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Sino-Cambodian Refugees in the United States:

Conceptualization of the Transnational and

Multi-cultural Ethnic Identity

Author

Shihlun Allen Chen ,

Department of Anthropology, University of Hawaii at Manoa

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Sino-Cambodian Refugees in the United States: Conceptualization of the Transnational and Multi-cultural Ethnic Identity

Author Shihlun Allen Chen ,

Department of Anthropology, University of Hawaii at Manoa

Abstract Many scholars in Southeast Asian studies and Ethnic studies have noticed and addressed the importance of ethnic Chinese in the region. Such attention has reflected on the studies from history, anthropology, economics, sociology, and political science. However, fewer researches have noticed the ethnic origins among those Indochina refugees who migrated to the West after 1970s. Most researches of present Indochina refugees in Untied States from 1980s mostly focus on their Social Economic Status and mental health care by reviewing their nationality origins rather than the ethnic origins. By neglecting their ethnic origins, researches such as those on Cambodian refugees assume the studied community shares homogenous cultural traits and thus project their pre-refugee experiences with the Khmer identity under the unitary influence of Khmer culture.

However, both literatures and the evidence from my preliminary fieldwork support that there are significantly large amount of ethnic Chinese Cambodian refugees came into the United States from 1970 to 1980s, although the exact ratio of ethnic Chinese origins among Cambodian refugees remains unclear. Those Sino-Cambodian refugees were demographically classified as Cambodian nationals before obtained their political asylum in the US. Along with such classification, they were largely considered and treated as ethnic Khmer. Such cultural and ethnic mistreatment or inexactitude would lead to misjudgments and misunderstanding of their psychological and cultural root. Thus, it is important to look into the historical development root of the ethnic identity of Sino-Cambodian refugees in the United States, especially the first generation who have experienced long-term livelihood in Cambodia, Thai refugee camp and later in the United States.

Therefore, in this paper I firstly review the three stages that dynamically shift the

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ethnic identity of Sino-Cambodian refugees. And, further in this article I argue that, rather than the flexible citizenship Professor Aihwa Ong argues in her 1998 book, the case of ethnic Chinese refugees from Cambodians demonstrates that cultural citizenship in sense of the ethnic identity is mainly restrained by linguistic skills and external environmental limitation. The reviewed developing process of ethnic identity among Sino-Cambodian refugees in present study supports that ethnic identity not only can be seen as a formation of socially constructed ethnicity as Michael Omi addresses, but it can be also understood as a cognitive subject that an individual optimize encountered circumstances.

Authors Contact Information : Name: Shihlun Allen Chen Email: shihlunchen@gmail.com / shihlunc@hawaii.edu

Cambodia Cell phone: (092)559-420 (080)205-532

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It was due to a small project I used to explore possible ethnographic methodologies for my thesis topic, Ethnic identities among overseas Chinese in Cambodia, that I approached Uncle Sam Ly (anonymous), a so-called Cambodian American in Honolulu, Hawaii for a semi-structure life story narrative interview in late 2010. As well-known local Cambodian church leader and out-spoken community representative to outside general public in town, his ethnic Chinese family background, like his name and skin color, is not a secret. Rather, it is simply just a fact, like many other Cambodian Americans in Hawaii. Yes, he is an ethnic Chinese, formal Cambodian refugee, and yet a Cambodian American who has rooted down his family in Honolulu for 29 years since he entered the US in 1982 from Thai refugee camp (Chen 2010).

It is the story and case that raises my attention on the transnational and multicultural experiences of being a Sino-Cambodian refugee in the United States. How does a second generation of Chinese migrant from Cambodian who was forced to become a refuge fled to Thai border camp and later settled down in the United States, a new world where he did not even speak the language, develop his ethnic and cultural conscience? How does he identify and situate himself cross Chinese, Cambodian and American cultures? How do his living experiences from Cambodian, Thai refugee Camp and the United States influence his identification selection and cultivate his ethnic identity? This paper is thus an attempt to answer these three questions. My conclusion finds that, quite surprisingly, many studies and community data have misclassified these formal Cambodian refugees as ethnic Khmer, while they are actually ethnic Chinese. They succeed their legal and political identity of Cambodian refugees after fled to Thai Border Camp from chaotic Cambodia, and were admitted to resettle to the West by immigration agencies under such identity. Since then, they are viewed and treated as Cambodians in a homogeneous culture sense of Khmer natives by migration agents, social workers, psychologists, journalists and even some anthropologists. Such misclassification has also been internalized by them; Chinese identity for them becomes simply just a family legacy and remote memory that exists within first generation Cambodian Americans, while later generations just sway between their Khmer and American identities.

