everyday experiences of people who belong to that group. In order to illustrate the political and analytic currency that this proposed conceptualization has to offer, I will locate my discussion at three particular points. First, I explore how the notion of ‘immigrants as a social group’ helps to disrupt the ideologies of individualism and egalitarianism that shift responsibility from the structure/state onto the individual by blaming immigrants for failing to integrate and succeed in their new country. Second, I discuss the differences between conceptualizing ‘immigrants as a social group’ and ‘immigrants as a cultural group’, and examine how the ‘social group’ concept could avoid some of the pitfalls of culturalism that academic and non-academic discourses around immigrants tend to engender. Last but not least, I discuss what possibilities the notion of ‘immigrants as a social group’ provides for challenging historical injustices against immigrants (and other racialized populations). I conclude by pondering some of the implications of conceptualizing ‘immigrants as a social group’ for immigrant research, theorizing, and activism.

KEYWORDS: Immigrants, inequities, race/class/gender relations

Session 3: Asian Canadian Studies III (200pm-315pm)
Title: Asian Canadian Histories and Placemaking
Discussant: Prof. David Ley, UBC Geography

The Potato Wars: Chinese-Canadian Resistance during the Exclusion Era
Ruth Mandujano López, History, University of British Columbia

ABSTRACT
Almost immediately after their arrival on the western coast of present-day Canada, during the second half of the 19th century, Chinese-Canadians became targets of racially discriminatory attitudes and policies by Dominion authorities and different sectors of the “white” society. The process reached its climax during the Exclusion Era when the federal government prohibited the arrival of new Chinese immigrants (with very few exceptions) and applied even more restrictions to those already living in the country. Yet, the Chinese-Canadians conceived strategies to survive and actively confronted injustice. This paper intends to recover their voices and actions in their effort to confront discrimination. It focuses on the experiences of potato farmers and peddlers and their particular forms of resistance during the mid-1930s in order to demonstrate that even during the harshest period of legal discrimination, Chinese-Canadians were not mere recipients of legal violence but actually engaged in acts of resistance by pushing the limits of the unfair legal system in which they were living. Additionally, it aims to problematize the simplified notion of separate spheres that has dominated the field, according to which discrimination is seen as a confrontation between two homogeneous contenders: whites versus Chinese.

KEYWORDS: Chinese-Canadian communities, Resistance, Vancouver Chinese


A new kind of refugee: Hong Kong to Canada in 1962
Laura Madokoro, History, University of British Columbia

ABSTRACT
Fifteen years after the repeal of exclusionary anti-Oriental legislation, the Canadian government took the next step in the evolution of its migration policy and admitted one hundred Chinese refugees from the territory of Hong Kong. While small in terms of numerical impact, the special admission of the Chinese families in 1962 marked the first time that Canada offered asylum to refugees from Asia and it came at a time when Canada was seriously redefining itself and its position in the international scene. The admission of these refugees, therefore, represents a significant marker in Canada’s shift from a largely Euro-centric migrant nation to a more global and Pacific-oriented one. This paper seeks to investigate the import of the 1962 Chinese refugees against the historical backdrop of anti-Asian immigration legislation in Canada and the later, extraordinary efforts to provide asylum to Indochinese refugees following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Unfortunately, this task is complicated by the dearth of evidence available to scholars and the widespread disinterest in this particular refugee movement. Archival materials documenting government policy during this period remain closed and the movement is most often treated as a footnote in general histories of Canadian migration policy. Nevertheless, this paper will attempt to piece together the impact of the 1962 asylum offer based on the limited evidence currently available. In so doing, this paper will consider the meaning behind the lack of substantive attention to this group to date and argue that new and important research avenues are possible if migration scholars follow the Canadian government’s lead and shift their traditional focus from west to east. By seriously considering the role that Pacific migration movements played in state-building activities in Canada, scholars can provide a rich analysis of how immigration has shaped the country both domestically and in terms of the roles it plays on the world stage.

