Cultural citizenship as subject-making - Immigrants negotiate racial and cultural boundaries in the United States

This paper views cultural citizenship as a process of self-making and being-made in relation to nation-states and transnational processes. Whereas some scholars claim that racism has been replaced by ''cultural fundamentalism'' in defining who belongs or does not belong in Western democracies, this essay argues that hierarchical schemes of racial and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 different class backgrounds. Comparing the experiences of rich and poor Asian immigrants to the United States, I discuss institutional practices whereby nonwhite immigrants in the First World are simultaneously, though unevenly, subjected to two processes of normalization: an ideological whitening or blackening that reflects 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 locations in the global economy, some immigrants of color have greater access than others to key institutions in state and civil society. Global citizenship thus confers citizenship privileges in Western democracies to a degree that may help the immigrant to scale racial and cultural heights but not to circumvent status hierarchy based on racial difference.