Announcements

1. Announcements • Thurs 11/21, 6pm – Open Mic Fundraiser for Typhoon Victims @ Filipino Food and Bakery • Donate to National Alliance for Filipino Concerns! www.nafconusa.org. • Changes to syllabus: • T 11/19: Homebound, Chs 2 & 3 • Th 11/21: Homebound, Chs 4 & 5 • T 11/26: Homebound, Ch 6 • Th 11/28: NO CLASS –  HAPPY THANKSGIVING! • T 12/3: Homebound, Ch 7 • Th 12/5: Homebound, Ch8 and Silent Sacrifices (2001) • T 12/10: Homebound, Ch 9

2. Making Home Transnationalism & the Politics of Location

3. What is Prof. Espiritu’s argument in her book? Grab a partner. Locate the best statement of her argument in pgs 1-3.

4. What is racialization? • ideas of racial difference are not biologically determined; they are social constructions • these ideas of racial difference strengthen and are strengthened by social, economic and political forces  the feedback loop • race is an unstable formation that is constantly challenged but still has serious consequences on the lives of people who are racialized racial formations Racial meanings Social, political, economic forces

5. When & where does racialization begin? • “this book contends that Filipino American racial formation is determined not only by the social, economic, and political forces in the United States but also by U.S. (neo)colonialism in the Philippines and capital investment in Asia” (1) • racialization and the cycle of center & periphery

6. The Politics of Home • “I argue that Filipino Americans confront U.S. domestic racism and the global racial order by leading lives stretched across borders – shaped as much by memories of and ties to the Philippines as by the social, economic, and political contexts in their new home in the United States” (2) • home making – “the processes by which diverse subjects imagine and make themselves at home in various geographic locations” (2) • material vs abstract • homemaking vs homelessness • inclusion vs exclusion • nurture vs conflict

7. GangsterHomemaking • “the politics of location – how immigrants use literal or symbolic ties o the homeland as a form of resistance to places and practices in the host country that are patently ‘not home’” (13) • “Ma says living next to Anh’s family reminds her of Vietnam because the blue tarp suspended above Anh’s backyard is the bright blue of the South China Sea. Ma says, isn’t it funny how sky and sea follow you from place to place as if they too were traveling” (thuy 89) • “It is hot and dusty where we live. Some people think it’s dirty but they don’t know much about us. They haven’t seen our gardens full of lemongrass, mint, cilantro, and basil” (thuy 90)

8. Transnational Circuits • survival strategies • recognition of legacies of imperialism and power of global capitalism • connects seemingly disparate experiences. Ex: Filipino & Mexican immigrants (8) • contradicts linear narratives of assimilation US Philippines Philippines US Linear narratives of assimilation imply myth of US as exceptional space of progress

9. Debunking Model Minority Myth • Asian American “success” attributed to “proper” cultural values rather than structural racism • What counts as success? What counts as harm? • Avery Gordon’s “the subtleties of domination” (9) • “People who, feeling they have no recourse to change the circumstances of their lives, fold down, crumble into their own shadows. This is what I say my father do. he made himself small…” (122)

10. the space between • “Living between the old and the new, between homes, and between languages, immigrants do not merely insert or incorporate themselves into existing spaces in the United States; they also transform these spaces and create new ones, such as the ‘space between.’ This transnational space, then, is a productive site from which to study immigration because it articulates the tensions, irresolutions, and contradictions characteristic of immigrant lives” (10) • Is the Philippines the homeland if you’ve never been home? (11) • How can parents who represent the homeland use it to control children, especially daughters? (Ch 7) • Who has the privilege to even maintain physical connections to the homeland? (12)

11. Questions • What are the macro and micro forces shaping Filipino immigration into San Diego? • How have Filipinos experienced “enforced homelessness” in the US? • Why does Espiritu claim that Filipino experience in the US is one of “differential inclusion” (47)?