Identities, Practices and Education of Evolving Multicultural Families in Asia-Pacific

Jan Gube, Fang Gao, Miron Bhowmik, Jan Gube, Fang Gao, Miron Bhowmik

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000548532
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This edited book highlights the identities and practices of ethnically diverse families and schools in contexts where multicultural policies are not always a priority. In an era of globalization and ensuing population mobility, it places a focus on Asia-Pacific, a continent with diverse customs, populations, and languages, but grapples with what it might mean to be multicultural.

The book features studies and frameworks that illustrate how minoritized communities engage with the diversity they live in and strategies in adjusting and adapting to their sociocultural environments, including practices that might support these efforts. This book represents initiatives and interdisciplinary scholarship from Japan, Hong Kong, mainland China, Australia, South Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan, which underscore the intersection of identities, cultural values, efforts, conflicts, and religions in making diversity work in their contexts. Collectively, these works make a unique contribution by invigorating debates on the flows and evolvement of cultural values and practices within and across families and institutions.

This book will appeal to researchers, practitioners, and readers with interest in the current state of cultural diversity among minoritized families in Asia-Pacific and beyond.

1Cultural diversity in communities and schooling in Asia-Pacific

Jan Gube, Fang Gao, and Miron Bhowmik

DOI: 10.4324/​9781003173724-1

Introduction

Our preparation of this book has witnessed a tumultuous period in understanding the points of tension of identities in culturally diverse settings. In the media, these tensions are represented in overt racist-related crimes and incidents as observed in anti-Asian sentiments in North America arising from the COVID-19 pandemic (Gover et al., 2020). For example, advocacy groups (Chinese for Affirmative Action, & Asia Pacific Policy & Planning Council, 2020, April 24) received close to 1,500 of such reports. These incidents speak to how intolerance has brought blatant forms of racism back to life. Despite questions on the relevance of these incidents in Asia-Pacific societies, racism against cultural and religious minority groups is not new in many parts of Asia (Kowner & Demel, 2013). As Chin (2021, March 20) pointed out, “‘Asian hate’ has also long encompassed stereotypes and discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities as well as against Indigenous peoples, including within Asia. The need to “Stop Asian Hate” is not just a U.S. or European challenge” (para. 16). The intertwining of these sentiments and societal responses to these recenters the very question of what education and communities can do to improve social cohesion in light of cultural difference. While this book focuses on the Asia-Pacific region in tackling this question, it is no less concerned with emerging social and educational equity issues brought by the contact of cultural groups in a society that has (subtly) cast minoritized groups as “Others” or different.

This chapter locates this concern within an international frame to explain the links between identities, families, and education in culturally diverse contexts. Scholars have frequently debated the impact of migration and cultural diversity on multicultural and intercultural policies (and vice versa) (e.g., the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada), particularly the membership of various minoritized groups in their nation-states (Meer et al., 2016). Another set of key concerns on this impact is evident in debates relating to the schooling of Asian learners in these societies, such as issues relating to their ethnicity and academic achievement (Watkins et al., 2017). These concerns often relate to child-rearing practices (e.g., as typified in Amy Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother) and private tutoring trends underpinned by a desire to gain competitive results in high-stakes tests (Chang, 2017; Watkins et al., 2017). Conversely, as we continue to grapple the relevance of tensions on race and ethnicity in these societies, these larger debates on the confluence of cultures in education leave us wondering about those who move from the “East” to other parts of the Asia-Pacific continent.

Chan (2014) aptly described the present era as “the age of Asian migration”. Indeed, Asia witnessed a 69% growth of international migrants between 2000 and 2019, involving an estimate of 34 million people (International Organization for Migration, 2019b). Kawate (2018, March 31) reported that, in 2017, one out of every four migrants moving globally made their move within Asia, “compared with one out of five or so in 2000”. This trend appears to parallel a steady supply of migrant workers in Asian economies. The Asian Development Bank predicted that Asia would produce 50% of the world’s gross domestic product in 2050, in view of China’s stable economic growth (Kawate, 2018, March 31). Although most Asian migrants are low-skilled workers (Édes, 2019, February 12), skilled migrants who decide to settle in Asia contribute to the continent’s widening spectrum of ethnicities regardless of the amount of state-level support for diversity. Asians today do not necessarily migrate for poverty reasons but for factors related to “family strategies” that enable the mobility of capitals and investment (Chan, 2020). Thus, the pluralization of population groups and economies is not something that Western societies come to terms with exclusively, but applies also to those who are living and moving in and across the Asia-Pacific continent.

