From the imagined community to communities of practice :Immigrant belonging among vietnamese Americans

Introduction One of the ways to theorize the nation and a sense of belonging to it is that of Benedict Anderson's (1983) concept of the "imagined community"-the idea that belonging to a group that one cannot see or interact with directly is based on imagining the greater unit and coming to identify with it through various media such as newspapers and novels. Anderson writes also of the sense of simultaneity necessary to nationalism that is created not only through these print media but also through rituals. If a nation is an "imagined community," then how can immigrants imagine their place within it? This is a question that Leo Chavez (1991) has asked about undocumented Mexican immigrants in the United States. He places them "outside" of the imagined community of America, and analyzes their experience of travel to the United States in terms of Arnold Van Gennep's rites of passage. Chavez suggests that Mexicans go through stages of separation (from home) and liminality (in the United States after they fi rst arrive), but not necessary that fi nal stage of incorporation. There are parallels in the circumstances of refugees, who also make a separation from home (often quite abruptly) and are then in a liminal state while in refugee camps and after initial arrival in a host country. Vietnamese refugees who have settled in the United States differ from the undocumented Mexicans studied by Chavez in that they have been granted rights to permanent residence and eventual citizenship. The degree to which Vietnamese Americans are now making the transition to incorporation in U.S. society is based not only on formal citizenship but also on their participation in the public sphere ("participatory citizenship") and on modes of belonging imagined for them by the dominant sectors of society. Although they are not necessarily "outside" of the imagined community, it may be more useful to view Vietnamese Americans in terms of a process of moving toward being "inside.".