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. W hereas some scholars claim that racism has been replaced by ''cultural fundamentalism'' in defining who belongs or does not belong in Wester n democracies, this essay argues that hierarchical schemes of racial a nd cultural difference intersect in a complex, contingent way to locat e 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 Fir st World are simultaneously, though unevenly, subjected to two process es of normalization: an ideological whitening or blackening that refle cts dominant racial oppositions and an assessment of cultural competen ce based on imputed human capital and consumer power in the minority s ubject. Immigrants from Asia or poorer countries must daily negotiate the lines of difference established by state agencies as well as group s in civil society. A subsidiary point is that, increasingly, such mod alities 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 an d civil society. Global citizenship thus confers citizenship privilege s in Western democracies to a degree that may help the immigrant to sc ale racial and cultural heights but not to circumvent status hierarchy based on racial difference.