Ethnic Hierarchy Research Articles

Ethnic Microaggressions: The Experiences of Zainichi Korean Students in Japan

Critical race theory (CRT) and the framework of microaggressions has been used to analyze concepts such as majority power, discrimination, and the marginalization of minority groups. This study focuses on the application of CRT and microaggressions analysis to examine issues of ethnic discrimination in contemporary Japan. Within Japanese society and its ethnic hierarchy the minority group known as “Zainichi” Koreans are struggling with prejudice and challenging their status as a marginalized group. Even the Japanese term Zainichi, meaning “living in Japan,” reflects their separation from mainstream Japanese society. Koreans are the largest ethnic minority in contemporary Japan as a direct result of Japan’s colonization of Korean Peninsula from 1910-1945. Japan tends to be perceived as homogenous country; however looking deeper, a diverse ethnic presence can be seen. There is a strong ethnic hierarchy in Japan and constant underlying ethnic discrimination that targets minority groups. What issues do ethnic minorities face living in Japan, and why? This paper illuminates the Zainichi Korean struggle, how ethnic microagressions occur within Japanese society, and how CRT can be effectively applied to this case and potentially, other circumstances of discrimination based on ethnic difference.

The Economic Integration of Latin Americans in Israel

In this paper we compare the economic integration of Latin American immigrants arriving in Israel under the provisions of the Law of Return with selected benchmark groups: Jewish native-born, immigrants from Europe, Ethiopia, Asia and Africa, the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and English-speaking countries. Our analysis is based on data of the Labor Force Survey 2011 collected by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. Our findings suggest that Latin American immigrants enjoy a relatively advantageous position in the Israeli labor market. They are located in the middle of the ethnic hierarchy and have attained socioeconomic occupational positions of similar status to that of the Israeli native-born, higher than that of immigrants from the FSU, Ethiopia, and Asia and Africa, but relatively lower than that of immigrants from Europe and ESCs (North America, Australia and South Africa). Our analysis also reveals marked gender gaps. Latino women, like all other working women, seem to suffer from structural disadvantages in the Israeli labor market deriving from their concentration in female-dominated occupations, especially in the social services sector. In the conclusion we discuss the findings in light of existing theories. Dans cet article, nous comparons l’intégration des immigrants latino-américains qui sont arrivés en Israël en vertu de la Loi du Retour en utilisant plusieurs groupes de référence : les Juifs natifs, les immigrants de l’Europe, d’Éthiopie, de l’Asie, de l’Afrique, de l’ancienne Union Soviétique et des pays anglophones. Notre analyse est basée sur des données de l’Enquête sur la main-d’œuvre de 2011, réalisée par l’Office central des statistiques d’Israël. Les résultats montrent que les immigrants latino-américains occupent une position relativement avantagée dans le marché du travail. Ils se trouvent au milieu de la hiérarchie ethnique et ils ont atteint des niveaux socioéconomiques et professionnels de statut similaire à celui des Israéliens natifs, plus élevé que celui des immigrants d’Éthiopie, de l’Asie, de l’Afrique et de l’ancienne Union Soviétique, mais relativement plus faible que celui des immigrants de l’Europe et des pays anglophones (Afrique du Sud, Australie, Canada et États-Unis). Notre étude révèle également des différences marquées sur le plan du genre. Les femmes d’origine latino-américaine, comme d’autres femmes immigrantes, semblent subir les effets d’un désavantage structurel dans le marché du travail israélien, notamment en raison de leur concentration dans des secteurs d’occupation à prédominance féminine (particulièrement les services sociaux). En conclusion, les résultats sont interprétés à la lumière de considérations théoriques.

