The Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (REDI) Task Force invites you to the second event in the "Critical Conversations: Race and Global Affairs" series. This panel discussion and Q&A will explore the resonance of Black internationalist research, past and present, to offer new insights on the Black Lives Matter movement .
About the Event: The Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (REDI) Task Force invites you to the first event in the "Critical Conversations: Race and Global Affairs" series focused on international research and racism. This conversation is an open dialogue featuring Dr. Christian Davenport, author of one of the pre-selected articles:
About the Speaker: Christian Davenport is a Professor of Political Science and Faculty Associate at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo and Elected Fellow at the American Association for the Arts and Sciences. Primary research interests include political conflict, measurement, racism and popular culture. He is the author of seven books and author of numerous articles appearing in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science and the Annual Review of Political Science (among others). He is the recipient of numerous grants (e.g., 12 from the National Science Foundation) and awards.
Film Studies major Dexter Sterling Simpson, ’21, dreams of entering the documentary industry after graduation. To test the waters, he moved to New York City for two quarters last year to pursue an internship with a professional documentary house. One recent highlight of his documentary experience, though, occurred while working as a research assistant with Stanford sociologist and the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea Gi-Wook Shin.
The research assistant job, available through the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), which Shin directs, provided Simpson with the opportunity to produce a film that documents how high-skilled migrants to the United States, including several Stanford scholars, continue to make significant contributions to their home countries and create mutually beneficial ties — or “brain linkages” — between the United States and their home countries. The documentary, called Brain Bridges and now available on APARC’s YouTube channel, showcases research that is part of Shin’s multiyear project studying global talent flows, brain hubs, and socioeconomic development in Asia.
A Positive-Sum Approach
“I started working on the project last summer and then continued remotely from New York before remote work became the new norm in the time of COVID-19,” says Simpson. “Surprisingly enough, the pandemic seemed to speed things up for us rather than slow them down. I would meet regularly with Professor Shin and the research team via Zoom to exchange updates and notes on my work. Several weeks ago, we held an outdoor, socially distanced interview shoot to close the film. It has been a unique challenge to work around the abrupt life changes caused by the pandemic, but it is deeply rewarding to emerge with a finished product that, I hope, is inspiring and informative.”
What we find is that brain drain offers opportunities for brain circulation and brain linkage, that is, home-host interactions that create a win-win, positive-sum situation for both sides.
Gi-Wook Shin
Director, APARC
The film traces the stories of several Stanford scholars and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who demonstrate that the migration of high-skilled professionals is not a zero-sum game in which the host country (in this case, the United States) receives a net inflow of human capital from the home country. “Rather than simply enhancing the competitiveness of the host country at the home country’s expense — a phenomenon commonly referred to as ‘brain drain’ for the home country and ‘brain gain’ for the host country — what we find is that brain drain offers opportunities for brain circulation and brain linkage, that is, home-host interactions that create a win-win, positive-sum situation for both sides,” explains Shin.
From Human Capital to Social Capital
The story of Indo-American entrepreneur and venture investor Kanwal Rekhi is a case in point. When Rekhi came to the United States from India for graduate studies, he encountered prejudice in American society and criticism of his “unpatriotic” move in his home country. Undaunted, he advanced through the engineering ranks in several technology companies and in 1982, cofounded the computer networking company Excelan in Silicon Valley. Five years later, he became the first Indo-American entrepreneur to list a venture-backed company on the NASDAQ.
When high-skilled migrants stay engaged with the home countries, both home and host countries gain from the productive capacity embodied in the ties and networks linking many individuals and organizations.
Gi-Wook Shin
Director, APARC
From a human capital perspective, Rekhi’s journey is a case of brain drain for India. Following his success, however, he became an advocate for border-bridging entrepreneurs, pushed Indian legislators to reform venture regulations, and cofounded The Indus Entrepreneur (TiE), a nonprofit with a mission to foster entrepreneurship globally. His efforts in Silicon Valley and India helped create a whole new generation of entrepreneurs and a tangible impact on the economies in both countries.
“In considering brain linkage, we must shift from a view that regards labor primarily as human capital to a new model of labor as social capital,” notes Shin. “When educated professionals permanently leave their home countries, it is true that those countries lose the totality of education, skills, and experience embodied by these individuals. But when they stay engaged with the home countries, both home and host countries gain from the productive capacity embodied in the ties and networks linking many individuals and organizations.”