I. To be or not to be: Chineseness, Said by whom?! Born to a Teochewese speaking family with father migrated from Southern China to Cambodian and second generation Sino-Khmer mother in 1954, Sam Lys family lived in a village at the outskirt of capital city Phnom Penh. Since there was no Chinese school around, he went to regular Cambodian public school and finished high school when the civil war broke out in 1970s. After successfully managed to survive from Khmer Rouge, he fled to Thai border refugee camp after Vietnamese invasion in 1979

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and resettled to the United Stated in 1982. With a Christian Churchs support, he then completed college education in Hawaii and started his career as a pastor in a local church that mainly gives services to Vietnamese and Cambodian migrants. With his native in Khmer and fluency in English, his role gradually advanced from the leader of local church to the representative of local Cambodian community to outsiders. As he identified himself with his live story during our interview, he firstly points out that his Khmer language, public school education and Khmer peer group is the key reasons helped him survive from the civil war, especially Khmer Rouge period. He clearly addresses that, I never thought myself as a Chinese (Interview with Chen 2010: 5:36) Although he did try to join the Chinese community earlier when he arrived Hawaii, he did not feel accepted since he does not speak Chinese mandarin and any other vernacular languages. Since then, he always sees himself a Cambodian American but ethnic Chinese. He did not practice any Chinese customs like his parents did either after he came and married an ethnic Chinese Cambodian refugee who he met at Thai border camp. It is easy to understand his personal identification choice in the sense of ethnic formation that Omi and Winant argue (Omi and Winant 1994) or anthropologists situational identity connation (Ong and Nonini 1997; Ong 1999). Such arguments claim that race, as well as ethnicity and class are classification paradigm constructed and framed by social and power structure. Ethnic identity thus can be seen as a group classified label exploited, mobilized, and constrained by power dominating group, which uses state as a power frame and ethnic conscience embodiment (Espiritu et al. 2000). Despite ones individual inner thoughts, his expression and actions will largely restrained by such racial dictatorship. Individuals ethnic identity is thus flexible and floating to cope with the hardship in utilizing ones social economic status. For Uncle Sam Ly, it is true that he was given choices to come to the US because of his Cambodian refugee status. He has every reason to maintain his Cambodian identity since it was listed as an official identification that can secure social benefit and legal status. It is clear that such ethnic classification was actually a political and legal identity rather than a cultural entity. Sam Ly and other formal Cambodian refugees recognition of Cambodian American identity is indeed an extension and legalized of their citizenship transformation from Cambodian nationals to American nationals but not related to their daily cultural practices. Therefore, despite their legal and political identification, the question should be asked here is what their real-life cultural and ethnic practices are, and how they justify and coordinate their daily cultural practice among their Chinese blood, Cambodian bone and American muscle? For this purpose, we would have to look in to the composing of Cambodian refugees and this population flow from Cambodian, Thai border camps and then to later settlements can be viewed as

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a divergence process to redistribute people with different ethnic identities toward different destinations.

II. Sino-Cambodian Refugees in the US: The Odyssey of finding HOME Majority of currently studies on Cambodian American community in the United States shows a clear inclination towards particular disciplines such as those in demographic distribution, mental health, education, language, and crime studies. Most of those studies view the Cambodian American community as a homogenous culture entity. That is Khmer community that is defined by the first language them speak at home, while many of these researchers presume only English and Khmer are spoken with those households and neglect many vernacular languages like Vietnamese, Teochewese, Fukkienese and some other minor ones are used as well. As many communal projects have to use translators to study the community, only major language speakers such as Khmers, Chinese Mandarin, Vietnamese speakers, thus are hired but not vernacular language speakers. This condition therefore limits and frames our understanding of the detail composing of ethnic diversity within the Cambodian community in the US. Thus, we can only track back to the source of Cambodian refugees. In William E. Willmotts 1981 article, The Chinese in Kampuchea, he points out two important phenomena about ethnic Chinese during the civil war. First is that most Chinese have voluntarily and involuntarily fled to Thai border during the civil war. Second is that, in order to survive in the crucial political environment, most of the Chinese in Kampuchea, another name of Cambodia, tend to deny their Chineseness (Willmott 1981). Carefully reviewing Willmotts claims in the article, he indicates that, after Vietnamese invasion, The Vietnamese were apparently encouraging Chinese to leave Kampuchea, gathering some twenty thousand of them in Battambang in March 1979 and urging them across the border into Thailand (Willmott 1981: 45). Such number of ethnic Chinese was almost all the Chinese population in the area. As Willmotts earlier record showed, he estimated there was 41,000 Chinese in Battambang in 1962 (Willmott 1967: 16), long before the civil war decreased the population number. Such encouragement were also reported on Washington Post (18 May, 1979, p. A32), and a medical doctor who worked in the Thai border Camps during that time (Levy 1981).

