Pan-Asianism is currently a very popular concept in Asian American research. Various pan-Asian studies have focused on pan-Asian coalitions at the collective level to protect common interests for all Asian Americans. While political identity is central to pan-Asian coalitions, private identity figures prominently in pan- Asian attachment at the individual level.
Structural factors such as racial lumping and anti-Asian violence have largely forced various Asian groups to make broad coalitions in politics, education, social services, and other areas. But primordial ties in the forms of similar cultures, physical affinity and similar historical experiences have direct and indirect effects on the development of pan-Asian attachment in friendship, dating, sharing residential areas and religious congregations.
Due to physical affinity and cultural similarities, East (Chinese, Korean and Japanese groups) and South Asian (Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladesh) groups maintain strong pan-ethnic attachment within each cluster and little interaction between the two separate clusters.
My presentation focused on pan-Asian attachment within East and South Asians in New York in friendship, residential patterns, and participation in religious congregation.
Author Bio
Pyong Gap Min is the Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Queens College and CUNY Graduate Center. He also serves as Director of the Research Center for Korean Community at Queens College. Dr. Min's areas of interest include immigration, ethnic identity, ethnic business, immigrants’ religious practices, and family/gender, with a special focus on Asian/Korean Americans. He is the author of six books, five of them focusing on Korean immigrants’ experiences. They include Caught in the Middle: Korean Communities in New York and Los Angeles (1996), the winner of two national book awards, and Preserving Ethnicity through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus across Generations (2010), the winner of three national book awards, one in Korea and the other two in the United States. His last book is Korean Comfort Women: Military Brothel, Brutality, and the Redress Movement published just this year.
Dr. Min's fourteen edited and co-edited books include Encyclopedia of Racism in the United States, 3 volumes (2005) and Asian Americans: Contemporary Trends and Issues, the Second Edition (2006). He was a Russell Sage Foundation fellow in 2006-2007, for writing his 2008 book, Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival: Korean Greengrocers in New York City. He received the Distinguished Career Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association in 2012 and the Contribution to the Field Award from the Section on Asia and Asian America of the American Sociological Association in 2019.
