Recognition, Redistribution and Redress: The Case of the "Chinese Head Tax"

Société québécoise de science politique

Recognition, Redistribution and Redress: The Case of the "Chinese Head Tax"Author(s): Matt JamesSource: Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 37,No. 4 (Dec., 2004), pp. 883-902Published by: Canadian Political Science Association and the Société québécoise de science politiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25165733 .

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Recognition, Redistribution and Redress: The Case of the "Chinese Head Tax"

Matt James University of Victoria

In the course of addressing the striking contemporary focus on redress

ing past injustices, the historian Charles Maier notes an accompanying

proliferation of words prefixed with "re": "reparation, remembering,

recording, reconciliation" (2003: 295). The nearly two-decades long cam

paign to redress Canada's infamous "Chinese head tax" confirms this

trend and qualifies as an important domestic instance of this new "poli tics of apology" (Cunningham, 1999). The head-tax redress movement

has drawn on painful memories of injustice to publicize a history of Cana

dian wrongdoing while insisting that repairing past wrongs is the best

route to achieving reconciliation in the present time.

This article focuses on the head-tax redress campaign as an impor tant empirical vantage point from which to consider a topic of broader

contemporary concern: the impact of recognition-seeking social move

ments on the changing moral contours of Canadian citizenship. At a time

when neoliberal globalization highlights the shrinking social dimension

of citizenship, the emphasis on reparations seems to point in a different

direction. It urges Canadians not to contract but to expand their sense of civic responsibility to address the continued impact of injustices that,

only a few decades ago, tended to be dismissed as bygones about which

not much needed to be said.

The premise that citizenship is possibly becoming less hospitable to

traditional social justice claims while it is expanding to include rela

tively novel claims, is at the centre of a growing scholarly literature. Like

reparations itself, this literature also traffics in "re" words: it debates the

Acknowledgments: An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2003 Annual

Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association. The author wishes to acknowl

edge the superb research assistance of Lesley Clayton, the work of Gabriela Chira in

translating the abstract, as well as helpful comments by Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Xiaobei

Chen, Rita Dhamoon, Avigail Eisenberg, Kenda Gee, Catherine Lu, Michael Mac

Millan, John Torpey, Jeremy Webber and the anonymous reviewers of this Journal.

Matt James, Department of Political Science, University of Victoria, Victoria, British

Columbia, V8W 3P5; [email protected]

Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique 37:4 (Decern ber/decemb re 2004) 883-902

? 2004 Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Societe quebecoise de science politique



884 Matt James

relationship between what are conventionally called the politics of rec

ognition and the politics of redistribution. Many participants in these

debates suggest that the shifting fortunes of the two types of activities

are helping to transform politics and citizenship in the advanced capital ist democracies?with struggles over recognition displacing struggles over

redistribution. The stakes are important: if shrinking social safety nets,

growing income gaps and diminished working-class bargaining power can

be even partially attributed to the emphasis on recognition, then that

emphasis urgently needs to be rethought. This article has two main objectives. The first is to begin to remedy

a gap in the recognition-redistribution literature. Little empirical atten

tion has been devoted thus far to studying precisely how the focus on

recognition might be harming the cause of redistribution. This article sug

gests that accomplishing this latter task requires complementing the nor

mative theorizing and conceptual model making that have tended to

characterize the recognition-redistribution debate with concrete studies

of particular social movement campaigns. The second objective is to show

how the recognition-redistribution distinction can be deployed as a tool

of social movement analysis. By focusing on the redistributive implica tions and subtexts of the head-tax redress campaign, this approach yields a richer and arguably more nuanced account of the movement than might otherwise be attained.

The article proceeds as follows. The first section explains the

recognition-redistribution debate and links the debate's core themes to

the issue of reparations. The second and third sections outline the his

tory, objectives and political trajectory of the head-tax redress cam

paign. The article's penultimate section analyzes the head-tax campaign in light of the recognition-redistribution distinction. This analysis argues that although the head-tax campaign seems to exemplify some of the

core respects in which recognition may be overshadowing redistribu

tion, the movement has also amplified traditionally marginalized voices,

helped to expose contemporary injustices that have important distribu

tive ramifications and promoted social justice work across group bound

aries. These conclusions highlight significant nuances that blanket claims

about recognition's negative impact on redistribution both ignore and

serve to obscure. They also illustrate the utility of treating this impact as an empirical question to be approached through the systematic study of actual recognition-seeking campaigns.

Recognition, Redistribution and Redress: An Overview

The central text in the recognition-redistribution debate is critical theo

rist Nancy Fraser's 1995 article, "From Redistribution to Recognition?



Abstract. This article uses the recent Canadian campaign seeking redress for the infamous

"Chinese head tax" as a vantage point from which to consider whether recognition-seeking social movements are undermining the cause of egalitarian redistribution. Methodologically, the article seeks to complement the normative theorizing and conceptual model-making that

have tended to characterize the "recognition versus redistribution" debate by focusing more

concretely on the dynamics of an actual social movement campaign. The article demonstrates

how this approach can help to identify important nuances in recognition campaigns that blanket

claims about recognition's impact both ignore and serve to obscure.