Featuring Stanford Scholars and Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs
Simpson’s documentary film follows the transnational brain bridging stories of several other accomplished academics and industry leaders in Silicon Valley, including Hongbin Li, the James Liang Director of the China Program at the Stanford King Center on Global Development and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research; Kyle Loh, assistant professor of developmental biology who heads the Loh laboratory at the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine; Arogyaswami Paulraj, professor emeritus at Stanford’s Department of Electrical Engineering; Sievlan Len, Stanford graduate student in international policy studies; Gen Isayama, general partner and CEO at venture capital fund World Innovation Lab; Asha Jadeja, an entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist; Young Song, CEO of desktop virtualization company NComputing; Mariko Yang, cofounder of STEAM education organization SKY Labo; and Eugene Zhang, a founding partner of early-stage venture capital fund TSVC.
The documentary film brings to life the powerful lesson from the research by Shin and his colleagues: that transnational social capital and ties spanning geographic and cultural distance remain vital to today’s global market economy, even more so in a time of political tensions at home and abroad.
Dr. Yuen Yuen Ang Awarded Theda Skocpol Prize for Emerging Scholars
Former China Program postdoc and Stanford Ph.D alumna Yuen Yuen Ang has received the Theda Skocpol Prize for Emerging Scholars from the American Political Science Association for her scholarship on China’s transformation into a global superpower.
Call for Stanford Student Applications: APARC Hiring 2020-21 Research Assistants
To support Stanford students working in the area of contemporary Asia, the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Center is offering research assistant positions for the fall, winter, and spring quarters of the 2020-21 academic year.
Each year the United States resettles thousands of refugees in pre-determined locations across the country. However, refugees are free to relocate upon arrival. Although this secondary migration can fundamentally alter outcomes for both refugees and the communities that host them, policymakers lack systematic data on this phenomenon. Using novel administrative data covering all adult refugees resettled between 2000 and 2014 (N≈447,000), we provide a comprehensive analysis of secondary migration patterns. A high proportion of refugees leave their initial resettlement site and migrate to a different state, although rates vary widely by origin, family ties, and arrival state. Importantly, secondary migration is driven primarily by the presence of co-ethnic networks and labor market considerations. We find no evidence that patterns of secondary migration are driven by state partisanship and the generosity of welfare benefits.
We provide evidence that citizenship catalyzes the long-term economic integration of immigrants. Despite the relevance of citizenship policy to immigrant integration, we lack a reliable understanding of the economic consequences of acquiring citizenship. To overcome nonrandom selection into naturalization, we exploit the quasi-random assignment of citizenship in Swiss municipalities that held referendums to decide the outcome of individual naturalization applications. Our data combine individual-level referendum results with detailed social security records from the Swiss authorities. This approach allows us to compare the long-term earnings of otherwise similar immigrants who barely won or lost their referendum. We find that winning Swiss citizenship in the referendum increased annual earnings by an average of approximately 5000 U.S. dollars over the subsequent 15 years. This effect is concentrated among more marginalized immigrants.
Connie will speak about how the Chinese detention barracks on Angel Island were saved from demolition in the 1970s, opening the door to the hidden history of the immigration station. She will recount the experience of her grandmother, Mrs. Lee Yoke Suey, who was detained in the barracks for 15 and a half months starting in 1924 and how the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled on her grandmother’s case.
The Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), which is a program of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, worked with graphic artist Rich Lee to publish Angel Island: The Chinese-American Experience. Its author, Jonas Edman, will share activities and materials from this graphic novel that tells the story of Chinese immigrants who were detained at Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay between 1910 and 1940.
Connie Young Yu is a writer, activist and historian. She is the author of Chinatown, San Jose,USA, co-editor of Voices from the Railroad: Stories by Descendants of Chinese Railroad Workers, and has written for many exhibits and documentaries on Asian Americans. She was on the citizens committee (AIISHAC) that saved the Angel Island immigration barracks for historical preservation and was a founding member of Asian Americans for Community Involvement (AACI). Connie is board member emeritus of the Chinese Historical Society of America and historical advisor for the Chinese Historical and Cultural Project (CHCP).
Jonas Edman
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Jonas Edman is an Instructional Designer for the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). In addition to writing curricula, Jonas coordinates SPICE’s National Consortium for Teaching About Asia (NCTA) professional development seminars on East Asia for middle school teachers, and teaches online courses for high school students. He also collaborates with Stanford Global Studies on the Education Partnership for Internationalizing Curriculum (EPIC) Fellowship Program. Prior to joining SPICE in 2010, Jonas taught history and geography in Elk Grove, California, and taught “Theory of Knowledge” at Stockholm International School in Stockholm, Sweden.
