Urban place-making centred on equity and social justice
ESSAYS
The following essays explore a wide range of topics that I had been curious about. Common themes include sustainability and Asian diaspora. I feel that these are the issues that most intimately reflect my identity and interests.
THE INVENTION OF RURAL ETHNIC MINORITIES:
DESTABILIZING DISCURSIVE BOUNDARIES IN CHINESE DOMESTIC TOURISM
The demand for domestic tourism in China has emerged spontaneously since the economic reform in 1978 as a result of rapid modernization in China’s urban centres and the increased wealth among urban elites (Chio, 2014). Since then, tourism has been actively mobilized by the government as an important tool for rural economic development and modernization. By 2015, the tourism sector had contributed to 10.51% of China’s GDP, overtaking traditional industries such as education and automobile production.
However, domestic tourism in China is also charged with ethnic and social implications due to the relatively high concentration of the 55 officially-recognized ethnic minority groups in rural tourist destination regions.
In this paper, I illustrate domestic ethnic tourism as a site of contradictions that can help expose the constructedness of discursive binaries between Chinese urban Han and rural ethnic minorities. I will draw on Marx, Foucault, and agency-centric frameworks to deconstruct urban/rural and Han/ethnic binaries, interrogate identity-forming institutions, and highlight the power relations and performative practices that are necessary to reinvent, reify, and reproduce these discourses.
DECENTERING WESTERN IMAGINARIES OF YOUTH MOBILITIES THROUGH THE HOPE AND ASPIRATIONS OF EAST ASIAN WORKING HOLIDAYMAKERS
The working holiday visa is a temporary residence permit that allows a youth traveller, often between the ages 18-30, to work in a partner country so that they can experience living abroad for an extended period of time with a relatively low upfront cost. While the program has been a long tradition for youth in "western" nations, it is relatively new, though extremely popular, for youth from East Asian nations. As the program opens up to these youth, what are the cultural, ethnic, political, and socioeconomic processes that influence the EA working holidaymakers (WHM) experience? In this paper, I explore the ways in which the WHS is understood and imagined by WHMs of western/white and EA racial and geographical origins, as well as by scholars who study their experiences. I also pay attention to how regionally-specific social processes intersect to produce diverse imagination and discourses about WHMs from different nations, which permits me to problematize western-centric and normative narratives about the WHS and youth mobility more broadly.