“Go where the Love Is”: Failed Emotional Negotiations of Space and Identity in Tessa McWatt's This Body

Identity, space and emotions, although traditionally all traditionally naturalized and delinked from the construction of one another, might also be read as formed by intertwined processes that are guided and shaped by hegemonic powers. Nonetheless, as they delineating difference within and among themselves, the consideration of these three fields and the way they work together in these shaping opens up new ways to approach the split between normative categories of identity, assigned location and adequate feelings, and their subjective perception. Tessa McWatt’s novel This Body presents the reader with two Guyanese characters, Victoria and her nephew Derek, that undergo, at many different levels, this split between subjectivity and a socially and culturally given subject position. Challenging normative ideals, Victoria struggles with her categorization as Other; an endeavour marked by her trajectories and experiences as she negotiates and redeploys a physical as well as a social space of her own in the city of London. Still, her love relationship with a British man would make her drift towards assimilation inasmuch as this affair relocates Victoria within dominant gender, ethnic and class hierarchies.

From assimilation to multiculturalism: managing ethnic diversity in Milwaukee

From Assimilation to Multiculturalism considers the formation and history of ethnic social stratification in one locality--Milwaukee, Wisconsin--and shows the varied treatment different groups encountered at the hands of local elites, authorities, and institutions. But while much of the existing historical literature on ethnic and racial groups generally isolates one or two particular communities, August moves along the entire continuum of ethnicity, giving equal attention to Native Americans, European Americans, African Americans, and Asian Americans, as well as pointing out the varied paths taken by people belonging to different religious groups. August shows how some immigrant groups were able to undergo Americanisation and graduate to whiteness, an experience vastly unlike that of minorities identified today as people of colour. He also notes that the marginalisation and regulation of those at the bottom of the ethnic hierarchy came at a very great social cost. When cultural adjustment--the prevailing strategy of regulating diversity in the city prior to the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s--collapsed, Milwaukee adapted as required but entered the new millennium as a still severely segregated metropolis.

Multicultural attitudes mediate the relation between personality and perceived ethnic outgroup distance in the Netherlands

We focus in the current study on associations between personality, multicultural attitudes, and perceived ethnic outgroup distance in the Netherlands. Data were collected among four different ethnic groups (from low to high in terms of ethnic hierarchy): Turkish/Moroccan-Dutch, Antillean/Surinamese-Dutch, Mixed Western immigrants, and Dutch majority group members. We found support for a mediation model in which in all groups multicultural attitudes mediate the relation between personality traits, education level, and age as antecedents, and outgroup distance as outcome; age was the only antecedent that also had a direct effect on outcome. Education was positively related to multiculturalism in the groups high in the hierarchy and unrelated in the groups low in the hierarchy. The association between multicultural attitudes and outgroup distance was negative and stronger for the groups higher in the ethnic hierarchy; hierarchy was unrelated to outgroup distance. Groups higher in the hierarchy scored lower on multicultural attitudes. It was concluded that multicultural attitudes and outgroup distance are important for understanding intergroup dynamics in ethnically diverse societies.

A Propaganda Film Subverting Ethnic Hierarchy?: Suicide Squad at the Watchtower and Colonial Korea

In the film Suicide Squad at the Watchtower (1943), the appearance of a Korean female physician carries with it the potential to subvert the film's representation of the colonial ethnic hierarchy. The film's director, Ch'oe In-gyu, had in his earlier film Homeless Angels presented the edifying message that a Korean female orphan could aspire to become a physician. This message was also incorporated into Suicide Squad at the Watchtower . In these two films the story of a Korean woman who studies to become a physician (or at least desires to become one) unfolds through the same actress, Kim Sin-jae. The suggestion that a Korean could achieve a social position equal to or even higher than a Japanese introduced the possibility of subverting the colonial ethnic hierarchy. But while the screenplay for the film had explicitly portrayed the female physician, the film version suppressed the representation, making it less evident. Nevertheless, it is possible to see Suicide Squad at the Watchtower 's enlightened message as an element with the potential to upset the ruling colonial order.

