From traitor to collaborator: Nepali social action in the context of immigration, transnationalism, and diaspora.

• Date: 22 December 2008
• Author: Koirala-Azad, Shabnam
• Published date: 22 December 2008
• Author: Koirala-Azad, Shabnam

Introduction

THIS ARTICLE EXPLORES THE WORK OF A SMALL GROUP OF NEPALI IMMIGRANTS LIVING in the San Francisco Bay Area, who are attempting to move away from the debilitating force that Amartya Sen (1999) calls "national/cultural chauvinism" by living transnational lives that appreciate both cultures while also engaging in deliberate social action benefiting both "homes." While understanding and enjoying some aspects of their new lives in the United States, many members of the Nepali immigrant community are well aware of the negative effects of emigration on their country of origin. Specifically, the loss of professionals and "formally" educated Nepalis cannot be ignored. (1) Therefore, we engage in ongoing collaboration with our Nepali counterparts to move beyond oversimplifications and generalizations and to work toward social change.

By creating an innovative transnational development project, this group has attempted to break down stereotypes and reverse the negative connotations attached to the word "immigrants." Since the Nepali community is a minority even within immigrant groups in the United States, we are often seen as passive people attempting to maintain our identity in the U.S. by promoting our "exotic" culture and heritage. In his work on Mexican transmigrants in the U.S., Robert C. Smith (1998: 197) speaks of the images commonly connected with immigrant groups:

We [academics] are accustomed to equating membership in a political community with citizenship, or membership in a nation-state; to treating immigration as a unilinear, stage-like process of incorporation or assimilation; and to treating migration as a structural phenomenon through which migrants passively respond to "push" and "pull" forces. These images have captured the imaginations of scholars precisely because they correspond to important realities: most of us do live our lives as citizens in nation-states; immigration is a process of incorporation; and migration is induced by structural causes. However, these conceptualizations also lead us to develop what Veblen called "trained incapacity": the inability to see what is there because of how we have been trained to look. This article challenges that "trained incapacity" by looking at the organizing, collaborative, and action-oriented attributes of a small but growing immigrant community. It reveals that far from being a unilinear process of incorporation, the immigrant experience is a dynamic process of dialogue, resistance, reflection, creation, and critical action. Through a detailed ethnographic account of the creation, implementation, and success of a transnational Nepali action group, Kartabya, this dynamism will hopefully become apparent.

Globalization from Below and Its Possibilities

This article seeks to move beyond pro- and anti-globalization dichotomies to look more deeply at the possibilities inherent within our "globalized" world. The term "globalized" indicates the existence and perpetuation of hegemonic forces that promote divisions based on power and privilege, as well as new grass-roots forces that seek to dismantle that hegemony and offer new possibilities for equity. To this end, this article utilizes a completely redefined notion of citizenship and nationality. As McMichael (2003) observes, "corporate globalization clarifies the world-historical and exclusionary dimensions of citizenship as it erodes social entitlements, and redistributes people across national boundaries, complicating the question of sovereignty and citizenship." McMichael invokes Held's work (1995) concerning whether the rights embodied in citizenship can be sustained within the framework that brought them into being and explores new conceptions of citizenship--cosmopolitan citizenship through mobility citizenship (Urry, 2000) to global citizenship (Muetzelfeldt and Smith, 2002)--as well as the notion of the "multi-layered citizen," in which "people's rights and obligations to a specific state are mediated and largely dependent on their membership of a specific ethnic, racial, religious, or regional collectivity, although they are rarely completely contained by it" (Yuval-Davis, 2000: 171).

Our responsibility as "globalized" people, then, is to celebrate the positive while making concerted efforts to combat the negative. Globalization is not inherently negative, but it is influenced by existing oppressive structures. Its perpetuation of social, economic, and cultural hegemony creates divides in the market economy, in the global division of labor, and in the sociopolitical realm. Changing the status quo requires us to significantly change the way in which we function. Sustainable change in pursuit of a just and democratic transformation must rely upon an alternative politics that:

expresses the conjunctural crisis of market rule at the same time as it conditions future possibilities for transforming global political economy/ecology. Grassroots movements such as these embody "cosmopolitan localism" (Sachs, 1992:112), that is, asserting cultural diversity as a world-historical relation, and therefore as a human right (McMichael, 2003).

This is the starting point for the conception, implementation, and documentation of a transnational counter-hegemonic project by the Nepali community.

Globalization, Development, and Transnationalism: From a Market Mentality to the Public Sphere

Development emerged from the modernity paradigm as a political response to the depredations of the market. In the era of mid-20th century decolonization, the discourse of international development specifically targeted "Third World" poverty. In 1949, President Harry Truman enunciated it as follows:

We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas. The old imperialism--exploitation for foreign profit--has no place in our plans. What we envisage is a program of development based on the concepts of democratic fair dealing (in Esteva, 1992: 6).

With the word "democratic" conveniently added, the campaign started "a vision of all societies moving along a path forged by the Western world--a path constituted by dispossession" (McMichael, 2003: 594). Behind the facade of liberalism, this vision of development ignored the contributions of non-European cultures and leaders in the process of decolonization, as well as the values of cultures outside the Western world. The contradictory logic of this development paradigm offers "self-determinism at the same time it suspends self-definition" (Rist, 1997: 79). While promoting a progressive democratic belief in self-organization, primary control over it remains with the state. "Development was instituted as a regime of 'embedded liberalism' premised on the deliberate organization of the world market around national economic priorities" (Ruggie, 1982).

Colonialism was pronounced dead and a new system of dependency introduced the exploitation of the "periphery" by the "core." With the Western world constantly monitoring and "aiding" processes of change in the developing world, poorer countries became dependent on external financial assistance to mobilize change. Dependency transcended nation-states to include large corporations with the creation of multinational banks. The concept of development was conceptualized as a relationship between nation-states. Consequently, leaders of states took charge of development, with the process monopolized by governments and rarely involving the people.

The extreme debt suffered by some of the poorest countries was among the most obvious and disheartening byproducts of development. A strategy of change through "democratic fair dealing" created immense economic gaps in the global capitalist system, strapping poor (and even some resource rich) countries with ongoing debt and leading to deteriorating conditions on the ground. Arguably, globalization attempted to resolve the crisis of development and the nation-state. This crisis was immanent in the contradiction between the ideal of national development and transnational economic integration (Friedman and McMichael, 1989).

Because the concept of transnationalism implies the transcendence of national boundaries, the nation as a confined space made little sense in the larger processes of globalization. Yet, in attempting to resolve the problems of development, globalization has become another face of colonialism, this time with a facade of unity. Studies on socioeconomic change show that many nations still see the process of change as occurring through traditional definitions of development and modernization (PRIA, 2000). Though the globalization agenda involves demystifying development and the state, it continues to promote westernization as the path to advancement.

The merging of global markets has forged some of the most intricate connections between corporations and large organizations worldwide. Indeed, transnationalism as a concept was created to accurately describe the financial and business collaborations that flourished between these international organizations (Ong, 1999). "Trans" replaced "inter" to describe the dual processes of give and take that transcended just one or two entities:

The idea of transnational studies shakes a lot of assumptions. The hoary old topic, individual and society, which still dominates textbooks must do a timeshare with society-society relations if particular societies can no longer rely on keeping individuals in tight embrace forever. The critique of the over socialized model of man from a Freudian standpoint ... needs to be paralleled, if not replaced altogether, by deconstruction of the nationalized version of the individual (Albrow, 1998: 2).

My research with the Nepali...