Dannah
To what extent are the refugees' memories of Cambodia shaped by their subsequent experiences in the camps and the US? In other words, are their recollections of Cambodia nostalgia for the way things never were? Does this affect how their memories should be regarded as ethnographic evidence?

Dannah
I enjoyed reading the ethnographic material in this chapter, but I'm not sure how it contributes to Ong's central discussion of citizenship. Is it just that the medical discourse is another part of the regime of discourse that the Cambodian refugees were subjected to?

Nathalie
Ong makes the point for why she is interested in how a particular citizenship is shaped rather than look at how "culture" changes. Is there any way we could reconcile the two?
 
Nathalie
They way the Pol Pot is presented makes it look like notions of personhood were already changing in Cambodia before the refugee journey to the US began. How might we reconcile that with her broader argument of how Cambodians are shaped and shape their personhood in the US once they arrive? Why is the breaking point entry to another country?
 
Nathalie
The way women "lose virtue and gain autonomy" is interrsting in this chapter. However, as we read with " Finding the man in the state" they are still being assimilated into a patriarchal US state. What pheonomena that happen in the refugee camp might we consider to bring out the differences and/or similarities from the transition of one patriarchal state to the other? 
 
Grace
How do ideas of ‘legibility’ contribute to a discussion of the Khmer Rouge’s attempts to become a policing state? How is it more/less important for a state to have legibility in a policing state than any other?

Grace
Ong summarizes the experience of the succession of patronage relationships on the part of both male and female refugees much like Brown discussed the shift in dependency for women from men to the state.  Ong implies that it is through this shift and succession (from husbands to Khmer Rouge to Thai police to humanitarian agencies to the US social services, for example) that women gained some autonomy and rose as the “managers of patronage relationships.”  Does this oppose or agree with Brown’s notions of women’s shifting dependencies?

Lauren
On page 12 Ong writes, “Increasingly, citizenship is defined as the civic duty of the individual to reduce his or her burden to society, and instead to build up his or her own human capital—in other words, to “be an entrepreneur of her/himself.” How does this conception of individualism as critical to citizenship affect the influential power of “imagined communities”? Does it undermine “imagined community” as an analytical tool?

Lauren
This chapter seems to suggest that there is an important division between medicine as perceived and understood conceptually (or ideologically) and as practiced literally upon the body. Is medicine in this context a repressive or ideological state apparatus?

Lauren
ON page 129 Ong describes how many of the social workers working with new immigrants are themselves the children of recent poor immigrants, and, having surmounted the victimization of refugee status themselves, contribute to the oppression of the newest groups. Where is the distinction, if there is one, between these earlier generation immigrants as oppressors and the state apparatus as the invisible oppressive force? How much responsibility can be assigned to the immigrant social worker as individual agent when he/she is arguably a result of the pressures imposed by the state? Is this one of the ways in which the state can mask its existence and influence?

Alison
Are there fundamental reasons why a move to strengthen political sovereignty within the state could mean the death of religion, especially if these were thought of as inherently connected (i.e., the Buddhist model of state & religion described)?

Alison
It seems that American institutions have a tendency to look at the issues not the individual. The human being seems to disappear in the quest to assess the problems of society (i.e., healthcare and economic status). What can this be attributed to? Is it that institutions have broken things down so much, down to the individual person and individual molecule, that the social aspects of the problems seem to disappear? In other words, is individuality a major obstacle in American policy?
Alison
Unfortunately, the atrocities with regard to the conditioning and treatment of refugees Ong discusses have come to pass. What could have changed this situation? Specifically, can we think of some better strategies that could have been employed by social workers, the government, or those working to prepare Cambodians for the US that would have been more culturally and socially advantageous for Cambodian refugees?

Cathy
Ong proclaims that “The substance—the marrow, the soul, and the ethics—of American citizenship is a prolonged crisis” (2). We witness this in her subsequent examples of Cambodian refugee immigrants, in the ideas of ethnic succession, medicalization, the welfare system and so forth suggesting that the problem lies in the techniques of our institutions. Can any technique have purely positive outcomes, or is the very process of assimilation inherently problematic?

Lolan
On page 30, the authero describes the " dyadic relationships extending downward from the king," existent in the pre-Pol Pot Cambodia. A contrast is then made with the Pol Pot regime where "political subjecthood" is the order of the day. To what extent are refugee status requests influenced by the host country/ a nation in the international community's understanding of the concept of "political subjecthood," which often goes beyond requirements that a citizen performs certain responsibilities for his country of citizenship to an understanding that the country of citizenship has certain rights over their citizen? May host countries be reluctant to grant citizenship because of the fear that they may be infringing on another country's rights over its "political subjects"? 

Josh
It would not make sense if medical, welfare, and immigration policies did not inculcate and embody (adn thus be a site of the production of) American ideals; what does this particular investigation reveal?

Josh
It might be expected that immigration would require a loss of many old lifeways, what do the descriptions of changing values add, other than the personal hardships experienced by immigrants?

Cathy
Ong writes “Relief workers, however genuine their humantarian urgency, are perhaps unavoidably agents of compassionate domination. They introduce specific technologies of governing that orient and shape the everyday behavior of refugees…transforming them into particular kinds of modern human beings (bound for Western liberal democracies)” (52-53). This idea, namely that which aids in assimilating the “other” is similar to the idea that development projects are the gateway to an ideal Western subject and also similar to the idea espoused in Immigrants Acts that the education system also makes the immigrant into an ideal Western subject. In this way a pattern of contact with institutions emerge to demonstrate sovereign power. Is this power inherent in institutions?

Cathy
Ong writes “It also occurred to me that the vigilance of social workers in stigmatizing teenage pregnancy as deviant might have lent it greater prominence that it would otherwise have had” (14). Where else might we locate other instances where the very act of “prevention” actually aids in making the stigmatization a reality for an immigrant?