In the same article, Willmott further argued that, due to Vietnamese governments anti-Chinese stance, ethnic Chinese would high unlikely to identify themselves as Chinese. This safety reason, plus two anti-Chinese tax and registration laws announced in early 1980s, can be used to understand why there was no one willing to identify their Chineseness in post-Khmer Rouge period. This denial of Chineseness can be also

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seen in an open letter written by Chinese in refugee camps in Thailand to Liao Cheng-chih, the chairman of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission and also vice-chairperson of Standing Committee of the National peoples Congress in Beijing, China. In this open letter, leaders from those Sino-Cambodian refugees wrote, many of the refugees who fled to Thailand and elsewhere pretended to be Khmer because they thought they would not receive U. N. aid if they were identified as Chinese (Willmott 1981: 44) Apparently, it seems wired that contemporary scholars who wrote about ethnicity in Cambodia do not mention or acknowledge what Willmott has pointed out in 1980s. Rather, later scholars who studied Cambodian refugees around the world neglect this ethnic reality and over-generalized that Cambodian refugees are mostly ethnic Khmer. However, we still find some evidences in some of those newly works in supporting the fact that most of Cambodian refugees in Thai border camps are indeed ethnic Chinese. For example, this is also confirmed by Aihwa Ong in her 2003 book, Buddha is hiding. She quotes from the most famous Cambodian refugee, Haing Ngor (Ong misspells as Hiang Ngor), most of Cambodias old middle class and elite showed up in Khao-I-Dang (Ngor 1987: 419; Ong 2003: 54). Since both W. E. Willmott and Penny Edwards confirm that most of middle class in Cambodia were ethnic Chinese, it is reasonable to say that, in the largest Thai border camp, Khao-I-Dang, there were overwhelming [significant] amounts of Cambodian refugees were ethnic Chinese. It is true that there is no any direct evidence to indicate the definite number or proportion of ethnic Chinese among all Cambodian refugees. Nor there was any research or observation reports manifest the clear ethnic structure in the Cambodia before 1991.

With present Cambodian American community studies, the most significant claim about Sino-Cambodians in the United States is their livelihood predomination as small business owners within the Cambodian American communities (Turcotte 2003; Chan 2004, 2005; Ong 2003). As their ethnographic data confirm, most of small ethnic business in the communities are established and owned by ethnic Chinese. Those ethnic businesses include Asian grocery stores, travel agencies, restaurants, pawnshops and international trade companies. This tradition of ethnic capitalism and entrepreneurship is transplanted to the new World settlement with their family tradition and know-how knowledge from their Cambodia life experiences.

In terms of their ethnic identity studies within existing works, scholars like Nancy Smith-Hefner, Hardman and Jean Phinney, they all address that Khmer language can be used as ethnic signifier to understand the various development of ethnic identities. For instance, both Smith and Hardman point out that Khmer is used as first domestic language in most Cambodian American households (Smith-Hefner 1999; Hardman 1998). Such linguistic choice then develops as later generations ethnic and cultural

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identity besides American political identity. Psychologists Jean Phinney, on the other hand, brings in multiple variables to this justification by adding parental attitude, peer group influence, and language proficiency in defining ones ethnic identity within Cambodian American adolescents (Phinney 1990, 1997, Phinney et al 2001).