KEYWORDS: refugee, Hong Kong, Asia

Layering Upon Cultural Landscapes:
Continuity as a Design Vision for Vancouver’s Chinatown
Yin-Lun Chan, Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of British Columbia

ABSTRACT
Mobility changes and communication technology advances have impacted migration patterns in unprecedented ways. Over the course of the twentieth century, successive waves of international migration and the popularization of tourism have inscribed cultural imprints on metropolitan landscapes. As places evolve over different sets of historic circumstances, many historic ethnic neighbourhoods within Western metropolises have evolved from the fulfilment of everyday functions into marketed tourist destinations. Vancouver’s Chinatown is one telling example of how ethnic relations have evolved over time and captured in the traces of urban form. Originally developed as an ethnic enclave in a society of wide racism, the neighbourhood has now come to represent the celebration of Vancouver’s multicultural fabric. The current problem now lies in that what appears to be a firmly rooted and culturally unique place that has developed through a lived, organic process of migration settlement over the past century has been capitalized and represented through a superficial image in touristic place-marketing. The 1971 Provincial heritage designation of Chinatown, to some, has turned it into a “Musem-without-walls”. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the skyrocketing property values of Vancouver and hegemonic notions of “livability” are encroching upon the Chinatown fabric with a dominant podium-point tower typology. Development pressure and the influx of a different demographic threatens to erase the area’s historic fabric and social structure.

With changing market forces, settlement and consumer trends, the historic Chinatown needs to redefine itself in the context of Vancouver’s Downtown and Downtown Eastside developments. The urban design challenge for Chinatown now becomes one of how to preserve existing layers of history but allowing Chinatown to evolve and sustain a vibrant community. I argue that preservation of culturally and historically significant landscape is crucial for communities to develop a strong sense of place, identity, and belonging. The question of what is to be kept, what is of high cultural value, and what can be disregarded and built-upon becomes of primary importance. And in what forms, and in what character shall the additional contemporary layer take? Through design, the representation of the “contemporary” has to become intentional and self-conscious. Design as a research approach is integral to the understanding of urban form, in that it explicitly critiques the existing realm and actively envisions an alternative scenario. It is future-directed and makes constructive propositions for change. Through the lens of critical regionalism, the current project attempts to capture Chinatown’s essence of place through experience, narratives, and the structure of signs, and finally proposes an urban design vision that will layer upon the historic thickness of the site. By doing so, I wish to develop a site-specific vocabulary, and more generally, a design methodology that would direct the design of cultural landscapes. The design addresses authenticity as an attitude in process and identity of place as the driving generator of function and form. The objective of the final design is to create an open space that is strongly embedded in site activities, reinforces the identity of place, and firmly rooted within local and larger geographic context.

KEYWORDS: Chinatown, cultural landscape, design, preservation, urbanism

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

ASIAN CANADIAN STUDIES
DAY 1, March 14, Friday, St. John’s College

Registration and Breakfast 900am-930am
Welcome Remarks, Principals, St. John’s College/Green College, 930am-945am

Session 1: Asian Canadian Studies I (945am-1030am)
Title: Asian Canadian Art and Media Representation/s
Discussant: Prof. Chris Lee, UBC English

Justin Tse, Geography, University of British Columbia
The Hui Brothers and the 1970s Young Hongkonger Man:
Re-thinking the Astronaut in Context of 1970s Heterosexual Masculine Desire

Joanne Hui, Interdisciplinary Studies, Concordia University
The Research and Creation of A Graphic Novel: Comic Art Narrating Migration Experiences


Session 2: Asian Canadian Studies II (1045am-1200nn)
Title: Race, Ethnicity and Migration in Asian Canada
Discussant: Prof. Renisa Mawani, UBC Sociology

Sanzida Z Habib, Women’s and Gender Studies, University of British Columbia
Race, Ethnic Diversity, Culture, and Multiculturalism: A Feminist Antiracist Examination of South Asian Canadian Women’s Utilization of Cancer Screening Services

Eisuke Shimo, Anthropology, Hokkaido University
Invoking “Japaneseness”: The Utilization of ethnic resources among new Japanese immigrants in Canada

