2009/05/10 by Jiemin Bao · 5 citations
Social Sciences · #Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy #Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies #Diaspora, migration, transnational identity #Elite #Middle class #Politics #Identity (music) #Power (physics) #Gender studies #Equating #Political science #Sociology #Law #Aesthetics
paper · doi:10.1353/jaas.0.0041
published in Journal of Asian American Studies 12(2), 163-190 (Johns Hopkins University Press)
openalex publication_date 2009/05/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/12
This essay explores how Thai transmigrants practice middle-classness by forging alliances with middle-class Whites and cultivating patronage from elites in Thailand. It suggests that simultaneously engaging with local and transnational networks and two sets of cultural codes have become defining characteristics of Thai American middle-class practices. Such practices challenge equating social categories with social groups, deconstruct the false "two Buddhisms" dichotomy, and show that Thai Americans experience greater structural limitations in the United States than in Thailand, as the effects of racialized identity politics and the asymmetrical positions which Thailand and the United States occupy in the global power structure.