How does the appearance of a new immigrant group affect the integration of earlier generations of migrants? We study this question in the context of the first Great Migration (1915-1930), when 1.5 million African Americans moved from the US South to northern urban centers, where 30 million Europeans had arrived since 1850. We exploit plausibly exogenous variation induced by the interaction between 1900 settlements of southern-born blacks in northern cities and state-level out-migration from the US South after 1910. Black arrivals increased both the effort exerted by immigrants to assimilate and their eventual Americanization. These average effects mask substantial heterogeneity: while initially less integrated groups (i.e. Southern and Eastern Europeans) exerted more assimilation effort, assimilation success was larger for those culturally closer to native whites (i.e. Western and Northern Europeans). We show that these patterns cannot be entirely explained by economic forces. Our findings are instead more consistent with a framework in which changing perceptions of outgroup distance among the majority group lower the barriers to the assimilation of less distant minorities.
Upwards of 15,000 to 20,000 individual migrant Chinese laborers performed the bulk of the work constructing the Central Pacific span of the Transcontinental Railroad. Between 1864 and 1869, these Chinese also crossed the Pacific Ocean in what was then, and may still rank among the largest transnational labor migration movements. How do we find sources to uncover this forgotten and deliberately erased history? How did they live their daily lives? What kinds of enterprise did they innovate? How did their work on the railroad shape their lives in communities on both sides of the Pacific? We will look together at digital resources available at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/chineserailroad/cgi-bin/website/.
In 2018, the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), which is a program of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, published four lessons on the Chinese Railroad Workers. These units adapt the research, primary sources, and insights of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project for high school students and classes. Together, we'll engage in several activities from these lessons which are free for download from the SPICE website.
Roland Hsu is Director of Research for the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford University. Hsu’s publications address migration and ethnic identity formation. His is the author of multiple essays in international scholarly collections, and in policy journals including Le Monde Diplomatique. Hsu’s most recent book is Migration and Integration. His writing focuses on the history of migration, and on contemporary immigration policy questions, combining humanistic and social science methods and materials to answer what displaces peoples, how do societies respond to migration, and what are the experiences of resettlement. Hsu earned his Ph.D. in Modern European History at the University of Chicago. He holds an M.A. in Art History from the University of Chicago, and a dual B.A. in Art History and also English Literature from the University of California, Berkeley.
Greg Francis
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Greg Francis is a Curriculum Consultant for SPICE. Previously, he was Director of Impact Programs for Net Impact. In that role, he led a team that designed and executed experiential learning programs for college students. Before that, Greg was a director for The Broad Superintendents Academy, where he oversaw an executive training program for leaders of urban school districts. With SPICE, Greg has authored or co-authored 10 curriculum units, including Along the Silk Road; Security, Civil Liberties, and Terrorism; International Environmental Politics; and China’s Cultural Revolution. In 2007, Greg received the Franklin Buchanan Prize, which is awarded annually by the Association for Asian Studies to honor an outstanding curriculum publication on Asia at any educational level. Greg received a B.A. in International Relations from Stanford University and M.A. in Latin American Studies from the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar in Ecuador.
Won-Gi Jung (BA '20, History and East Asian Studies) has been awarded the ninth annual Korea Program Prize for Writing in Korean Studies for his paper, "The Making of Chinatown: Chinese migrants and the production of criminal space in 1920s Colonial Seoul." "Jung has written a thoroughly researched, beautifully crafted and convincingly argued honors thesis, that was sparked by his interest in colonial Korea’s articulation of its ‘Chinese problem,’ a crisis that resulted in anti-Chinese riots and massive relocation of migrants back to China," notes Dafna Zur, Associate Professor, Korean Literature and Culture and Director of the Center for East Asian Studies. The details of the annoucement are available here.
Sponsored by the Korea Program and the Center for East Asian Studies, the writing prize recognizes and rewards outstanding examples of writing by Stanford students in an essay, term paper or thesis produced during the current academic year in any discipline within the area of Korean studies, broadly defined. The competition is open to both undergraduate and graduate students.
Won-Gi Jung (BA '20) is awarded the ninth annual Writing Prize in Korean Studies for his paper, "The Making of Chinatown: Chinese migrants and the production of criminal space in 1920s Colonial Seoul."
Dr. Roland Hsu
