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The Homeless Diaspora of Queer Asian Americans
Introduction
THIS ARTICLE EXPLORES POSSIBILITIES FOR CONCEPTUALIZING QUEER DIASPORA AS a critical practice in cross-border organizing. It also addresses the citizenship(s) that are implicated in the process of transnationalism, which evokes gender and sexuality as crucial modes of analysis. I will be looking specifically at Asian models of diaspora and alternative models of diaspora, which are informed by sexuality and gender as much as they are by nationhood. One of the major terms of analysis in this article is the notion of hybridity as it is used by cultural critics writing on second- and third-generation immigration experiences and the counterhegemonic cultural practices that arise from those experiences. However, this term can be interpreted in various ways, some of which incorporate queerness as a challenge to heteronormativity. Previously, I have used hybridity as a term to designate the multiplicity and/or intersection of various identities, particularly postcolonial and sexual identifies. In this article, I will explore the dangers and difficulties in conceptualizing hybridity in terms of queer diaspora due to the unequal power relationships existing between members of the same diaspora, some of whom are located in more economically privileged sites. Given these asymmetries, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to use one starting point (i.e., sexuality, race, gender, class, or nationhood) in writing about queer diaspora.
Citizenship and dual citizenship acquire new meanings depending on the shifting global positionalities of transnational subjects. Experiences of privilege and diaspora are informed by race, class, gender, nationality, and/or sexuality. For instance, although a transnational Mexican migrant may enjoy citizenship in his/her country of origin, the border is the point at which rights associated with U.S. citizenship cease; however, a transnational capitalist, or a Third World elite, may enjoy benefits approximating those of dual citizenship to a larger degree due to his/her economic status. A First World queer transnational, on the other hand, may not enjoy many of the rights of citizenship or dual citizenship in various locations of a diaspora in which heterosexism is the norm; hence, the dialectic relationship between privilege and diaspora makes the notion of power relative to specific locations. In the process of strategizing for transnational organizing, it is necessary to explore the relationship between diasporic and/or transnational...