Resume. Cet article etudie la recente campagne canadienne cherchant la reparation dans les

cas d'application de l'infame taxe d'immigration aux Canadiens d'origine chinoise. Cette cam

pagne offre 1'opportunity pour etudier si les mouvements sociaux militant pour la reconnais

sance des situations d'abus perpetrees par le passe sont en train d'eroder la cause de la

redistribution egalitaire. D'un point de vue methodologique, l'article essaie de completer la

theoretisation normative et le developpement de modeles conceptuels qui ont seulement pris en

compte le debat dit ? de la reconnaissance versus la redistribution ?, en se concentrant plus sur

l'etude de la dynamique d'une campagne sociale contemporaine. L'article montre le fait que cette approche peut aider a mettre en exergue d'importants nuances dans les campagnes dites

? de la reconnaissance ?, que des etudes plus generaux sur l'impaet de la reconnaissance ignorent.

Dilemmas of Justice in a Tostsocialist'Age." Fraser identifies an epochal shift in the focus of progressive politics, which she describes in the fol

lowing, somewhat apocalyptic terms: "[G]roup identity supplants class

interest as the chief medium of political mobilization. Cultural domina

tion supplants exploitation as the fundamental injustice. And cultural rec

ognition displaces socioeconomic redistribution as the remedy for injustice and the goal of political struggle" (1995: 68).

Many left-wing critics of identity politics cite the emphasis on rec

ognition as a major culprit in the diminished contemporary fortunes of redistributive politics. To use Fraser's terms, they fear that campaigns

targeting "cultural or symbolic ... injustice ... rooted in social patterns of representation, interpretation and communication" are impeding strug

gles against "socioeconomic injustice ... rooted in the political-economic structure of society" (1995: 71, 70). For sociologist Todd Gitlin, "[a] Left

that was serious about ... reducing the inequality of wealth and income

would stop lambasting all white men, and would take it as elementary to

reduce frictions among white men, blacks, white women and Hispanics"

(1995: 234, 237). And according to political theorist Brian Barry, "[c]laims for special treatment are advanced by groups of all kinds while material

inequality grows and the postwar welfare state shows increasing signs of

strain" (2001: 3). For her part, Fraser stresses that her recognition-redistribution dis

tinction is ideal-typical and that real-world injustices, as well as the var

ious campaigns against them, will inevitably traverse both domains. In her words: "Culture and political economy are always imbricated

with each other, and virtually every struggle against injustice, when prop

erly understood, implies demands for both redistribution and recogni



886 Matt James

tion" (70; also see Tully, 2000). Nevertheless, Fraser worries that the balance has been tilting toward recognition, to the detriment of redistribution.

Her concern is not unanimously shared on the left. Unimpressed by Fraser's acknowledgment that culture and political economy are interim

bricated, left-wing defenders of identity politics charge Fraser with under

estimating this interimbrication?in a way that subordinates the former to the latter. With the cultural theorist Judith Butler, they reject the

recognition-redistribution heuristic as merely the latest gloss on ortho dox Marxism's tendency to identify "the new social movements with the

merely cultural, and the cultural with the derivative and secondary" (1998: 36; also see Young, 1997). Fraser responds by insisting that recognition and redistribution are distinct spheres of justice that are equally impor tant. The left's task, she argues, is to devise an approach to recognition that can be combined more harmoniously with efforts focused on redis tribution (Fraser, 2000; 2001).

Provoked by the abstract way in which it tends to be made, Keith

Banting and Will Kymlicka have attempted to test the contention that

recognition is undermining redistribution (2004). To this end, Banting and Kymlicka employ a battery of measures comparing the fortunes of

welfare states that have adopted relatively vigorous formal multicultur alism policies with those that have not. They conclude that countries

with formal multiculturalism have fared no worse in sustaining redis tributive social policies, and in some respects may have done better than ones opting for a difference-blind approach. However, as the authors themselves are quick to point out, testing the impact of formal multi culturalism policies on formal social welfare policies does not settle the

wider recognition-versus-redistribution debate. When it comes to chart

ing the impact of recognition politics, not as a specific bundle of con

crete public policies but as a more diffuse set of discourses and practices,

understanding proves more elusive. And with all the worries about mis

placed identitarian obsessions at a time of neoliberal assault, it would seem that discourses and practices are core concerns for recognition's left-wing critics.

Fraser emphasizes these concerns when she identifies two features of recognition politics that may be undermining redistribution. The first is a pervasive "culturalism" which, by ignoring political economy in favour

of an exclusive focus on discourses and representations, contributes to

what Ellen Meiksins Wood calls the "retreat from class" (1998; Fraser, 2000: 109-112). Fraser calls this the problem of displacement. Fraser's

second target is an overly rigid view of the nature of group identity, which she detects in many contemporary instances of recognition politics. This

view, she fears, fuels separatist impulses that fragment left-wing forces

(2000: 112-113). Fraser calls this the problem of reification. It bears



Recognition and Redistribution 887

repeating that Fraser focuses on displacement and reification not to

denounce recognition politics without further elaboration, but rather to

advocate a politics of recognition that will complement rather than con

flict with the politics of redistribution. Yet the question remains of whether

and if so, how, recognition is undermining redistribution.

