Space Making: Chinese Transnationalism on the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands

Abstract

As the U.S.-Mexico border becomes more diverse and militantly guarded, interactions between various cultural groups grow more frequent and convoluted. This article describes the ways in which a group of Chinese transnationalists as recent arrivals (re)construct the meanings of El Paso in quotidian interactions. Recurrent themes on the ways in which participants constructed El Paso as an unauthentic American space are discussed. I argue that spatial identities are products of various forces and further reconceptualize the natural connections between place, people, and culture.

Keywords:

• Chinese Transnationalism
• U.S.-Mexico Border
• Space
• Cultural Identity
• Ethnography

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Alberto Gonzalez, Bettina Heinz, John Warren, Laura Ellingson, Thomas Nakayama, and the two anonymous reviewers. She would also like to thank the School of Communication Studies at Bowling Green State University for the fellowship that made this research possible.

Notes

1. The naming practice that I deployed was to first explain to the participants reasons for an alias. Some participants asked me to generate one for them. In those instances, I did so after asking their preference for a Chinese, English, or Spanish pseudo name since most people I encountered use English names specifically for work or school purposes.

2. I am fully aware of the debates between the binary operations of Manichean allegory without considering various struggling interests, or space for resistance on the one hand (Stoler & Cooper, 1997) and the hybrid identities replete with romanticized subaltern resistance on the other, as Loomba (1994) has argued. In my analysis, Manichean allegory is perceived as a mindset that positions people or places into an oppositional binary (i.e., the colonizers vs. the colonized) and within which, static characteristics are attached to each group (i.e., the civilized vs. the barbarian). It is practiced and enacted in daily interactions as a means to gain understanding of the worlds for sense making during my encountered interactions in El Paso. I do not claim anybody to be in the fixed category as the “colonizers” or the “colonized.” Rather, I intend to illustrate the heavy influence of such an exchanging mechanism in the everyday understanding and organizing, not without contradictions, however, of various places and peoples.

3. Most of the transnationalists that I met during the field research identified themselves as Chinese from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. Comments and interviews included here are of those from Taiwan and China.

4. However, since Hispanics may include all races, it is difficult to determine who belongs to which race and who does not, even for the surveyee. As one of my interviewees claimed “My father is Chinese and my mother is Mexican. So I am Hispanics, I guess.” This points to the ambiguity and contradiction in categories such as race.

5. See Fetterman (1998), Goodall (2000), Hammersley and Atkinson (1995), and Lindlof (1995) for further discussions on analyzing data for significant meanings.

6. I view the research participants as friends whose lives overlap with mine where we continue, even to this date, to build support, overcome tension, and generate knowledge interactively. It is similar to Tillmann-Healy's (2003) argument on conceptualizing friendship as fieldwork.

7. “Lao-Mo,” “Lao-Wai,” “Lao-Mei,” “Lao-Bai,” “Lao-Hei,” and “Lao-Jong” are nicknames for various racial and ethnic groups of different nationalities. “Lao-Wai” is a term for foreigners (Wai Guo Ren), which often is used to mean (white) Americans. “Lao-Mei” is another term in referring to Americans (Mei Guo Ren). “Lao-Mo” refers to the Mexicans (Mo Xi Ge Ren). “Hei” means black color while “Bai” is white. Thus, “Lao-Hei” refers to the Blacks while “Lao-Bai” means the Whites. In referring to the Chinese race/ethnicity/cultural group, the term “Lao-Jong” (Jong Guo Ren) was used. These usages are somewhat similar to Fitch's (1998) explanation of “references to such characteristics as one's personality, ability, or physical appearance” (p. 42). However, the race and ethnicity-oriented usage is juxtaposed with the national and cultural heritages, which naturalizes skin color and national identity in an intriguing yet unsettling way. As one of my friends in El Paso explained, a person who is neither white nor black would be a Lao-Mo (Mexican).

8. It is worthy to note that English literacy was made mandatory for naturalized citizenship for the first time in the United States “during the height of hysteria over postwar communism” (Delgado, 1999, p. 247).

9. Paek and Shah (2003) analyzed how Asian Americans are stereotyped in U.S. magazine advertisements and pointed out the racial ideology implicated in these practices as “Asian Americans are frequently depicted as highly educated, proficient with technology, and affluent” (p. 225). They argued that these stereotyping practices overlook great differences in a heterogeneous group and pose potential conflicts between Asian Americans and other minority groups.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hsin-I Cheng

Hsin-I Cheng (Ph.D.) is Assistant Professor in the Communication Department at Santa Clara University