How Asian American Girls Create Ibasho/Home at a Community-Based Organization

• In Event: 66.035 - Situating the Identities of Asian/American Girls and Women Across Multiple Contexts and Institutional Settings: New Paradigms for Explicating "Gendered" Experiences

Abstract

Studies have called attention to family pressures such as strict gender roles and expectations (Espiritu, 2003), body image struggles (Lee & Vaught, 2003), and model minority stereotypes (Lee, 2009) as primary forces in the lives of Asian American girls. This focus on structural inequalities is essential and places the spotlight on the struggles of an often overlooked, yet highly at-risk, population. Asian American girls and young women, ages 15-24, have the highest suicide rates across any racial or ethnic groups (National Center for Health Statistics, 2003) and have the highest rates of depression of any racial, ethnic, or gender group in the United States (Schoen et al., 1997). Community-based organizations (CBO) which serve Asian American children and youth have played important roles in providing academic, social, economic, and emotional support for these girls (Reyes, 2007; Wong 2008). These organizations often value and integrate the knowledge, ability, and strength that youth bring, and have enormous potential to become Ibasho (home-like spaces) for Asian American girls, which warrants further attention. Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork at a CBO that targets low-income Asian American children and youth on the East Coast of the United States, this paper explores the ways in which a group of Asian American high school girls create Ibasho at an Asian American youth organization.
This study primarily uses a Japanese indigenous concept of Ibasho to explore the possibility of a CBO in empowering and supporting the lives of Asian American girls. Ibasho could be any places, spaces, and communities where one feels a sense of comfort, belonging, safety, comfort, and acceptance (Sumida, 2003). The concept of Ibasho is similar to the Western notion of home but emphasizes more on emotional aspect and focuses on concrete places and spaces in everyday lives.
The main participants of this study are nine first, 1.5, and second generation Asian American girls (ages 13 to 17) –three Filipinas, two Vietnamese, two Chinese, and one Indian –who regularly participated in a CBO that primarily served Asian American students. The fieldwork mainly took place at this organization, where I conducted participant observations, interviews and focus groups during after-school programs at a local high school, summer programs, and events. I also interacted with the girls’ friends in and out of the school, CBO staff and volunteers, and the students at the Asian American youth organization.
The CBO was one of the important Ibashos for the girls. The CBO affirmed and celebrated Asian American identities and cultures which allowed the girls to connect to their ancestral and ethnic roots. It also celebrated racial/ethnic diversity, inclusivity, and hybridity (e.g., recruited participants from diverse race/ethnicity) which the girls valued in their lives. Lastly, the CBO acknowledged the youth as cultural innovators and mediators including embracing the value of the popular culture that these youth enjoyed engaging, which became crucial factors of their Ibasho making. This paper also suggests ways to support the development of CBO where Asian American girls, who often struggle from racialization and hypersexualization can thrive.

Author

• Tomoko Tokunaga, Keio University