Diaspora, Identity and Cultural Citizenship: The Hakkas in ‘Multicultural Taiwan’

Abstract

The ethnic Hakka community is one of several recognized diaspora in Taiwan that are currently posing a challenge to the island's traditional foundations of identity. This article attempts to explore how the Hakka diaspora in Taiwan is integrating into the new ‘Multicultural Taiwan’ identity and how ‘Multicultural Taiwan’ influences the Hakkas along the three dimensions of identity, culture and citizenship. On the other hand, the diasporic character of Hakkas challenges the discourse on ‘Multicultural Taiwan’ through its multiple identities and hybrid culture. This study argues that the interaction between Hakkas and ‘Multicultural Taiwan’ is dialogic and dynamic. ‘Multicultural Taiwan’ redefines the identity, culture and citizenship of the Hakkas. However, the diasporic Hakkas also push the discourse of ‘Multicultural Taiwan’ towards greater diversity and complexity.

Keywords:

• Cultural policy
• identity
• citizenship
• multiculturalism
• diaspora
• hybridity

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the interviewees for supporting this research, and the anonymous reviewers of Ethnic and Racial Studies for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

1. Before the 1990s, the main ethnic distinction in Taiwan was between Benshengren (i.e., multigenerational ethnically Chinese residents of Taiwan) and Waishengren (i.e., mostly post-1945 Mainlander emigrants to the island). The distinction was clearly printed on ROC ID cards in the ‘Province of Origin’ field. For purposes of classification, Hakkas and Hokkiens were grouped together as Benshengren. The ‘Province of Origin’ field was removed from ID cards in the early 1990s, after which a new distinction focusing on the ‘Four Ethnic Groups’ came into widespread use under the name of ‘Multicultural Taiwan’. The ‘Four Ethnic Groups’ refers to the four main ethnic groupings in Taiwan: Taiwanese of Malayo-Polynesian descent (a.k.a. Taiwanese aborigines around 3% in the whole population), Hakkas(15%), Hokkiens(65%) and post-1945 Mainlanders(12%).Taiwanese aborigines were the first ethnic group to settle in Taiwan and arrived long before the first ethnically Chinese settlers. They are Austronesian and are of Malayo-Polynesian descent. Taiwan's aborigines belong to over eleven different tribal groups, each with its own distinct language, culture, social system, lifestyle and physical attributes.‘Mainlanders’ mainly include those people who arrived in Taiwan with the Guomintang (KMT) government between 1945 and 1949 as well as their descendants. This group included KMT party administrators, government officials, military men and their families, and refugees from the war that had engulfed much of the Chinese mainland.Hokkien represents the numerically largest ethnic group in Taiwan – over 65% of the total population. The main wave of Hokkien emigrants came to Taiwan from Fujian province (along the southeastern coast of China) during the seventeenth century.

2. This paper uses the Hanyu Pinyin system to romanize Chinese words. Whether Taiwan will adopt this or another system remains a controversial issue. Hanyu Pinyin is used as the romanization standard throughout much of the world, including Mainland China.

3. The research compares ethnic representation in the population to the rates of usage of different languages on the radio. The population ratios of Taiwan's main ethnic groups (Hokkien: Mainlanders: Hakkas: Aborigines), respectively, are 73: 13:12:1.7, and the rate of each of their language use on the radio is 49.93: 46.73: 1.47: 0.44. See Liu, You-Li, A Survey of the Use and Satisfaction of the Hakkas in the Media (Taipei: Research of the CCA, 1997), p.12. (Chinese)

4. In the ‘Lin, Shuangwen Event’ (1786) and ‘Zhu Yigui Event’ (1721), two serious incidences of ethnic conflict between Hokkien and Hakka, the Hakkas were described as an ‘accessory' of the ruling Ching Dynasty in oppressing Hokkiens.

5. ‘Hybridity’ and ‘hybrid culture’ have been discussed in cultural studies by numerous researchers. Homi K. Bhabha, the first to use the term ‘hybridity’ in cultural studies, transformed the term from Bakhtin's ‘intentional hybrid’ into an active moment of challenge and resistance against a dominant cultural power. Bhabha translated this moment into a ‘hybrid displacing space', which develops through the interaction between indigenous and colonial cultures. He has since extended his notion of hybridity to include ‘forms of counter-authority’. E. Said and S. Hall also use this term. In Said's phrase, ‘hybrid counter-energies’ challenge the centred, dominant cultural norms with their unsettling perplexities generated out of their ‘disjunctive, liminal space’. Hall use the term to discuss black cultural politics and the diaspora experience of black Africans. See Robert J. C. Young, ‘Hybridity and Diaspora’, in Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), pp.1–28.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lijung Wang

LIJUNG WANG is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan.