Dissertation

From diaspora to North American civil rights: Chinese Canadian ideas, identities and brokers in Vancouver, British Columbia, 1924 to 1960

Mar, Lisa Rose

2002

Overview

This study uses collective biography of Chinese Canadian elites and an historical account of Chinese Canadian citizenship cultures to explore how across four decades, the “personal was political” for an elite group of ethnic brokers. Conceptually, this case study demonstrates that elites as a category of analysis deserve fuller attention within immigration, Asian Canadian, and Asian American history. Through elites' lives, ideas and work, the dissertation traces diverse social constructions of identity, belonging and citizenship that informed the creation of a distinct Chinese Canadian set of politics. These identity politics and their practitioners involved China and Canada, as well as a larger North American ethnic backdrop. Patterns of brokerage remained relatively consistent throughout the period of this study, allowing important continuities in ethnic politics and ideas to inform what scholars commonly view as the 1940s “turning point” in race relations. Brokers' politics started within diaspora frameworks in the 1920s and 1930s. These politics, though ostensibly concerned with China, helped bridge the gap between Chinese Canadian brokers and larger powers, enhancing their struggle for recognition of their people's belonging. Later, in the late 1940s and 1950s, Chinese Canadian brokers shifted to a more Canadian direction, allying Chinese in Vancouver first with the Allies' democratic cause during the Second World War, then later with a local “nationality equality movement” for civil rights and human rights. Brokers' thrust towards Canada occurred because of two factors: a more welcoming Canadian climate and political problems that ended essential community unity with mainland China. Overall, the case of Chinese Canadian brokers suggests that the process of ethnic integration in Canada extends far more deeply and widely than is commonly assumed. The inclusion of these ethnic politicians contributes an important angle to history of contests over meanings of Canadian citizenship. Popular Chinese Canadian debates about identity and belonging helped shape the institutional context of how brokers in this era acted, though brokers led as well as followed. In the end, Chinese Canadians participated in multiethnic civil rights politics in postwar Vancouver because they were already part of the local political scene.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Canadian history / Ethnic studies / Minority & ethnic groups / Sociology
• ISBN: 0612746690, 9780612746695