A Different Kind of Whiteness: Marking and Unmarking of Social Boundaries in the Construction of Hegemonic Ethnicity

This article proposes a new theoretical approach to the analysis of hegemonic ethnicity through an examination of the construction of white ethnicity among Ashkenazim (Jews of European origin) in Israel. Contrary to the theory of symbolic ethnicity, I argue that “Ashkenaziness” in Israel is not an optional, voluntary identity; rather, it is constituted by employing narratives that continually establish cultural, color‐based, and ethnic boundaries between Ashkenazim and Mizrahi Jews. In certain social and ideological circumstances, however, boundary marking is not enough to maintain a privileged status. From the narratives of Ashkenazi Jews—the Israeli version of whites—it emerges that not only do they demarcate social boundaries between themselves and other groups, thereby preserving the ethnic hierarchy, but they are constantly engaged in blurring or erasing these same boundaries, allowing Ashkenazim to remain a transparent, unmarked social category. This dual practice of marking and unmarking is a result of the tension between the Jewish‐Zionist and Western‐secular images of the state. While Israel's Jewish discourse supposedly negates intra‐Jewish ethnic conflicts, the Western ideal identifies Ashkenazim with the state, thus solidifying their power and preserving their privileged status.

Weaving Women's Agency into Representations of Marriage Migrants: Narrative Strategies with Reflective Practice

In the growing feminist inquiry regarding international marriage migration from Southeast Asia to the East Asian countries, the ethnic hierarchy between migrant subjects and feminist authors has presented a methodological challenge relating to the politics of knowledge. Drawing on the postcolonial critique of feminist representations of Third World women and the idea of reflective practice in ethnographic representation, this paper explores narrative strategies to overcome the victim-agent dichotomy when telling the stories of “bound’ migrant wives. Following a review of the literature regarding the agency question in feminist and marriage migration discourses, I outline strategies involving terminology, methodology, and reflective practice in order to circumvent the trap of cultural colonization or discursive domination. Finally, I present nuanced portrayals of two Filipina marriage migrants and analyze their narratives.

Beyond Gran Torino's Guns: Hmong Cultural Warriors Performing Genders

Clint Eastwood's feature film Gran Torino (2008) represents an ongoing site of cultural struggle from the perspective of Hmong Americans, not only because of issues around the portrayal of Hmong culture and society, but also because of the very fraught politics of the film's production process itself. This collaborative piece stages conversations and critiques so as to be stylistically consistent with the ensemble nature of film production, bringing together the voices of a Hmong antiracist media activist, a white academic in media and Hmong studies, the Hmong lead actor from Gran Torino, and a Hmong PhD student in English. With special attention to how regimes of gender and sexuality manifest racial and ethnic hierarchy, the piece asks questions about the consequences of hypervisibility for Hmong Americans who have been chronically silenced and invisibilized, and interrogates the counterpointing of Eastwood's character, Walt, and his normative white masculinity with two dysfunctional immigrant masculinities—that of the effeminate, childlike geek and that of the hyperviolent and transgressive gangster. The piece proceeds to read Hmong cultural production and critique as racial struggle which entails a queer response that would go beyond exclusively textual readings of alternative masculinity to refigure racial engagements beyond conventional binaries of hyposexual versus hyperviolent, and beyond queer as antimasculine.

Ethnic Land Rights in Western Ghana: Landlord–Stranger Relations in the Democratic Era

ABSTRACT In Citizen and Subject (1996), Mahmood Mamdani denounced the ‘bifurcated nature’ of the African state which, in his account, imposed ethnic hierarchy and chiefly despotism on rural dwellers while reserving democratic citizenship for the urban minority. Have twenty years of ‘decentralized democracy’ in many countries washed away these distinctions? This article takes up this issue in an analysis of the politics of land allocation and landlord–stranger relations in Western Ghana. An analysis of historical trajectories, and our own field observations and interviews in two Western Region districts, suggest that at the local level, the bifurcated character of political authority that was identified by Mamdani persists in the domain of economic rights. The record also shows that state policies and institutions, rather than working to chip away at ethnic hierarchy and chiefly authority, work at least in part to reproduce these features of the local political economy. In both non‐democratic and democratic eras, Ghana's central government has played an important role in shoring up chiefly and ethnic privilege in the land domain. These local hierarchies influence the practical meaning of democracy and economic liberalization for rural citizens, and should be explored more systematically in future studies of democratic and electoral politics in Ghana and elsewhere.