Although charting the overall impact of recognition politics as a vast

and diffuse ensemble of discourses and practices is an unmanageable task, it may prove helpful to scrutinize the discourses and practices of partic

ular recognition campaigns for their potential interplay with political econ

omy concerns. This focus can complement the comparative study of public

policies undertaken by Banting and Kymlicka, the conceptual and pre

scriptive approach developed by Fraser, and the more sweepingly impres sionistic treatments offered by critics like Barry and Gitlin.

Reparations campaigns may be particularly appropriate candidates

for such an approach, not least because their discourses and practices seem to exemplify the emphasis on recognition with which many schol

ars and activists are concerned. Philosopher Janna Thompson, to name

one important scholar in the field, identifies the emphasis on recogni tion as a crucial distinguishing characteristic of reparations demands. To

better understand their moral specificity, Thompson differentiates calls

for reparative justice from both justice-as-equity, which compensates indi

viduals for unfair disadvantage, and from restorative justice, which aims

to return victims to their pre-injustice state. While noting that reparative claims often contain egalitarian and restorative elements, Thompson argues that their stress on reparative acknowledgment for histories of disrespect

makes them distinct (2002: xiv, 10). Catherine Lu's analysis of reparative processes as potential pro

cesses of "moral regeneration" is also useful in highlighting this em

phasis. Although Lu doubts whether actual monetary payments will

necessarily help in achieving this goal, she sees reparative claims as

bids to establish "a new moral order of political, legal and social rela

tionships that affirms certain moral truths denied by a previous order"?a

view that brings the question of recognition to the fore (2003: 5; 2002).

Representing constituencies that know the stigma of what Charles Tay lor calls "misrecognition" (1994: 25), redress movements see formal rec

ognition of past injustice as a crucial recognition of present dignity and

worth (James, 1999: 253-260). Redress campaigns are also relevant to the recognition-versus

redistribution debate because they seem to exhibit some of the key social movement tendencies that critics see as threats to redistribution. For

instance, concerns about displacement inform sociologist John Torpey's criticism that movements seeking redress for what are in many cases

long-past injustices tend to be "commemorative" rather than "anti

systemic" in nature (2001: 337). The commemorative focus looks back



888 Matt James

wards rather than forward, and it privileges emotions and feelings in

determining movement strategies. In Torpey's words, it shifts "from the labour movement's traditional rallying cry of 'don't mourn, organize' to a sensibility that insists we must 'organize to mourn'" (2003: 1). The commemorative emphasis in redress politics may thus contribute to the

displacement of redistribution in the same sense conveyed by historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's complaint that "The Personal is Not Political

Enough" (1980). Concerns about reification inform a second general criticism of

redress politics. This criticism notes that reparative claims tend to target deliberate acts of state malfeasance committed against specific ethno cultural groups. To be sure, the focus is not pernicious in its own right. But it may be more troubling when viewed in light of a wider shift in the moral contours of contemporary citizenship. As Xiaobei Chen's

analysis of "The Birth of the Child-Victim Citizen" suggests, our

increased sensitivity to the plight of innocents suffering at the hands of identifiable perpetrators seems to be paralleled by a mounting indiffer ence towards suffering that either lacks the requisite "innocent" quality or appears to have been caused by market or other structural forces

(2003). To use Fraser's terms, therefore, a process of reification may be

reshaping our sense of repairable injustice. Turning away from a post war, "no-fault" vision of social citizenship which blurred inter-group distinctions and located injustice in social processes (Brodie, 2002), our

reparative sensibilities may be shrinking to encompass only discrete, deliberate acts committed against groups defined categorically as vic tims. What light can a closer look at an actual redress campaign shed on these apprehensions?

Historical Injustices in Canada: The "Chinese Head Tax"

The main claimants in Canadian reparations politics are citizens of

Aboriginal, Acadian, African, Chinese, Italian and Ukrainian ancestry. Their campaigns focus on cultural assault in the residential schools

(Aboriginal peoples), deportation under British rule (Acadians), histo ries of slavery and racism (African Canadians), internment during the Second and First World Wars (Italian and Ukrainian Canadians, respec

tively) and the impact of racist immigration policies (Chinese Canadi

ans). Although clearly important in its own right, a more specific reason for studying the Chinese-Canadian case is that its relatively lengthy duration?the head-tax redress campaign began in the early 1980s and continues to this day?makes it easier to treat the movement in the

broader context of the changing moral contours of contemporary Cana dian citizenship than might otherwise be the case.




