Being an international student living in Canada, I am by definition a member of a large ethnic community. The members of the Chinese Canadian group share a common country of origin, language, norms, and values, use the same media sources and usually communicate with each other daily. College students organize culture-themed events and societies, such as UTM’s Chinese Students and Scholars Association (UTMCSSA), which facilitates interaction within the Chinese student community, holds events for members, and helps new students meet other people from China and adjust to life in an alien country through the use of common native food, music, celebrations, and other cultural features. Since the defined group, which is a part of the larger Canadian culture, uses these cultural attributes daily, this group can be referred to as the Chinese Canadian subculture. Being a member of this community, as well as a sociology student allows me to examine the Chinese Canadian subculture from a functionalist point of view, and to evaluate its influence on the members through the use of the sociological imagination.
Despite the current multiculturalism policy of the Canadian government, the history of Chinese immigrants in Canada provides very few grounds for successful cultural assimilation. Initially, Chinese immigrants were allowed into Canada from 1850 to the 1920s as cheap labor workers to work in railway construction, as well as in lumbering and mining (Brym and Lie 2012). They “were paid half the wages of white workers” (Brym and Lie 2012:154), and it was said they ’worked like horses’ and ‘dropped like flies’ due to “exposure, disease, malnutrition and explosions” (Brym and Lie 2012:154). The cheap cost of labor, however, facilitated the split labor market, which resulted in hostility against the Asian immigrants: “European Canadians formed ‘exclusion leagues’ to pressure the government to restrict Asian immigration, and on occasion, they even staged anti-Asian riots” (Brym and Lie 2012:155). According to Brym and Lie (2012), side effects of such treatment were the “solidified racial identities among both the rioters and the victims of the riots” (155), as well as the consequent struggle of immigrants to integrate into Canadian societies for many generations after: “The groups that have had most trouble assimilating into the British values and institutions that dominate Canadian societies are those that were subjected to expulsion from their native lands, conquest, slavery, and split labor markets. These circumstances have left a legacy of racism that has created social-structural impediments to assimilation, such as forced segregation in low-status jobs and low-income neighbourhoods” (Brym and Lie 2012:155).
Functionalism argues that social structures have a distinct function: they either maintain or undermine social stability (Innocente 2016). Since the somewhat distant relationship between the European and Chinese Canadians is still present today, one of the primary functions of the Chinese Canadian subculture is to mitigate these difficulties by “re-establishing equilibrium” (Innocente 2016) to solve social issues. For Chinese people who come to Canada for the first time, the subculture becomes a way to stay close to their ethnic identity through the celebration of holidays, such as Chinese New Year, cooking traditional foods, and so on. Moreover, being part of this ethnic subculture provides means to receive support and help when needed. For instance, it is common to look for jobs or housing through the other members of the ethnic subculture. Besides aiding the particular individual, this process also helps to maintain social stability by reducing the possibility of unemployment or homelessness among the immigrants. Brym and Lie (2012) agree, “for those ethnic groups who ‘have experienced unusually high levels of prejudice and discrimination involving expulsion or attempted genocide […] ethnic group membership offers security in a world still seen as hostile long after the threat of territorial loss or annihilation has disappeared” (156). Whereas subculture helps its members to cope with assimilation difficulties by reinforcing ethnic identity and providing a secure independent environment, it has a different effect on the outside community. Members of the subculture are seen not individually, but as a group, and this affects their image in the eyes of the general public, facilitating and maintaining racial stereotypes, which “embed themselves into popular lore, journalism, literature, and political debate, reinforcing racial inequalities” (Brym and Lie 2012:142). Another function of the Chinese Canadian subculture, according to the functionalist approach, is, therefore, to maintain the distinctive system of social inequality by separating members of ethnic subcultures.
In conclusion, I would say that, apparently, the Chinese Canadian subculture, like many other ethnic subcultures, functions under the structural functionalism theory and serves the end goal of ensuring social stability in the country with vast and diverse immigrant communities. Sociological imagination, on the other hand, allows us to explore the given subcultures and their influence more effectively. Brym and Lie (2012) define sociological imagination as the “ability to see the connection between personal troubles and social structures” (7). In my example, the need for subculture arises out of people’s problems that they experience in a new country and community. To gain some stability, people turn to the elements of their native culture – language, foods, celebrations, and others. Due to the interaction between the members of the subculture, it becomes a social structure and influences the people both in a positive way, by providing support in difficult circumstances, and in a negative way, by reinforcing cultural barriers and impacting the communication between different ethnic communities.