Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making: Immigrants Negotiate Racial and Cultural Boundaries in the United States [and Comments and Reply]
Year: 1996
Type: article
Abstract: This paper views cultural citizenship as a process of self-making and being-made in relation to nation-states and transnational pro cesses.Whereas some scholars claim that racism has been re placed by "cultural fundamentalism" in defining who belongs or does not belong in Western democracies, this essay argues that hierarchical schemes of racial and cultural difference intersect in a complex, contingent way to locate minorities of color from dif ferent class backgrounds.Comparing the experiences of rich and poor Asian immigrants to the United States, I discuss institu tional practices whereby nonwhite immigrants in the First World are simultaneously, though unevenly, subjected to twO processes of normalization: an ideological whitening or blackening that re flects dominant racial oppositions and an assessment of cultural competence based on imputed human capital and consumer power in the minority subject.Immigrants from Asia or poorer countries must daily negotiate the lines of difference established by state agencies as well as groups in civil society.A subsidiary point is that, increasingly, such modalities of citizen-making are influenced by transnational capitalism.Depending on their loca tions in the global economy, some immigrants of color have greater access than others to key institutions in state and civil society.Global citizenship thus-eonfers citizenship privileges in Western democracies to a degree that may help the immigrant to scale racial and cultwal heights but not to circumvent Status hi erarchy based on racial dUference.
Source: Current Anthropology
DOI: 10.1086/204560
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1719388272