The 1885 Chinese Immigration Act responded to racist criticisms

that Chinese labourers were driving down wages and taking jobs away from Anglo-Saxon workers in British Columbia. Its avowed purpose was

to discourage Chinese immigration; the act imposed a head tax of $50 on any Chinese person entering Canada, which was raised to $100 in

1900 and then to $500 in 1903 (Bolaria and Li, 1988: 107). After 1924, the head tax was replaced with a near-total ban on Chinese immigra tion, known commonly as the Chinese Exclusion Act, which remained

in place until 1947. This legislation reflected a wider pattern of anti

Asian public policy in Canada. For example, because the federal fran

chise was based on provincial voters' lists, and because most Chinese

Canadians lived on the West Coast, a British Columbia law preventing persons of Chinese descent from voting or standing for office in provin cial elections effectively disfranchised most Chinese Canadians until the

passage of the Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947 (Canada, 1997: 47,

63-64, 80-89). Other racist policies included a Saskatchewan law that

barred Chinese employers from hiring 'white' women, and various Brit

ish Columbia laws that prevented persons of Asian descent from work

ing in the liberal professions or on Crown lands (Bolaria and Li, 1988:

107-109). These policies have had a severe impact. As Yasmeen Abu-Laban

points out, while federal policy was bringing female domestic workers

from Europe to boost "white" birth rates, it was also deliberately pre

venting the formation of Chinese-Canadian families (2001: 265-266). The prohibitive cost of the tax, which at $500 was equivalent to two

years' wages, created a population of 'married bachelors,' with virtually no second Chinese-Canadian generation until the late 1970s (Bolaria and

Li, 1988: 114-116). Thus, the head-tax legislation deprived early Chi nese migrants of family support, created psychological scars, delayed the formation of a viable Chinese-Canadian community and exposed those

Chinese women who did manage to immigrate to an unusually harsh environment of sexual and reproductive pressure.1 It also encouraged an informal system of indentured servitude. The cost of the head tax

left most Chinese migrants at the mercy of unscrupulous labour contrac

tors, who gladly paid the price of admission in order to acquire more

indebted and defenceless 'clients' (Cho, 2002: 72-73). Also important as a source of lasting bitterness is the stigma that

Canada's racist immigration regime imposed on Chinese Canadians. By

singling out Chinese migrants for unique, state-sanctioned discrimina

tion, the legislation stamped the Chinese as official 'undesirables.' And

by preventing the formation of a viable Chinese-Canadian community while impeding the fair integration of those who were here, it created a

lasting stereotype of Chinese Canadians as lacking indigenous contribu tions or roots. As the Chinese Canadian National Council has com



890 Matt James

plained, "the bitter legacy of the Canadian government's 62 years of

legislated racism is a Chinese-Canadian community that is still seen as a

new immigrant community" (Bolan, 1995: B3).

The Head-Tax Redress Campaign

The head-tax redress campaign began in 1983 when an elderly man pre sented his $500 head-tax receipt to the office of then Vancouver East

New Democratic party MP Margaret Mitchell. After reading the equality

rights provisions of the new Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Dak Leon

Mark had decided to seek his MP's assistance in claiming reimburse

ment. With Mitchell's help, the Chinese Canadian National Council soon

collected over 1,000 head-tax receipts and an official redress campaign was underway (Chinese Canadian National Council, 1988: 12). Its initial

phase focused on lobbying federal politicians, holding rallies and distrib

uting pamphlets. The movement has gone on to seek an official apology from the federal government, financial compensation for individual head tax payers and their immediate descendants, and new federal expendi tures on anti-racism projects ("Unfinished business," 2001: A14; Roman, 2001: Dl).

During the mid-1980s, groups such as Japanese, Ukrainian and Ital

ian Canadians were also organizing to demand redress for past wrongs. In September 1988, the federal government and the National Associa

tion of Japanese Canadians signed the Japanese Canadian Redress

Agreement (Kobayashi, 1992; Weiner, 1988). The agreement extended an official apology for the World War Two internment, provided $23,000 individual cash payments to survivors and pledged to create the Cana

dian Race Relations Foundation. Soon after passing the agreement the

governing Conservatives established a process of collective redress nego tiations between the relevant organizations and the federal multicultur

alism ministry. But these negotiations ended in 1993 when the

organizations rejected federal Multiculturalism Minister Gerry Weiner's

final offer. Weiner had proposed to issue certificates of apology to the

directly affected individuals and to hold official ceremonies to commem

orate the relevant injustices, but ruled out offering financial compensa tion (Norris, 1993: A6).

Although it set up a $10 million trust fund in March 1996 for the

Pond Inlet and Grise Fiord Inuit, who had been relocated coercively to the High Arctic during the 1950s, and provided an official apology and a $350 million healing fund in January 1998 for former inmates

of the residential schools, the subsequent Liberal government took a

remarkably hard line with the groups that had been negotiating with the

multiculturalism ministry (James, 1999: 251). On December 14, 1994,

Secretary of State for Multiculturalism Sheila Finestone sent a letter to




eight redress-seeking organizations (Canada, 1994). The letter, which

Finestone read subsequently in the House of Commons, announced the new Liberal policy of refusing to offer compensation or apologies to

the relevant groups. Finestone explained the policy by claiming that her

government faced a choice between whether "to attempt to address the

past or to invest in the future." She pledged the latter: "We believe our

only choice lies in using limited government resources to create a more

equitable society now and a better future for generations to come." One news report described the response of head-tax activists upon reading Finestone's letter: "[S]ome shook their heads, some shouted in their dis

