Brokering Belonging: Chinese in Canada's Exclusion Era, 1885-1945

by Lisa Rose Mar

Overview

Brokering Belonging traces several generations of Chinese "brokers," ethnic leaders who acted as intermediaries between the Chinese and Anglo worlds of Canada. Before World War II, most Chinese could not vote and many were illegal immigrants, so brokers played informal but necessary roles as representatives to the larger society. Lisa Rose Mar's study of Chinatown leaders shows how politics helped establish North America's first major group of illegal immigrants. Drawing on new Chinese language evidence, her dramatic account of political power struggles over representing Chinese Canadians offers a transnational immigrant view of history, centered in a Pacific World that joins Canada, the United States, China, and the British Empire.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199733132
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/13/2010
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Lisa Rose Mar is an Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Ch 1 Negotiating Protection: Illegal Immigration and Party Machines
Ch 2 Arguing Cases: Legal Interpreters, Law, and Society
Ch 3 Popularizing Politics: the Anti-Segregation Movement as Social Revolution
Ch 4 Fixing Knowledge: Pacific Coast Chinese Leaders' Management of the Chicago School of Sociology
Ch 5 Transforming Democracy: Brokerage Politics and the Exclusion Era's Denouement
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

"Highly innovative .This study of politics from the middle will shape the way political, immigration, and ethnic historians view power politics."—American Historical Review

"Lisa Mar has written a history from neither above nor below, but from the middle. Her account of Chinese Canadian immigrant brokers during the exclusion era shows an active world of politics taking place 'off stage,' in patronage deals made in the back rooms of political parties, law offices, and in the Chinese-language press. This is a fascinating study that changes the way we think about Chinese immigrant communities and the ways in which power operates."—Mae M. Ngai, Columbia University

"Lisa Mar's work uncovers the complex political and social life in Vancouver's Chinese community to a depth that goes beyond earlier scholarship. Mar's ability to follow the lives of the 'brokers' who could operate both in Chinese and English language worlds—tracing their ability to translate and represent each side to the other and to take advantage of their advantageous position as go-betweens—gives us insights into the complicated world of political deal-making and betrayal that almost no other scholar has been able to achieve."—Henry Yu, author of Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America

"Brokering Belonging reinscribes general scholarship concerning ethnicity and immigration with the adventures of politically adroit, transnational yet highly acculturated Chinese Canadian 'brokers' who successfully strategized for greater access and rights on behalf of an otherwise legally and ideologically marginal minority population. Despite the inherent contradictions between their roles as advocates, interpreters, and influence peddlers, Mar persuasively argues that brokers made it possible for even small immigrant groups to sink roots into hostile soil."—Madeline Y. Hsu, University of Texas at Austin

"Short but riveting...A work that is vast in its implications...By using transnational lives and experiences to inform our understanding of the Chinese experience in Canada, Mar offers a convincing portrait of how transnationalism and national experiences intersect and effectively broadens the scope of the national lens."—H-Net Reviews

From the Publisher

'Brokering Belonging reinscribes general scholarship concerning ethnicity and immigration with the adventures of politically adroit, transnational yet highly acculturated Chinese Canadian 'brokers' who successfully strategized for greater access and rights on behalf of an otherwise legally and ideologically marginal minority population. Despite the inherent contradictions between their roles as advocates, interpreters, and influence peddlers, Mar persuasively argues that brokers made it possible for even small immigrant groups to sink roots into hostile soil.'

Madeline Y. Hsu

'Lisa Mar's work uncovers the complex political and social life in Vancouver's Chinese community to a depth that goes beyond earlier scholarship. Mar's ability to follow the lives of the 'brokers' who could operate both in Chinese and English language worlds-tracing their ability to translate and represent each side to the other and to take advantage of their advantageous position as go-betweens-gives us insights into the complicated world of political deal-making and betrayal that almost no other scholar has been able to achieve.'

Henry Yu

'Lisa Mar has written a history from neither above nor below, but from the middle. Her account of Chinese Canadian immigrant brokers during the exclusion era shows an active world of politics taking place 'off stage,' in patronage deals made in the back rooms of political parties, law offices, and in the Chinese-language press. This is a fascinating study that changes the way we think about Chinese immigrant communities and the ways in which power operates.'

Mae M. Ngai