Multiculturalism and young people’s leisure spaces in Finland: perspectives of multicultural youth

The article sums up the main results of a research project Multicultural Youth, Leisure and Participation in Civic Activities carried out in Finland 2004–2007. Through empirical analyses, interpretations can be made concerning the readiness of youth’s leisure communities to adapt to the situation where their members are more and more diverse with regard to their cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Formal education and labour market are crucial but not the only significant areas of integration, especially when young people are in the focus of discussion. Tolerance for multiculturalism in leisure environments and youth communities is still a topic, which has remained largely unexplored. Multicultural youth, whose experiences are analysed in this article, seem to share the opinion that concrete and continuous forms of multicultural leisure action are often lacking, as well as active participants with divergent ethnic backgrounds. The experiences of multicultural youth thus challenge the general optimism of an anti-racist leisure policy. Skin colours, cultural distances and ethnic hierarchies are still elements that regulate informally youth’s possibilities to participate in common leisure activities.

Ethnic Redistribution in Bipolar Societies: The Crafting of Asymmetric Policy Claims in Two Asia-Pacific States

Many post-colonial states use ethnically-based redistribution (EBR) programs to address economic inequalities between dominant minority communities and professedly autochthonous majority communities. Nevertheless, despite considerable efforts such programs have generally failed in terms of advancing the economic status of majorities. In this article I will suggest that EBRs in post-colonial states are not solely intended to ameliorate economic gaps, but rather are also a policy tool used by governing elites to advance a narrative of state ownership, and by extension a decidedly non-liberal notion of democratic citizenship. I explore this claim through an analysis of Malaysia and Fiji, two post-colonial states characterized by persistent asymmetric claims by ethnic majorities who claim legitimacy by virtue of indigenousness. The discussion will focus first on the formation, deployment, and persistence of claims of ethnic hierarchy by professedly indigenous groups. Second, attention will be paid to how such claims are linked to demands for ethnically based redistribution following a direct challenge to extant ethnic hierarchies. Finally, the policies will be assessed both in terms of their stated economic objectives and in terms of their ability to generate a broader sense of autochthonous identity.

Social Trust in Urban Neighbourhoods: The Effect of Relative Ethnic Group Position

Social trust is essential to a cohesive society. Previous studies have demonstrated the importance of individual and contextual determinants in explaining social trust. In this paper it is argued, by means of Blumer’s group position theory, that an individual’s position in the ethnic hierarchy relative to that of the neighbourhood residents influences his or her social trust in the neighbourhood. The multilevel regression analysis of data from the Amsterdam Safety Monitor 2009 provides tentative support for this theory. Building upon previous studies, the relevant individual and contextual determinants of social trust in the neighbourhood are also studied. Contrary to earlier findings, no neighbourhood effects are detected. Thus, it is neither the actual position in the ethnic hierarchy nor the effect of the neighbourhood, but the ethnic position relative to the neighbourhood residents that diminishes minority group members’ social trust through a threat that appears to be both socioeconomic and cultural.