To sum up all available ethnic identity studies on Cambodian American community, we can see clear and well-rounded conclusion about how those refugees were force to left their homeland and later settlement experience in the United States. Many sources have carefully looked into their mental health, education, cultural adjustment and crime issues. However, there is no clear evidence and argument can be used to justify their ethnicity formation and identification. Even more, the data of Cambodian refugees ethnic status and full records of their resettling whereabouts are not reachable as well. Therefore, it is understandable that many researchers mislabel all of those Cambodian refugees as ethnic Khmers. This is why it is important that, in this article, I attempt to reconstruct the ethnic reality among Cambodian refugees who resettled to the United States, especially ethnic Chinese Cambodian refugees.

III. Cambodia: A Home away from Home. From late French colonization period, the Chinese in Cambodge has been seen as a

treat for the fact that their isolation and independence as a state in the State. French administrator has started to regulated the power of the five Chinese assemble halls. However, the real battle began along with the raising of Cambodian nationalism and its independence in 1953. In the 1949, a series of citizenship and immigration laws were launched by French colonial administration to unify the power of customs and immigration management. Chinese migrants were asked to obtain visa with valid passports (Lin 2008). After Cambodian gained its independence in 1953, the new Kingdom of Cambodia regulated its qualification of Cambodian citizenship with jus sanguinis, right of blood system. In addition, Khmer language was also set as a part of qualification, which is considered targeted at ethnic Chinese since they tended to maintain their Chinese education and vernacular languages.

After the Kingdom of Cambodia gained its independence in 1953, there were two key dilemmas that the Chinese countered in Cambodia. First is the antagonism between indigenous political Elites and Chinese economic class. This reflects on a series of anti-Chinese laws and regulations announced respectively from 1954 to 1970. These new policies regulated the naturalization of the Chinese (1954), restricted 18 kinds of professions that Chinese can work into (1956), increased the tax load (1957), limited the asset ownership (1957), gradually restrained Chinese education (1956~1957), restriction of remittance outflow (1957), confined the property-owning duration to 99 years (1958),

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banned the Chinese hometown associations and social organizations (1958), shut down all eight Chinese newspapers (1967), and closed all Chinese schools (1970) (Chen 2007). Among all these anti-Chinese policies, the taxing, curriculum censorship, and licensing management in 1956, 1957 and 1958 respectively have increased the cost and difficulty to operate.

Most importantly, the prohibition of Chinese newspapers in 1967 and the bans of Chinese schools and language in 1970 then have official terminated the sources of forming Chinese identity. On the other hand, the main purpose of these series of anti-Chinese regulations, of course, is to counterbalance the predominately economic power that the Chinese had enjoyed. Yet, it is also to assimilate the centrifugal Chinese community in the nation by shrinking the economic gap and breaking down the culture barriers. This is to say, Chinese Cambodians class, culture, communal and national identities during this period were gradually pressed to compromise, assimilate or dissimulate by the local political elites with compelling regulations or encouraging naturalization enactments. It is clear that the first six prohibition orders aimed to reduce the influential power of the Chinese in the economic affairs. But the prohibition of Chinese social organization, Chinese schools and newspaper were to dismantle the original social structure of the Chinese in Cambodia and force them to be assimilated into Khmer culture, language and society.

In terms of ethnic identity cultivation during this period, it is clear that we can see that ethnic Chinese, who were born in 1950s and educated in 1960s, are major age group who later became refugees in 1970s and early 1980s and migrated to the west. Living under anti-Chinese atmosphere, they grew up in Khmer public school and spoke Khmer since there had less exposure to Chinese education and newspapers. They might speak mandarin and other vernacular languages at home but were forced to speak Khmer outside and in public. This can explicitly explain most of ethnic Chinese in this age tend to be bilingual and have looser ethnic boundary with Khmer indigenous, comparing with how their parental generation situated into. This bilingualism later evolved into a survival advantage and identity capital in coping with the extreme predicaments during the civil war, refugee camp and to the New World. Beside the anti-Chinese policies, it is important to review another historical debate of whether ethnic Chinese was particularly singled out to wipe out during the civil war period. This has been one of the biggest debate on contemporary Cambodian history that whether the massive killing during the civil war was target on particular ethnic

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groups, given the label of genocide that aimed at Chinese and Vietnamese. Leading by famous Yale historian Ben Kiernan, some claim that the massive killing was intrinsically a massacre that targeted on intellectuals, formal public servants, landlords, middle class, and professionals, in order to create a self-sufficient agriculture Utopia. Although that the majority of those targeted elites in Cambodian were ethnic Chinese, there were also ethnic Khmers and Vietnamese as well. They were killed because of their class identity, education, working experience, and knowledge, but not because of their ethnicity. The idea of genocide was an image publicized by Vietnam to justify its invasion. Furthermore, ethnic Chinese were oppressed during Vietnamese invasion period and early time (1979-1985) of Peoples Republic of Kampuchea. Thus, from 1970, when the civil war broke out, to 1985, when Indochina three countries announce their economic reform policy under Vietnams leadership, more than hundreds of thousands of Cambodian refugees fled to more than eighty refugees camps.

