Reconstructing a collective Asian American political identity: Political projects among new Chinese American activists

Participation in the political processes of community is a way for citizens to work out projects of identity making including the assertion of differences and the claiming of rights. Through collective struggle borne out of these constructions, people can alter and transform power relations. This dissertation finds that a group of post 1965 naturalized Chinese Americans are not only politically active, but they do so as part of their embrace of the emancipatory character of democracy. Further, they perform political activities within a racialized identity in order to realize the goal of full citizenship.; Naturalized Chinese American political participants are new actors on the block; part of a vast cohort of Asian immigrants who have come to the U.S. since 1965 as a result of global economic restructuring and resultant changes in U.S. immigration policy. The new immigration has transformed Asian American communities. Native born Asian Americans are no longer the majority; that distinction now belongs to the foreign born.; Through the construction of life histories, and ethnographic observation I have found foreign born, Chinese American activists' grassroots activism challenging both a progressive Asian American political sensibility and the larger racial state. The findings in this research underscore the salience of ethnic networks but more importantly, I uncover how ethnicity is subsumed by a racial identity---the product of their experiences in mainstream American society. How this ascription is contested creates a nexus of common ground with native born Asian Americans with whom they are beginning to politically align, albeit not without considerable intergroup differences. Despite heterogeneity, an Asian American political identity privileges a racialized history. In their collective political mobilization and the integration of their own racialized American lives, the example of naturalized Chinese American political activity informs new ways of belonging for Americans of Asian ancestry. Regardless of nativity, these new ways of achieving the rights of American citizenship and the dynamics of this interaction can lead to a more inclusive and just society.