Introduction: Coming to Ruin

Introduction: Coming to Ruin Sarah E. Chinn (bio) and Rupal Oza (bio) We came to the subject of ruin because destruction and disaster seemed to be everywhere we looked. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent collapse of the levees protecting New Orleans, the tsunami in Southeast Asia, the earthquake in Haiti, the floods in Pakistan, the Japanese tsunami and nuclear plant crisis, the tornadoes in the South and Midwest of the United States, and the flooding of the Mississippi river, the line between "natural" and "man-made" disaster was stretching to almost imperceptible thinness, a membrane held in place mostly by vague but emotionally powerful words like "tragedy," "loss," "devastation," and calls for mostly white people to rescue mostly brown and black people. As a geographer (Rupal) and a literary scholar (Sarah), we knew that those words held within them other worlds of meaning, that few disasters were solely "natural" either in cause or in effect, and that environmental devastation always brought with it immense social, cultural, political, economic, and psychological change. We were most interested not in disaster itself, though, but in its aftermath—how do we understand the ruins that are left behind? And what about ruin that is not the result of a single event, but is the accumulation of neglect, the outcome of political repression, or the shifting of priorities? Moreover, we wondered, is ruin always negative? After all, while ruin can exist in the singular as a catastrophe, it also figures in the plural as an aesthetic, architectural, and historical pleasure. What is (always) so bad about ruin? Can we, for instance, imagine more fair and just possibilities emerging out of financial ruin? [End Page 17] Ruins also engage in and spark a variety of affective responses. Mourning at a ruin can entail grief as well as nostalgia for a world before disintegration and decay. Ruin suggests both temporal and spatial change, evoking a time and a place before as well as meditating on the here and now. And ruin has metaphorical valences as well as environmental, architectural, and economic meanings. Gendering Ruin As feminists we were also struck by how little gender analysis accompanied considerations of disaster and its ruins. How do enormous environmental changes alter gendered relationships, let alone the intersecting hierarchies of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality? Closest to home for us here in New York City, the victims in the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, were not unmarked by gender or class. Indeed, the majority of people who died were men working in predominantly male occupations defined very specifically by class: financial services workers, fine dining waitstaff and busboys, firefighters (one of the most gender-segregated jobs in New York). In the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, "September 11th widows," predominantly white, middle-class, and US-born, were pitted against "the terrorists": male, Muslim, and foreign. The ruined, charred remains of the World Trade Center, doubling as a mass grave, were almost immediately transformed from a site of disbelief, grief, and trauma into a contested space, a source of debate over what the attacks on the World Trade Center meant and what the right response to them was. As we all know, this debate was significantly foreclosed by US military action, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, which then raised and revived new and ongoing debates about (to name a few issues) women in combat, women in Muslim countries, sexual assault, and sexual orientation. This potted history powerfully illustrates Ann McClintock's pithy maxim: "All nationalisms are gendered, all are invented, and all are dangerous" (1995, 352). If the ruin of the World Trade Center (re)invoked a narrative of American exceptionalism, and the horrors of the attack (perversely) allowed the United States to reclaim its place at the center of the world stage, the nationalisms that emerged out of the ruins were deeply gendered. George W. Bush's now infamous "Mission Accomplished" publicity stunt wedded militarism, imperialism, masculinism (not to say cow-boy-style [End Page 18] posturing), and triumphalism far more effectively than a brace of feminist scholars could. While this moment...

Governmentality in Motion: 25 Years of Ethiopia’s Experience of Famine and Migration Policy

In the 25 years since the 1984–85 Great Sahelian Famine, the Ethiopian state has used the management of mobility as a tool to control the poorest of its citizens. In this paper I examine three cases: the forced resettlement of people during the 1980s, the repatriation of refugees during the mid-1990s and the more recent resettlement of food insecure people in the early 2000s. I argue that in each of these cases, people’s movements have been controlled so as to undermine their agency with the net effect of increasing their vulnerability. Such strategies have transformed and reinforced class, ethnic and religious hierarchies to such an extent that those being managed have become silently complicitous in their own exploitation. The paper argues that analyses of how governmentality functions should be set in motion, and that mobility management strategies may be a central tool for promoting governmentality on wider levels.