However, there is not a certain and precise statistic number to confirm the total amount of Cambodia refugees fled out during the civil war. From 1970 onward, there are more than eighty recorded refugee camps existed between Thai and Cambodia border. Some were established by the United Nations, international non-profit organizations, private foundations, religion organizations. And some were even controlled by Cambodias different domestic political parties and military forces, including Sihanouks Funcinpec, Khmer Rouge, and KPNLF. Most of those refugee camps were not able to maintain a clear record of personal identification and tracking numbers of refugees they took in. From the other way around, if we look into the population change of the Chinese in Cambodia, perhaps we can find some new evidences to estimate the approximation of all refugee population. As Willmotts field observation and estimation, there were about 465,000 ethnic Chinese in the Cambodian in 1950. Before the civil war broke out in 1970, he estimated there was 420,000 (Willmott 1967) since anti-Chinese laws reduce new migrants but also pushed out some ethnic Chinese population. Another Overseas Chinese expert from the Republic of China (Taiwan) appraises the Chinese population in Cambodia reduced to 360,000 in 1974 (Liang 1974) before the Khmer Rouge took over. After Khmer Rouges massive killings, I estimate that the lowest point should be in the early 1980s when the People Republic of Kampuchea announced two anti-Chinese regulations, Order 351 and K5 Plan. However, there was indeed no reliable number of ethnic Chinese during this period since the definite number of national population is even an intellectual debate center. However, it is later estimated that there were around 420,000 self-claimed ethnic Chinese in 1991 (Xing 1992) and the number bound up to 882,000 in 2010s national census, six percent of national population.

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IV. A Hilton in Border Zone: Thai Refugee Camp As I have addressed earlier in this article, literatures show a contradiction on the ethnicity formation of Cambodia refugee in the Thai border refugee camps. Therefore, it is important to clarify the ethnic composition of Cambodian refugees in Thai border camps. It is for sure that there is no precise record of refugee numbers and its ethnicity composition. Thus we can only use extant literature evidences to roughly understand the composition of Cambodia refugees. Several scholars like Jean Smith-Hefner, Frank Smith and Sucheng Chan, they all indicate that many of those Cambodian refugees are indeed the victims of Khmer Rouge, who are mostly Khmer villagers and peasants (Smith-Hefner 1999, Smith 1994; Chan 2004). However, William Willmott and Aihwa Ong believe most of they are actually ethnic Chinese, middle class merchants and professionals who were targeted as national enemy of Khmer Rouges Communism Utopian (Willmott 1981, Ong 2003). Without any physical evidence, it may not be practical to judge whether most of those Cambodian refugees are Khmer peasants or Chinese Merchants, while they could be both as well. However, there are two logic hints we can use to make educational judgment. First one is that information gaining and the decision to flee from the war calamity. After Chinese Communist Party won the civil war and established the People Republic of China in 1949, the negative image and severe life condition of Chinese in the homeland have been intensively spreading and promoted as a part of cold war. Thus, it is understandable that ethnic Chinese in Cambodia should be fully aware of the possible consequence if Khmer Communist Party took over, which it did happen and later established a regime known as Democratic Kampuchea or Khmer Rouge. Meanwhile, General Lon Nols 1970 coup and his regime has been known now of CIAs support and his anti-Chinese stance. Therefore, it is reasonable that ethnic Chinese in Cambodia were exposed to more information and crucial conditions that may all forced them to flee. Secondly, most Chinese were middle class in Cambodia and it is also true that most middle class in Cambodia were ethnic Chinese. After civil war broke out in 1970, political turmoil had collapsed Cambodias economy. The turbulent political and economy apparently was first influenced urban citizens and Chinese merchants who stayed and migrated at Cambodia for economic incentives. When such incentive disappeared, it is a logic guess that most ethnic Chinese will decide to flee away. Accordingly, Willmott and Ongs claim that most of Cambodian refugees who fled to the border were ethnic Chinese could be a more factual judgment. Meanwhile, the second question followed this judgment is that, if Willmott and Ongs judgment are true, should those Cambodian refugees preferred to be resettled to the Republic of China, as known as Taiwan KHM administration? Or should they identify themselves as Chinese rather than claim their Cambodia citizenship since most