Migrant, diaspora, refugee, national minorities, and Indigenous peoples

Battistella (2014) acknowledged the need for dialogues around social cohesion and the plurality of cultures. This is particularly the case in spheres where nation-states offer no public recognition of multiculturalism through policy. Unlike societies with an established immigration history and a strong group consciousness that embodies pan-ethnic identities, such as Asian-American (Junn & Masuoka, 2008) and (South) Asian-British identities (Tournay-Theodotou et al., 2016), the academic literature is less clear about the collective identity status of non-dominant groups in Asian families who migrated and settled in other Asian regions. Specifically, as Battistella (2014) observed further, there is less academic attention paid to the impact of migration on destination countries and its social consequences, including the migrant themselves. Some forms of migration, such as those related to marriage and with long-term resident rights, have prompted discussions on multiculturalism (Nagy, 2014). On the one hand, the impact of multiculturalism on these families is not entirely clear, given the recent development of multicultural conversations in Asia (Halse & Gube, 2018, May) and the assimilationist tendencies of ethnic statistics in some East Asian societies (Bélanger et al., 2010). On the other hand, a growing number of schooling systems and efforts in Asian societies are adopting multicultural practices for ethnically diverse students (Cha et al., 2018). Included in this widening spectrum of ethnicities are also diasporas, mixed race individuals, national minorities, refugees, and Indigenous peoples who have also experienced ethnoracial inequities reflected in school-based violence, high dropout rates, irrelevant curricula, and so forth (Lee, 2008; Park & Balitskaya, 2019; United Nations, n.d.-a).

Set against these issues, this book documents the experiences of ethnoracially diverse groups and their socialization in institutions comprising of communities, families, and schools. It is particularly concerned with the diverse makeup of societies as a result of (the lack of) contact among cultural groups. These groups are invariably known as migrants, mixed-race, diasporas, national minorities, refugees, and Indigenous peoples as defined in Table 1.1. The concern for the lives and sociocultural conditions of these groups draws attention to how they negotiate ethnoracial diversity as distinct from a focus on the movement of people across nations (see Kennedy, Chapter 11).

Table 1.1 Terms of ethnocultural and national minority groups

Terms	Definitions
Migrant	Any person who is moving or has moved across an international border or within a State away from his/her habitual place of residence, regardless of (1) the person’s legal status; (2) whether the movement is voluntary or involuntary; (3) what the causes for the movement are; or (4) what the length of the stay is (United Nations, n.d.-b, para. 4).
Mixed-race	These are persons of mixed racial heritage who are descendants of two or more groups currently believed to constitute distinct racial groups, such as when their parents are of a mixture of Black, Asian, and White (Christian & Badejo, 2000; Mix-d, 2021).
Diaspora	Migrants or descendants of migrants whose identity and sense of belonging, either real or symbolic, have been shaped by their migration experience and background. They maintain links with their homelands [or heritage countries], and to each other, based on a shared sense of history, identity, or mutual experiences in the destination country (International Organization for Migration, 2019a, p. 49).
Indigenous	People in independent countries who are regarded as Indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country, or a geographical region to which the country belongs, at the time of conquest or colonization or the establishment of present State boundaries and who, irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions (International Organization for Migration, 2019a, p. 105).
National minorities	Groups who formed functioning societies on their historical homelands prior to being incorporated into a larger state (Kymlicka, 2001, p. 54) and if these groups share their cultural identity with a larger community that forms a majority elsewhere (Khan & Rahman, 2012, p. 12).
Refugees	A person who, owing to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, and membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it (International Organization for Migration, 2019a, p. 171).

At times, the academic literature variably refers to these groups as “ethnic minorities”. The rhetorical baggage that comes with the term “minorities” deserves some critical attention. As editors and minoritized people ourselves, we find no easy solution on naming ethnoculturally diverse groups correctly. This is because researchers need an analytical lens (particularly those who use quantitative measures) to shape an empirical study (Perkins & Wiley, 2014). However, advocates resist the term on grounds of its victimizing effects, such as how the “majority” subjugates “minorities” (Cunanan, 2011). One may therefore wish to problematize the term “minorities” further as they operate very differently in different jurisdictions (Iwasaki, 2019). Perkins and Wiley (2014) suggested, for example, investigating the term from a social representation perspective to observe how researchers represent actual groups in the literature and how social actors use the term in daily conversations. Our task in this book, far from wanting to conflate and oversimplify the connotations of these terms, is to illustrate their experien...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of tables
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Foreword by series editor
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Cultural diversity in communities and schooling in Asia-Pacific
• PART I Resettlement and identities
• PART II Family and community resources
• PART III Conclusion
• Index