Migrant friendships, migrant loves – taking the sociability of second generations seriously

The children of immigrants, both foreign- and Italian-born, have become a sizeable presence in Italian high schools – one with which other students, teachers and administrators must interact on a regular basis. This paper presents findings – complemented by ethnographic observations – of the first two waves of a longitudinal survey among classi from high schools in Trento, Italy. It explores the sociability patterns and categorical identifications of both native- and foreign-born students at a phase of the life cycle when the changes brought by immigration interact with the social and psychological changes triggered by adolescence. The data reveal the possible existence of a weak form of ethnic hierarchy, but there is an absence of any significant processes of social closure. The length of stay is the key variable, associated both with having heterogeneous personal networks and with identification with Italy.

Diaspora and “Arabness”: Limits and Potentials for Critical Analysis

The article discusses and assesses the theoretical and conceptual approaches to diaspora research presented in this special section. By pursuing multiple forms of comparison, these contributions highlight several weak points inherent in the diaspora concept as it stands and demonstrate potentials for possible elaborations. Specific consideration then is given to the more detailed discussion of questions of power; the dynamics of processes of identification; and the relevance of specific positions inside wider ethnic hierarchies, sociospatial distribution patterns and demographic issues, and, finally, kinship ties and the reproduction of diasporic communities. The argument concludes with the main point that prevailing theoretical approaches in diaspora studies are not sufficient to analyze the communities in question. Instead, those approaches have to be combined with additional input from sociocultural anthropology’s theorizing.

Reexamining the ethnic hierarchy of locational attainment: Evidence from Los Angeles

Because of a lack of data, the locational attainment literature has not incorporated documentation status into models examining group differences in neighborhood quality. I fill this void by using the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey, which permits the identification of undocumented respondents, allowing a reexamination of the ethnic structure of locational attainment in this important immigrant-receiving city. Results first suggest that while undocumented Latinos live in the poorest quality communities, blacks live in neighborhoods that are similar to native-born Latinos and better than foreign-born Asians and Latinos. Second, the effects of education are strongest for blacks, allowing the highly educated an opportunity to reside in communities that are of better quality than educated Latinos and Asians. Thus, undocumented Latinos replace blacks at the bottom of the locational attainment hierarchy, allowing educated blacks in Los Angeles to reside in better neighborhoods than blacks in the nation at large.

Structural Vulnerability and Hierarchies of Ethnicity and Citizenship on the Farm

Every year, the United States employs nearly two million seasonal farm laborers, approximately half of whom are migrants (Rothenberg 1998). This article utilizes one year of participant observation on a berry farm in Washington State to analyze hierarchies of ethnicity and citizenship, structural vulnerability, and health disparities in agriculture in the United States. The farm labor structure is organized along a segregated continuum from US citizen Anglo-American to US citizen Latino, undocumented mestizo Mexican to undocumented indigenous Mexican. The ethnography shows how this structure symbolically reinforces conflations of race with perceptions of civilized and modern subjects. These hierarchies produce what is now understood in medical anthropology as structural vulnerability among those with poor living and housing conditions, producing social disparities in health. The ethnographic data argue against the common presumption that social hierarchies are willed by powerful individuals by showing the structural production of these social inequalities and their concomitant health disparities.

Making Women’s Suffrage Support an Ethnic Duty: Norwegian American Identity Constructions and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1880-1925

BETWEEN 1901 AND 1913, Norwegian women won a series of legislative victories, including the universal right to vote. To Norwegian Americans, these events held special meaning. They represented verifiable and contemporary proof of what Norwegian Americans had been arguing for some time: namely, that their homeland was a bastion of progress and democracy and that they had carried this particular legacy to the New World. Many argued that as Norwegian Americans they were committed to modern, forward-looking ideas and democratic principles, thereby making them model citizens in their adopted home. Women’s suffrage advocates also used this particular rhetorical emphasis to substantiate their claims that Norwegian Americans had a duty to support women’s suffrage based on their cultural connection to progress and equality. A rich literature has documented how immigrants and their offspring encountered racial and ethnic hierarchies in the United States that influenced their own efforts at constructing an American ethnicity. Some European eth-