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of those Cambodian refugees were accepted by the West with their Cambodian refugee identity? For the first question above, I have not yet found any evidence to show that the exact numbers of Sino-Cambodian refugees were taken in by Hong Kong or Taiwan. But it is true that the council of Overseas Chinese in Taiwan have long history on taking care of those who settled in Taiwan since Vietnam War broke out. Those Indochina refugees were called as refugees from Indochina Peninsula [Zhong Nam Ban Dao Nan Min; ]. So, it is true that many of they were accepted and resettled in Taiwan. For the second question, it has to be reviewed from a historical aspect as I have briefly reviewed the history of anti-Chinese policies in Cambodia. With all those crucial anti-Chinese regulations, many of ethnic Chinese in Cambodia have been forcefully assimilated to Khmer identity since Chinese language and school were both banned in late 1960s. Many of them went to Khmer speaking public school and only spoke Khmer outside their household. This may explain why many Sino-Cambodian refugees speak better Khmer than Chinese mandarin, the only official language in both cross-Strait regimes. Although many of them can also speak at least one Chinese vernacular languages such as Teochowese, but obviously it is not enough and still difficult for them to fit in to their mother land anymore. Rather, many of them learned to speak French since Cambodia was once colonized by France for ninety years, and, as middleman under the colonial regime, many of them still speak French. Therefore, it is not surprised that many of them would decide to go to France since a lot of them already families over there. It is also important to acknowledge that, in the refugee camps, may custom agency from the West have also stationed in the camp to evaluate the possibilities of taking in some refugees. They obviously would set up particular qualification and conditions to accept refugees applicants. Such qualifications would include language competency, family support, life sponsorship, and even political ideology. Their scanning process can be seen as a selection process that forced Cambodian refugees who wanted to go to those countries to fit in those expectancies.

According to Sucheng Chan and Audrey Kims interviews, one refugee points out that most of Ethnic Chinese choose to go to France since some of them were fluent in French and have many relatives in France already (Two Interviews, Chan 2003). These Sino-Cambodians were well-being middle-class economic elites who may be from merchant and colonial employee families. However, it would be an educational guess that many of those Sino-Cambodian refugees would choose to their Homeland, either China, Hong Kong or Taiwan, depending on their political identities and family ties. Both the Republic of China in Taiwan and the People Republic of China in the mainland have established bureaucratic institutes in charge of Overseas Chinese Affairs. Both bureaus were competing not only richer ones in Southeast Asian countries to bring back

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home more capital investment but also contending overseas Chinese who were willing to political recognize its cold war ideologies. Besides such cold war ideology and political identity, other reasons that a refugee family decided the location of their new life may involve economic incentives, geographic kinship tie, family and personal network chain, and of course, livelihood support from their own skills and social security of reception countries. Some may even simply go where they were accepted without rational thinking. However, we can see such process of decision making of relocation destinations as a pre-selection process of group identities, such as their various identities of particular political ideology, class, ethnic, culture or simply just ones irrational preference on specific location. This is to say, for those who applied and were accepted by the United States may show a homogeneous quality comparing with those who were relocated to China or France.

V. American Dream, Khmer Town, Chinese Mirage According to the data from US Committee for Refugees, from 1975 to 1998, the

United States alone has accepted around 147,228 Cambodian refugees to relocate to it soil from refugee camps. Most of them distribute in Long Beach, California and Lowell, Massachusetts. Being war refugees, Cambodian Americans are considered disadvantage minority in the country since most of they are English illiterate and lacks of advanced professional skills. Most of first generation Cambodian refugees even still suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, especially with new stress from resettlement in new environment. This is why most present studies on Cambodian Americans largely focus on the issues of mental Health, education, social aids, crime, and material abuse problems within the community. Those researches all assume that Cambodian Americans as a homogeneous entity of Khmer culture, while neglecting the fact that many of them do self-identify as ethnic Chinese. This homogeneous Khmer identity was only accepted by many scholars including Chandler (1983), Smith-Hefner (1989), Ledgerwood (1990) and Mortland (1994). With Khmer language competency and Cambodian political refugee identity, it is understandable that Khmer culture was used as a blurred but practical signifier to identify those new arrivals, which employed and also was evaluated with their Cambodian political identification as a qualification to award new citizenship. Transferring this Cambodian political identity into a pseudo-ethnic identity in order to gain the same benefit and access the same opportunities, many ethnic Chinese soon picked up this transformation opportunity and utilized it into their daily practice in community by self identifying themselves as Cambodian refugees rather than Sino-Cambodian migrants. In a cultural sense, Ong and Smith-Hefner also find the Theravada Buddhist as the greatest cultural common denominator between ethnic Chinese and Khmers. They use Theravada Buddhist as the

