Resisting immigrant myths: everyday consumer practices of Asian immigrants in America

Abstract

Projective, depth interviews with U.S. Asian immigrants revealed their ambivalence toward the U.S. commercial sector's colonial-era representations of Asian people. These commercial representations provide polarized depictions of Asian immigrants as either threatening aliens or as model citizens. These portrayals reflect “racialized otherness,” or racial stereotyping that represent Asian immigrants as inferior. Our findings indicate that Chinese immigrants strategically use everyday consumption related to foodways to resist the reverberation of American immigrant myths. In some instances, immigrants’ consumption practices instantiate a regional Asian identity. In other instances, however, immigrants’ consumption practices reflect a separation from the past and an acceptance of a new although not exclusively American way of life. Notwithstanding immigrant consumers' resistance practices, the findings call for future research into immigrant consumers' reactions to visual representations of race, ethnicity, and gender.