appointment and others had tears in their eyes" (Bolan, 1994: A3). The activists could certainly find little comfort in Finestone's ratio

nalization for the new policy. The only concrete evidence of the Liber

als' allegedly principled choice to focus on fighting racism in the future was the impending establishment of the Canadian Race Relations Foun

dation. However, this item was actually a leftover unimplemented ele ment of the Japanese-Canadian redress settlement of 1988 (Weiner, 1988), which owed its existence not only to a predecessor government, but also

to the very focus on past injustices that Finestone was portraying as the

discredited alternative to her emphasis on the future. The hollowness of

the Liberals' commitment to creating "a more equitable society ... for

generations to come" became even more apparent just three months later

(Canada, 1994). As Stephen McBride and John Shields note, Paul Martin's

February 1995 budget "marked the point where erosion of social pro grams ended and demolition seriously began" (1997: 81).

Ottawa's intransigence prompted head-tax campaigners to adopt a more antagonistic approach. In March 1995, the Chinese Canadian National Council presented the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights with a submission detailing the human-rights abuses com

mitted under the aegis of the head tax and the Exclusion Act. The sub mission claimed that Canada's refusal to remedy the abuses violated

several international human-rights treaties (Wong, 1995a: A3). As one

activist explained, the petitioners hoped to embarrass Ottawa with the

"spectacle of elderly pioneers ... bringing forth their individual cases of human injustice before the world community" (Wong, 1995b: A15). Chi nese Canadians took the head-tax issue to the September 2001 United

Nations World Conference Against Racism for the same reason: to see an unsympathetic government "shamed on the international stage" (May Cheng, in Boswell, 2001: A5).

The Mack Case

The movement unveiled its domestic response to Ottawa's hard line in December 2000, when three plaintiffs (Shack Jang Mack, a head



892 Matt James

tax payer, and Quen Ying Lee and Yew Lee, the widow and son of a

deceased head-tax payer, respectively) launched a class-action lawsuit in Ontario's Superior Court of Justice. Organized by the Chinese Cana dian National Council, the suit was initiated on behalf of approximately 4,000 individuals?mostly immediate descendants, but some surviving head-tax payers as well?who had registered with the council to sup

port the action (Thomas, 2000: A3). The Mack plaintiffs sought $1.2 billion in compensation. This figure encompassed the inflation-adjusted return of all head-tax funds to surviving taxpayers and to the descen

dants of deceased taxpayers, as well as damages for the financial impact of the tax, for the separation of taxpayers from their families and for

the stigma that the tax imposed (Mack et al., 2001). The plaintiffs forwarded three main arguments. First, they claimed

that the refusal to redress the head tax, when coupled with Ottawa's deci

sion to redress the Japanese-Canadian internment, violated section 15 of

the Charter of Rights. This argument held that the federal government had stigmatized Chinese Canadians by unfairly excluding them from a

benefit provided to other similarly situated groups. Second, the plain tiffs argued that the head tax and the Exclusion Act were invalid at their

enactment because they violated customary international law. And third, the Mack suit claimed that because the head tax violated customary inter

national law, its collection constituted a case of unjust enrichment which

Ottawa had a common-law duty to repair. In a decision reported on July 9, 2002, Justice Peter Cumming of

the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled against the Mack plaintiffs (Shack Jang Mack et al., 2002). Justice Cumming held that the proposed

application of the Charter of Rights was retrospective and therefore could not succeed; that the doctrine of unjust enrichment did not apply because

the impugned action was mandated by a duly enacted government stat

ute; and that the head tax and the Exclusion Act did not violate custom

ary international law during their application. The Ontario Court of Appeal

upheld this decision on September 13, 2002. The Mack plaintiffs were

denied leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada on April 24, 2003.

The bitter book-end to Ottawa's 1994 refusal to redress the head tax

is the controversy surrounding some remarks made by Justice James

MacPherson of the Ontario Court of Appeal in the appeal of the Ontario

Superior Court ruling. While asking the plaintiffs a series of hypotheti cal questions that might be posed by a critic, Justice MacPherson sug

gested that the tax had been willingly paid by people who chose freely to

come to Canada, that funds from the tax had helped to meet important

public purposes, and that paying it was worthwhile for a man who might now see his "granddaughter playing first-string cello for the Toronto Sym

phony Orchestra" (in Eng, 2002: A17). The Mack plaintiffs responded with a complaint to the Canadian Judicial Council, which argued that




MacPherson's questions indicated racism and bias against the plaintiffs (Poon, 2003). In October 2002 the Judicial Council dismissed the com

plaint, adding that its failure to appreciate the importance of adversarial

questioning by appellate judges made it "both unjustified and unfair"

(Makin, 2002: A23). A legal analysis of the Mack case, which raises complex questions

about the application of the Charter and its relationship with the com mon law, is best left to legal scholars (see Baines, 2002; Webber, forth

coming). Politically, the suit reflects the impact on the movement of the Liberal government's 1994 decision to terminate redress negotiations. Stung by the contrast established by the precedent of Japanese-Canadian success, and frustrated to see a decade of advocacy work and dialogue dismissed with a disingenuous snub, the head-tax campaign turned first to the international arena and then to the domestic legal process in an

angry attempt to embarrass Ottawa into resuming negotiations. As an

October 1998 Chinese Canadian National Council community newslet ter explained: although "legal experts caution against the chance of win

ning ... legal action can have a political impact on the redress campaign, which has been put on hold because of the federal government's refusal in December 1994" (Chinese Canadian National Council, 1998).

