Asian Diasporas

Asian Diasporas

Volume 47, Numbers 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2019
Jillian M. Báez

Excerpted from the Editor’s Note

The label “Asian” encompasses a heterogeneous group of people with varied histories of colonization (both as the colonizer and the colonized), spoken and written languages, and cultural practices. The “push” and “pull” factors for migration also differ among Asian groups—while some migrate for more economic opportunities, others leave for political refuge. U.S. policy also shapes Asian migration. For example, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States and the 1923 Chinese Immigrant Act in Canada both restricted immigration from China until the 1940s. During World War II, Japanese internment in the United States cast East Asians not only as second-class citizens but also as enemies. These policies and practices cemented the image of Asians as the perpetual foreign Other in the popular imagination. As a result of the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Asian migration to the United States soared to the thousands, but Orientalist discourses continued to circulate in the United States and Europe. U.S. military intervention in countries like Cambodia, Granada, the Philippines, and Vietnam also greatly influenced Asian migratory routes and patterns to the United States and other parts of the world. As such, militarization and colonialism remain a central part of the Asian diasporic experience.