The New Immigrant And The American Family

An engaging ethnography of Korean American immigrant families navigating the United States Both scholarship and popular culture on Asian American immigrant families have long focused on intergenerational cultural conflict and stereotypes about “tiger mothers” and “model minority” students. This book turns the tables on the conventional imagination of the Asian American immigrant family, arguing that, in fact, families are often on the same page about the challenges and difficulties navigating the U.S.’s racialized landscape. The book draws on a survey with over 200 Korean American teens and over one hundred parents to provide context, then focusing on the stories of five families with young adults in order to go in-depth, and shed light on today’s dynamics in these families. The book argues that Korean American immigrant parents and their children today are thinking in shifting ways about how each member of the family can best succeed in the U.S. Rather than being marked by a generational division of Korean vs. American, these families struggle to cope with an American society in which each of their lives are shaped by racism, discrimination, and gender. Thus, the foremost goal in the minds of most parents is to prepare their children to succeed by instilling protective character traits. The authors show that Asian American—and particularly Korean American—family life is constantly shifting as children and parents strive to accommodate each other, even as they forge their own paths toward healthy and satisfying American lives. This book contributes a rare ethnography of family life, following them through the transition from teenagers into young adults, to a field that has largely considered the immigrant and second generation in isolation from one another. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods and focusing on both generations, this book makes the case for delving more deeply into the ideas of immigrant parents and their teens about raising children and growing up in America – ideas that defy easy classification as “Korean” or “American.”

This six-volume set focuses on Latin American, Caribbean, and Asian immigration, which accounts for nearly 80 percent of all new immigration to the United States. The volumes contain the essential scholarship of the last decade and present key contributions reflecting the major theoretical, empirical, and policy debates about the new immigration. The material addresses vital issues of race, gender, and socioeconomic status as they intersect with the contemporary immigration experience. Organized by theme, each volume stands as an independent contribution to immigration studies, with seminal journal articles and book chapters from hard-to-find sources, comprising the most important literature on the subject. The individual volumes include a brief preface presenting the major themes that emerge in the materials, and a bibliography of further recommended readings. In its coverage of the most influential scholarship on the social, economic, educational, and civil rights issues revolving around new immigration, this collection provides an invaluable resource for students and researchers in a wide range of fields, including contemporary American history, public policy, education, sociology, political science, demographics, immigration law, ESL, linguistics, and more.

Immigrant children and youth are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population, and so their prospects bear heavily on the well-being of the country. However, relevant public policy is shaped less by informed discussion than by politicized contention over welfare reform and immigration limits. From Generation to Generation explores what we know about the development of white, black, Hispanic, and Asian children and youth from numerous countries of origin. Describing the status of immigrant children and youth as "severely understudied," the committee both draws on and supplements existing research to characterize the current status and outlook of immigrant children. The book discusses the many factorsâ€"family size, fluency in English, parent employment, acculturation, delivery of health and social services, and public policiesâ€"that shape the outlook for the lives of these children and youth. The committee makes recommendations for improved research and data collection designed to advance knowledge about these children and, as a result, their visibility in current policy debates.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The story of West Indian immigrants to the United States is generally considered to be a great success. Mary Waters, however, tells a very different story. She finds that the values that gain first-generation immigrants initial success--a willingness to work hard, a lack of attention to racism, a desire for education, an incentive to save--are undermined by the realities of life and race relations in the United States. Contrary to long-held beliefs, Waters finds, those who resist Americanization are most likely to succeed economically, especially in the second generation.

***2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST*** Winner of the Arab American Book Award in Fiction Finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Fiction Finalist for the California Book Award Longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize A Los Angeles Times bestseller Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Dallas Morning News, The Guardian, Variety, and Kirkus Reviews Late one spring night in California, Driss Guerraoui—father, husband, business owner, Moroccan immigrant—is hit and killed by a speeding car. The aftermath of his death brings together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui's daughter Nora, a jazz composer returning to the small town in the Mojave she thought she'd left for good; her mother, Maryam, who still pines for her life in the old country; Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, an old friend of Nora’s and an Iraqi War veteran; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son’s secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself. As the characters—deeply divided by race, religion, and class—tell their stories, each in their own voice, connections among them emerge. Driss’s family confronts its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love—messy and unpredictable—is born. Timely, riveting, and unforgettable, The Other Americans is at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture.

Immigrants and their American-born children represent about one quarter of the United States population. Drawing on rich, in-depth ethnographic research, the fascinating case studies in Across Generations examine the intricacies of relations between the generations in a broad range of immigrant groups—from Latin America, Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa—and give a sense of what everyday life is like in immigrant families. Moving beyond the cliché of the children of immigrants engaging in pitched battles against tradition-bound parents from the old country, these vivid essays offer a nuanced view that brings out the ties that bind the generations as well as the tensions that divide them. Tackling key issues like parental discipline, marriage choices, educational and occupational expectations, legal status, and transnational family ties, Across Generations brings crucial insights to our understanding of the United States as a nation of immigrants. Contributors: Leisy Abrego, JoAnn D’Alisera, Joanna Dreby, Yen Le Espiritu, Greta Gilbertson, Nazli Kibria, Cecilia Menjívar, Jennifer E. Sykes, Mary C. Waters, and Min Zhou.

“In this timeless book, President Kennedy shows how the United States has always been enriched by the steady flow of men, women, and families to our shores. It is a reminder that America’s best leaders have embraced, not feared, the diversity which makes America great.” —Former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright Throughout his presidency, John F. Kennedy was passionate about the issue of immigration reform. He believed that America is a nation of people who value both tradition and the exploration of new frontiers, deserving the freedom to build better lives for themselves in their adopted homeland. This 60th anniversary edition of his posthumously published, timeless work—with a foreword by Jonathan Greenblatt, the National Director and CEO of the ADL, formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League, and an introduction from Congressman Joe Kennedy III—offers President Kennedy’s inspiring words and observations on the diversity of America’s origins and the influence of immigrants on the foundation of the United States. The debate on immigration persists. Complete with updated resources on current policy, this new edition of A Nation of Immigrants emphasizes the importance of the collective thought and contributions to the prominence and success of the country.