The federal government responded to the second, more antagonistic phase of the head-tax campaign by flaunting its apparent impervious ness to the shaming tactic. This much was conveyed by Immigration Min ister Elinor Caplan's reaction to the Ontario Superior Court Mack verdict: "The courts have spoken and I think it's time to move on" ("Unfinished business," 2001: A14). Even the Globe and Mail thought that Ottawa should have offered "something a bit more graceful" ("Unfinished busi

ness," 2001: A14).

Evaluating the Head-Tax Campaign on the

Recognition-Redistribution Distinction

To use Fraser's words, the head-tax campaign has prioritized recognition over redistribution "as the remedy for injustice and the goal of political struggle" (1995: 68). Although the Mack plaintiffs certainly sought finan cial redress, the monetary emphasis is best understood in light of the

movement's broader focus on replacing historical stigma with symbols of respect. For example, and in contrast to African-Canadian discussions about how reparations might bring economic opportunities to marginal ized communities, the Chinese-Canadian campaign has framed financial redress in symbolic terms, as a means to "just and honourable closure"

(Chinese Canadian National Council, 2001; cf. Higgins, 2001). The Mack

plaintiffs emphasized honour and symbolism when they argued that



894 Matt James

Canada's decision to pay cash reparations only to Japanese Canadians

but not to their constituency "demeans the dignity of the Chinese Cana

dian community and belittles its claim to full equality" (Mack et al., 2002).

Pointing out this emphasis on honour and symbolism is not the same

as criticizing the head-tax campaign. Campaigns to accumulate honour

will inevitably play a crucial role in the recognition struggles of histori

cally stigmatized groups (James, 1999: 266-267). Thus, if one accepts Fraser's argument that recognition is equally important to redistribution

as a dimension of justice, the question becomes whether the head-tax

movement has pursued recognition in ways that might harm redistribu

tion. And while it is certainly arguable that the $1.2 billion sought in

Mack could be better spent on social policy, that figure should also be

seen in light of the movement's larger attempt to engage Ottawa in a bar

gaining process that would culminate in a more modestly symbolic cash

settlement. Indeed, recent literature from the campaign suggests that $23

million, the amount originally collected under the head-tax policy with

no adjustment for interest or inflation, would be acceptable (Chinese Cana

dian National Council, 2004).

Assessing the head-tax campaign from the standpoint of redistribu

tion requires noting from the outset that Canada's political climate since

the early 1990s has been hostile not only to projects of wealth redistri

bution but also to the recognition claims of racialized minorities (Abu Laban and Nieguth, 2000: 486, 489). Perhaps the opening salvo came

in 1991, when the Citizen's Forum on Canada's Future criticized the

multiculturalism policy for "reminding us of our different origins ...

[rather] than emphasizing the things we have in common" (in Fleras

and Elliott, 1992: 123). Evidence of multiculturalism's mounting disfa

vour also appeared with the ill-fated 1992 Charlottetown Accord's Can

ada Clause. Although observers ridiculed its scattered affirmations of

various constituencies as "little dollops of constitutional status [to] sym

bolically gratify all" (Russell, 1995: 100), the clause failed to even men

tion multiculturalism. The Chretien Liberals further diminished

multiculturalism's status in 1994 by replacing the multiculturalism min

istry with the Ministry of Canadian Heritage. The simultaneous character of the attack on the welfare state and

the demotion of multiculturalism may cast doubt on strong versions of

the recognition-versus-redistribution thesis because it suggests the shared, and declining?rather than conflicting?fortunes of recognition and redis

tribution in the contemporary Canadian context. The post-Finestone phase of the head-tax campaign constitutes a specific reaction to this context.

As Ottawa implemented a neoliberal agenda while seeking to assuage a

resentful populism which associated decades of constitutional wrangling with the machinations of 'special interests,' the movement found itself in

a difficult position. Although the head tax itself had begun as a sop to




racist British Columbians, who blamed "Ottawa's intransigence [as] the

reason for continued Asian migration to 'their' province" (Chalykoff, 1998:

161), although Canadian business had profited handsomely from exploit

ing Chinese immigrants and although anti-Asian racism amongst the

present-day citizenry remained a serious problem, the redress campaign tended to neglect these more controversial targets in favour of a straight forward antigovernment assault.