Sannie Tang, Nursing, University of British Columbia
Critical conceptualization of immigrants as a ‘social group’: Possibilities for challenging social inequities and historical injustice


Lunch Break (1200nn-200pm)

Session 3: Asian Canadian Studies III (200pm-315pm)
Title: Asian Canadian Histories and Placemaking
Discussant: Prof. David Ley, UBC Geography

Ruth Mandajano, History, University of British Columbia
Hot Potatoes: Chinese-Canadian Resistance in Vancouver during the Exclusion Era

Laura Madokoro, History, University of British Columbia
A new kind of refugee: Hong Kong to Canada in 1962

Yin-Lun Chan, Architecture, University of British Columbia
Layering Upon Cultural Landscapes: Continuity as a Design Vision for Vancouver's Chinatown0

PLENARY SESSION: ASIA PACIFIC MIGRATION STUDIES IN TRANSITION
Fairmont Social Lounge, St. John’s College, 400pm-630pm

400pm-405pm Introduce Plenary Speaker: Lawrence Santiago, Geography, University of British Columbia
405pm-450pm Plenary: Prof. Brenda Yeoh, Geography, Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore
450pm-530pm Response: Prof. Henry Yu, History, University of British Columbia, leading to Audience Q&A
530pm-700pm Wine and Cheese Reception for Prof. Yeoh at St. John’s College

TRANSPACIFIC MIGRATIONS
Day 2, March 15, Saturday, Green College

Breakfast, 900am-930am

Session 4: Transpacific Migration Studies I (930am-1045am)
Title: Korea as a Node of Pacific Migrations
Discussant: Prof. Jennifer Chun, UBC Sociology

Sung Sook Lim, Anthropology, University of British Columbia
Negotiating National and Ethnic Identities of Korean Chinese Workers in South Korea

Hui-Jung Kim, Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Marriage Migration and Changing Gender-Nation Relations in South Korea

Byoungha Lee, Political Science, Rutgers University
A Comparative study of Immigration Policies in Japan and Korea: From a Perspective of Historical Institutionalism

Session 5: Transpacific Migration Studies II (1045am-1200nn)
Title: Comparative Pacific Migrations Across Global Regions
Discussant: Prof. Henry Yu, UBC History

Judy Maxwell, History, Australia National University
Tracing the Chinese Diaspora in North America, Australasia, Latin America and Europe

Marilou Carrillo, Women’s and Gender Studies, University of British Columbia
Transnational Feminism from Living Forced Migration, Marginalization, and Social Transformation: Perspectives of Filipino Women Activists in Three Continents

Kenneth Ho, Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong Identity and Mainland-to-Hong Kong Migration

Lunch Break (1200nn-200pm) Asian-themed lunch at Green College for participants only (Please RSVP)

Session 6: Transpacific Migration Studies III (200pm-315pm)
Title: Class, Capital and Labor Migration in Asia Pacific
Discussant: Prof. Jim Glassman, UBC Geography

Jeaah Jung, Sociology, Oxford University
Effect of Social Capital on Migrant Workers: The Case of Korea

Junjia Ye, Geography, University of British Columbia
Multiple Identities in a Transnational Workplace: The Case of Singapore’s Financial Sector

Seok Hyeon Choi, Social Policy, Oxford University
How Do Skill Formation Regimes Influence Occupational Destination of Filipino Contract Workers?


Session 7: Transpacific Migration Studies IV (330-445pm)
Philippine Imagine-Nations: Filipina/o Global Migrations and the Media
Discussant: Prof. Nora Angeles, UBC Community and Regional Planning and Women’s Studies

Mark Lawrence Santiago, Geography, University of British Columbia
Who Cares? Global Nursing Shortage and the Politico-Cultural Economy of Philippine Nurse Migrations

Jason Cabanes, Communication, Ateneo de Manila University
Pinoy Postings: Young Filipino Professionals Blog Posts in Singapore

Jonathan Corpus Ong, Sociology, Cambridge University
Watching the Nation, Singing the Nation: How Filipino Migrants in London Construct Their Identity in the Media Rituals of News Reception and Karaoke