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core element of a common Khmer Identity (Ong 2003, Smith-Hefner 1999, Mortland 1994, Hein 2006) despites the ethnic diversity among Cambodian refugees. With new American identification while living in Cambodian Enclave such as Long Beach CA and Lowell MA, Chineseness seems to become a remote collective Memory that remind many Cambodian Americans their parents and grandparents.

VI. Ethnicity of Necessarity As I describe above, due to the domestic anti-Chinese policies in Cambodia since 1950s, ethnic Chinese in Cambodia had started to adopt local identities. It started from citizenship naturalizing, the adaption of local political identity at the beginning of independence, and followed with local education and language assimilation in late 1960s. This cultural and language assimilation has dramatically changed Chinese Cambodians even before the civil war broke out in 1970. Thats why Chinese Cambodians who were born after independence in 1953 usually went to Khmer public schools and spoke Khmer in public, while most of their parent generation still maintained strong Chinese identity since they went through isolated Chinese community under French colonization. After the civil war broke out, the departure to Thai border refugee camps and the transition to new settlements are considered as selection processes or divergence flows that separated people toward various destinations. Such population divisions are strongly based on refugees personal decisions that rationally made according to their surviving advantages and different identities that associate with particular ethnic or political identities. Although economic incentive plays an important role as well, the surviving conditions in new settlements and the acceptance by those countrys immigration agencies are the keys as well. These are the reasons that, although literature evidences show that the majority of Cambodian refugees in Thai border camps are actually ethnic Chinese. But immigration agencys filtration with cold-war ideological censorship has impacted Sino-Cambodian refugees identity choices. Such situational identity engagement is indeed coachable and can be utilized, simply through accentuating ones Cambodian language and political identifications. Therefore, it is understandable that many Sino-Cambodian refugees came to the United States because of their identity status as Cambodian refugees. Thus, they are treated and classified in the social welfare system, census and demographic data as Cambodian Americans. Their diaspora Chinese ethnicity and incompetence in Chinese mandarin or other vernacular languages, otherwise, have also marginalized their ethnic tie with Chinatown Chinese. Therefore, it is not a surprise to know that Sino-Cambodian refugees do aware of their Chinese ethnic background, but they are still willing to be identified as Cambodian Americans. It is indeed an

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acquiescence act, starting from time when they applied to the US asylum, and transmitted this Cambodian Refugees political identity into Cambodian American identity. This Cambodian American identity mainly associates with Khmer and American language and culture, rather that Chinese ones. As Sino-Cambodian refugees have situated their historical political identity, that is Cambodian identity, as ethnic identity, this politicized identity in the first generation has also changed how later generations cultivate their ethnic identity. Later generations has less; or in some cases even do not aware of their ethnic Chinese root, since they assimilated after long process of grew up American (Kim2004). Most of them would have mentioned about Chineseness and refugee experiences as parts of their family legacy and collective memory. But they still have clear ethnic and cultural identities as Cambodian Americans. According to my personal communication and small scale field survey with second or third generation of Cambodian Americans from Honolulu, Long beach and Boston area, almost every one of them would mention that one or both of their parents or grandparents are ethnic Chinese. And many of them, especially grandparents, speak Teochowese at home, or can still speak or understand Teochowese. Many of them would exemplify several words of Teochowese that the elders used at home, and describe their Chinese culture practice at home while they clearly define themselves as Cambodian Americans. For first generation Sino-Cambodian refugees, they have been socialized and exposed to Chinese, Khmer and American cultures that I describe as three different life scenes. Despite their parental choices and others who resettled to China, Taiwan or Vietnam, those who have been through all these three scenes made the decisions to become Americans for all kinds of motives, incentives and reasons. But clearly, their Cambodian refugee status is the quality to ensure their gain political asylum here in the United States. This Cambodian identity then was transferred and given to their children and relative dependents who immigrated to the United States by immigration laws article on family reunification. Many of those new generations are only exposed to American culture and their Cambodian identity, but not Chinese identification. Especially for those whose live in Cambodian towns like Long beach or Lowell, their Cambodianess is sometimes used as culture heritage in association with their family refugee background, social status and social circle against mainstream American culture. In terms of later generations who were raised and educated in the United States, it is clear that they were only exposed to American culture in formal institutional channels such as school and media, and also exposed to general Cambodia culture in informal channels like parental cultivation and community events, if there are willing to associate with. Therefore, new generations are articulated with only American identities and