The post-Finestone head-tax movement adopted both the rhetoric and

the favoured quarry of right-wing opponents of multiculturalism and the

welfare state. Participants framed their efforts as a battle against a "gut less" and "callous" government lacking "courage and conviction" (Letts,

2002; Smith, 2001: A4; Chinese Canadian National Council, 2001). The

Mack action strengthened this antigovernment stance by focusing the cam

paign squarely, to use co-counsel Avvy Go's words, on whether "it is okay for our Government to benefit from racist laws" (in "Post-WCAR con

ference," 2002). The political valence of this approach was highlighted in an opinion piece written after the conclusion of Mack by Toronto civic

politician Susan Eng. Noting that Heritage Canada had recently been

forced to withdraw a poster that featured "offensive caricature [s] of

Asians," Eng linked the gaffe to the department's stand against head-tax

redress. Denouncing "misspending" and "multicult bureaucrats," Eng con

cluded that "Heritage Canada do-gooders should get out of the business

of telling us how to celebrate our heritage" (2003: A17).

Thus, the post-1994 head-tax campaign adopted a variety of con

frontational tactics, the aim of which was to shame the Canadian govern ment. The turn to the domestic courts, which soon became virtually

identical with the campaign itself, conclusively established Ottawa as the

movement's official exclusive target. Along the route, frustrated activists

articulated their anger in harmony with a prevailing climate of antigov ernment sentiment. These actions and decisions invested the movement

deeply in the across-the-board antipathy to government that has been

undermining the cause of wealth redistribution since the early 1980s.

Recall that Torpey distinguishes between the possibility of a truly

"anti-systemic" reparations campaign and merely "commemorative" enter

prises, which nurture a "backward-looking ... victimhood" uninterested in building a better collective future (2001: 337). The head-tax move

ment is commemorative in the sense that it has dedicated considerable

energy towards exploring the past suffering of its constituency. Mack plain tiff Yew Lee expressed this backward-looking focus when he stated that

his family wonders "where we would have been if our families didn't have to go into debt to pay the head tax" (in Letts, 2003). Although this sort of

past-regarding introspection is an inevitable accompaniment to the busi ness of living human lives, redress politics may deploy it in troublesome

ways. By proposing bargains that appear to trade redemption for the state



896 Matt James

and majority society in return for acceptable commemoration of past suf

fering, redress may help to sanitize the present?and thus also to turn

attention away from growing economic inequalities. In this sense, redress

settlements may be akin to boutique job creation programs, whose archi tects seek ideological legitimation for neoliberal governance rather than

solutions to unemployment and poverty (McBride, 1992: 141-146). The head-tax movement seemed at times to be attempting to barter

redemption and closure. For example, Yew Lee proclaimed that redress

would constitute "just and honourable closure to this longstanding national

legacy," while May Cheng of the Chinese Canadian National Council sug

gested that redress would help Canada to "promote a good human rights record" (in Chinese Canadian National Council, 2001; in Carmichael, 2002: CI). James Moore, Canadian Alliance MP for Port Moody Coquitlam, highlighted this legitimation potential when he urged "the gov ernment to recognize the wrongs of the past so that the Chinese

community and all Canadians can have a prosperous and united future

together" (Moore, 2002).

However, the tendency to barter redemption and closure should not

be allowed to obscure a more positive aspect of the commemorative focus.

This aspect derives from the capacity of politicized encounters with the

past to raise the profile of members of historically marginalized groups in civic debates. As I have argued elsewhere, when a redress movement

wins meaningful redress for past wrongs it acquires a "symbolic capital" (Bourdieu, 1986) that it can deploy in future endeavours (James, 1999).

The symbolic capital produced by reparations follows from the tendency of redress settlements to establish potent precedents. As Kenda Gee of

the Edmonton-based Head Tax and Exclusion Act Redress Committee

put it, redress forces the nation to "confront its past so such things do not happen again" (Thomas, 2000: A3). In turn, the successful redress

movement wins recognition for leading its country to a better future.

The movement can then use its stock of symbolic capital to promote

progressive social change. For example, after winning redress Japanese Canadian activists participated in constitutional debates to support Aborig inal self-government, advised the British Columbia Union of Indian Chiefs on the residential-schools campaign, assisted with the preparation of the

Mack litigation and helped overseas groups suing the Japanese govern ment for its wartime atrocities (National Association of Japanese Cana

dians, 1991: 16; Miki, 1996; Letts, 2003; "Canadians," 2003: A6). In the absence of success, evaluating the head-tax campaign on this

dimension must turn on the movement's apparent intended uses for

whatever symbolic capital it might derive from commemoration. The evi

dence is favourable. For example, the Chinese Canadian National Coun

cil has consistently urged that, aside from compensating head-tax payers and their immediate descendants, any redress paid by the federal govern




ment should be dedicated to establishing anti-racism chairs in Canadian

universities, to enhancing the work of the Canadian Race Relations Foun

dation and to funding community anti-racism projects ("Unfinished busi

ness," 2001: A14; Roman, 2001: Dl).

