The Changing Faces of Chinese Canadians: Interpellation and Performance in the Deployment of the Model Minority Discourse

The history of Chinese settlement in Canada is one that closely parallels the evolution of the Canadian states own racial and immigration policies. As policy shifted from covert and overt forms of racial exclusion and discrimination, including the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 that attempted to ban immigration from China altogether, to the introduction of an official multicultural policy and a points system that admitted prospective immigrants based upon their academic and economic credentials, the portrayal of Chinese Canadians has centred on two predominant stereotypes: the Yellow Peril and the Model Minority.

While it is easy to retroactively assume that the Yellow Peril discourse has been superseded by that of the Model Minority particularly in light of Canadas official multiculturalism policy, the increased economic and social capital of Chinese Canadians, and Chinas own recent economic boom this dissertation argues instead that both discourses have co-existed since the beginning of Chinese immigration to Canada, and continue to do so today.

Using a combined examination of Chinese Canadian history and life writing, I argue that the Model Minority discourse is not a recent phenomenon; rather, it is an example of the complex relationship between external interpellation by mainstream Canadian society, and the agency and affective performance of Chinese immigrants and their descendants. While the Model Minority discourse has been used as a tool to maintain the Eurocentrism of mainstream Canadian society by placing Asian immigrants, including Chinese, upon a pedestal in contrast to other racialized minorities, it has also found footing in the desire of Chinese Canadian communities to be accepted and acknowledged as desirable citizens by the Canadian state and the public.