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Cambodia culture as heritage. Most of them supposedly identify themselves as Americans or Cambodian Americans, rather than taking consideration of their Chinese root as any part of it. With this cultivation process, it is understandable that their language competencies in English and Khmer are used as the key component to define their ethnic identity. And since most of their parents do not speak any more Chinese Mandarin and vernacular languages, they have thus even more alienated from their Chinese root but thinking their Chineseness as a family legacy and remote family memory. This identity phenomenon largely echoes what Omi and Winant argue of how the reality of political and social power hierarchy has limited and in a way formulate minoritys identities. Also, this process of how Cambodian refugee political identity is used and transferred into new American identity and later maintained as cultural identity or even ethnic identity in some cases demonstrates Aihwa Ongs argument of flexible citizenship. And it can be said that political identity, ethnic identity, and cultural identity can be viewed as three fundamental prototypes of self identities. The process of how an individual employ one to lever the other is strongly associated with the socio-political conditions and the decision space edge out between political power and individual rights. Such transformation and identity politics can also be found on the cases of Sino-Vietnamese Americans, Taiwanese citizens in China, and Tibetan-Chinese exiles. To sum up, the self-identification experience of Sino-Cambodian refugees in the United States displays a clear model of ethnic identification determination. It shows that ethnic identity is not only a complex result of socialization, assimilation, resistance and articulation, but it is also embedded with the impacts from the political reality, generation difference, and particularly historical restriction.

VII. Conclusion: From Who-you-are to What-you-are As I have reviewed the journey of Sino-Cambodian Refugees from Cambodian to Thai refugee camps and later to the United States, this case shows a transnational voyage of surviving and livelihood from one to the other countries. Sino-Cambodian Americans transformation experience of ethnic identity and utilization of their identity position are restrained by environmental political structure while each individual can still vote by feet, taking Cambodian refugees decisions on departure of Cambodia, destination selection for relocation, and resettlement with adjustment and compromise as an example. Their decision space or options among Chinese, Cambodia, and American cultures, on the other hand, represent the fuzzification of culture boundary and politics of ethnic classification. Although ethnic hierarchy and social economic status do limit an individual or minority groups option content and numbers, social welfare system and community support from public channels, in a way, do compensate their inequity position within the hierarchy. Ethnicity classification and culture heritage

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therefore becomes collective assets that a group can mobilize to accumulate their political dynamic to influence the higher groups who are in power. This utilization may initially sound like James Scotts claims of resistance of the weak. But, in Sino-Cambodian refugees case, it is actually an unconscious response with two Chinese philosophic attitudes of reconciliation [] and gratification[]. Their multicultural experience in a transnational contest will soon become a prototype of international immigration in the future with the unavoidable trend of globalization. Since the measurement of ethnic identity and its universal equation of formation are still ambiguous and difficult to define, the case of Sino-Cambodian Americans and their multi-ethnic self identification experience in a transnational scope may address the point that, maybe such pursuit of clear-cut ethnic identity and its measurement is actually meaningless since multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism become normal and usual.

Heavily relying on William E. Willmotts two monographs from 1967 and 1970 and the last article he published in same subject in 1981, it may be dangerous and risky to conclude my argument which is pretty much against the mainstream Khmer cultural identity of Cambodian Americans. However, it is important to address that many of Sino-Cambodian refugees have committed to their Cambodian political identity into new American identity, while forgetting their original Chinese ethnic identity. It is still unclear that how many Cambodian refugees are ethnic Chinese in a proportion sense. And I also agree that further historical investigation is urgent and necessary since most of those first generation Cambodian refugees are aging. But any counter-thesis materials and evidences will be welcomed to enrich this discourse.

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