Moreover, participants have used the media attention garnered by their

movement to call attention to links between the past treatment of Chi nese Canadians and present-day wrongs which might otherwise receive

less notice. For example, May Chiu and William Ging Wee Dere of the

Chinese Canadian National Council suggested that Ottawa's 1995 immi

gration policy changes, which imposed "a head tax of $975 on all adult

immigrants entering the country," would facilitate the sort of racist exploi tation promoted by the head tax (Roman, 2001: Dl).2 As Dere argued fur

ther, "If we had won our redress, it would have been impossible for the

government to attack new immigrants with another Head Tax" (2002). Yew

Lee has also drawn links between the exploitation encouraged by the head tax and contemporary Canadian immigration policy: "When I see immi

gration policy arising that treats people just as labourers or as skills, it

makes me cringe. Our present policies around domestic workers make me

wince. I think [the] settling of this matter in a proper way would send out

the message that governments can't do stuff like that" (Letts, 2002). Thus, the politicized bid to commemorate the mistreatment of early

Chinese migrants has helped to shed critical light on policies that are

exposing immigrants to harm today. From the standpoint of redistribu

tion, building awareness of policies that exploit immigrants is vital to

advancing the interests of other participants in the wage economy (Grint, 1991: 236-273). Indeed, the head-tax campaign has improved its capac ity to do just this, given its recent success in enlisting support from the

British Columbia Federation of Labour, the Council of Canadians and

prominent federal New Democrats such as Jack Layton and Libby Davies

(Chinese Canadian National Council, 2003b; 2003c). The heightened focus on coalition building may also be an indica

tor of an attempt on the part of the movement to rethink its approach following the collapse of the Mack litigation in April, 2003. For exam

ple, in September, 2003 the Chinese Canadian National Council launched its "Last Spike Campaign." This campaign involved sending an old railroad spike, which novelist and historian Pierre Berton had found near the site of the CPR's actual "last spike" at Craigellachie, British

Columbia, on an 11-city, cross-country media tour (Chinese Society of Nova Scotia, 2003). Sharpening the movement's earlier emphasis on the crucial connections between racialization, discrimination and worker

exploitation, the campaign reminded Canadians that this national icon also symbolizes "the struggle of early Chinese immigrants as they bat tled through economic hardship, discrimination and isolation as a result of legislated racism" (Chinese Canadian National Council, 2003a).



898 Matt James

On balance, therefore, the commemorative focus of the head-tax redress campaign did not sanitize the present. On the contrary: at a time of declining voter participation and citizen withdrawal from public life, it has helped Canadians to see contemporary immigration policy in its

highly revealing historical and political-economic context.

Conclusion

Assessing the implications for redistribution of the discourses and prac tices of the head-tax movement is complex. Insufficiently acknowledged in both the literature on reparations and on recognition-versus redistribution is that the political climate for recognition is itself becom

ing increasingly unfavourable, and that in some circumstances recognition and redistribution may occupy the same trajectory. Focusing on the head tax redress movement points up the importance of evaluating the impact of such climates on recognition appeals.

Angered by the federal government's post-1994 intransigence, the head-tax redress campaign found harmony with wider currents of public sentiment by becoming an antigovernment campaign. In doing so, it sup

ported the neoliberal move to reframe social justice as a matter of chas

tising and restraining an ever-menacing state?a move that contributes to redistribution's displacement (Bakan, 1997: 45-62). Furthermore, the intensification of this focus during the Mack phase of the movement sug

gests that the narrow legalism criticized in Miriam Smith's study of les

bian and gay organizing can have additional negative implications for

redistribution (1999; Fudge, 2001). Yet the post-Mack emphasis on coali tion building and socio-political critique also reminds us that neoliberal

anti-statism is not an automatic companion of either redress movements or of recognition politics itself.

Evaluating the head-tax movement on Torpey's distinction between

anti-systemic and commemorative redress campaigns has also proved com

plex. At times the campaign seemed to be bartering redemption for the

state and majority society in return for a satisfactory settlement.

Approaches of this sort can help to sanitize the present?and thus to under

mine redistribution?by fostering a self-congratulatory sense that the

polity's remaining task is to salve the lingering wounds of a vanishing past. But by using their commemorative focus to publicize and contextu

alize ongoing injustices, head-tax activists have avoided sanitizing the

present. Employing the dramatic example of the tax, they have helped cast vital scrutiny on contemporary policies that facilitate the exploita tion of immigrants and thus threaten the interests of other working Cana

dians. This approach not only escaped the problematic potential of

reparative campaigns to foster misplaced complacency about the




present?it also used the media spotlight garnered by the Chinese

Canadian campaign to illuminate the plights of others. In this sense, the

movement resisted the reification of group distinctions that can under

mine the civic solidarity necessary to promote redistribution.

A definitive answer remains elusive for the issue of whether cam

paigns like the head-tax movement, let alone recognition politics in gen

eral, assist the neoliberal move to reshape the moral contours of

citizenship. But the interplay between recognition politics and the shift

ing moral contours of contemporary citizenship is certainly a problem atic that merits continued research. This article has sought to contribute

to such a project by using the recognition-redistribution distinction not

to dismiss one or the other approach to equality seeking, but rather to

show that their inevitably intersecting roles are usefully addressed by

studying the discourses and practices of particular social movement

campaigns.

Notes

1 For a compelling literary treatment, see Lee, 1990.

2 On the hardships imposed by the new tax, see Canadian Council for Refugees, 1997.

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Documents

Recognition, Redistribution and Redress: The Case of the "Chinese Head Tax"