Search results

Using in-depth interviews with 30 working class and poor, minority adolescents, students were asked to describe their daily interactions and perceptions of peers in a neighborhood high school in NYC over two years. Among the key findings, students consistently expressed their distrust of “bad kids” who they blamed for many of the school's problems. Three themes based on students lived experiences are described: (1) a neighborhood school with a stigmatized reputation for low academic achievement housed students who displayed anti-academic behavior; (2) students developed normative behavior and informal rules to avoid hostile interactions with peers; (3) perceptions of “bad kids” was racialized and stereotyped. The discussion develops the idea of collective dis-identification, a reverse process from collective identity, where students learned to disconnect from their peers by racially and ethnically segregating.

This chapter draws from a three-year ethnographic study focused on the educational and community interactions among working- and middle-class ethnic Chinese immigrants in a mid-western town in the United States. Aihwa Ong (1999) argues that “Chineseness” is a fluid, cultural practice manifested within the Chinese diaspora in particular ways that relate to globalization in late modernity, immigrants’ cultural background, their place in the social structure in their home society, and their new social class status in the context they enter. The study extends research focused on the complexities of social reproduction within larger global flows of Chinese immigrants. First, we describe how Chinese immigrants’ social status in their countries of origin in part shapes middle and working-class group’s access to cultural capital and positions in the social structure of their post-migration context. Second, we trace groups’ negotiation of their relational race and class positioning in the new context (Ong, 1999) that is often invisible in the processes of social reproduction. Third, we describe how both groups must negotiate national, community, and schooling conceptions of the model minority concept (Lee, 1996) that shapes Asian-American’s lived realities in the United States; yet the continuing salience of their immigrant experience, home culture, and access to cultural capital (Bourdieu, 2007) means that they enact the “model minority” concept differently. The findings suggest the complexity of Chinese immigrants’ accommodation of and resistance to normative ideologies and local structures that cumulatively contribute to social reproduction on the basis of class.

The recent wave of immigration to North American society from new source countries challenges old theories of acculturation that were based on European immigration streams that assumed that ethnic retention was generationally conditioned. For Caucasian immigrants, it was assumed that assimilation was linear and that by the third generation, all traces of ethnic origin would be absent, save for a nostalgic interest in quaint and ephemeral aspects of an ethnic past labeled symbolic ethnicity (Child, 1943; Gans, 1979; Rumbaut, 1997; Waters, 1990). Since 1965 in the United States, and 1967 in Canada, changes in immigration policy suggest that alternative assimilation patterns may exist. Whereas previous immigration policy had discouraged non-Caucasian immigration, the new policy brought with it large-scale immigration from Asia in particular which introduced a different element of race into assimilation expectations. For these new immigrants, race continues to be a marker whereby prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination produce assumptions of “foreignness” regardless of generational status (Neckerman, Carter & Lee, 1999; Tuan, 1999).

The transition to motherhood has been studied extensively, but primarily among participants in homogenous race/ethnicity relationships. The aim of the current study was to explore the lived experiences of a diverse group of women in biracial and monoracial relationships experiencing the transition to motherhood (e.g., biracial or monoracial motherhood). Informed by the symbolic interaction framework, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted to investigate the expectations and experiences of first-time motherhood on a sample of 12 U.S. women. Their diverse stories contained multiple themes including an overarching theme of racial/ethnic differences in appropriate infant care, which surfaces during engagement in family and social support interactions. This analysis emphasizes the need for more diverse portrayals of motherhood. We discuss our findings in light of the literature and implications for future research and practice.

Various politicians and public commentators seek to deny birthright citizenship to children born in the United States to undocumented or temporary migrants. Among their claims, critics of universal birthright citizenship contend that the practice flies in the face of liberal principles, in which both individuals and the state should consent to membership. From this perspective, citizenship through naturalization is valorized, since it rests on the affirmative choice of the immigrant and the clear consent of the state. This chapter proposes a different approach to these debates, one that underscores the principles of inclusion and equality. The argument rests on empirical evidence on how those affected by these debates – foreign-born residents and their U.S.-born children – understand belonging in the United States. Interviews with 182 U.S.-born youth and their immigrant parents born in Mexico, China, and Vietnam show that despite a discourse portraying U.S. citizenship as a civic and political affiliation blind to ascriptive traits, many of those interviewed equate “being American” with racial majority status, affluence, and privilege. For many immigrants, membership through naturalization – the exemplar of citizenship by consent – does not overcome a lingering sense of outsider status. Perhaps surprisingly, birthright citizenship offers an egalitarian promise: it is a color-blind and class-blind path to membership. The Citizenship Clause of Fourteenth Amendment provides constitutional legitimacy for the ideals of inclusion and equality, facilitating immigrant integration and communal membership through citizenship.

Guided by Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological System’s model, this study documented acculturation and parental involvement in low-income Chinese immigrant homes that serve as predictors of parental mediation. By surveying 165 parents of 3–13-year-old immigrant children, this study found that low-income Chinese parents enacted restrictive mediation the most and exhibited a slow acculturation process even after an average of seven years of emigration. Higher parental acculturation was related to a higher use of active and restrictive mediation. Additionally, different aspects of parental involvement also served as predictors of the three mediation strategies. Chinese cultural emphasis on academic excellence and success was used to help interpret the findings. Future research should consider implementing research-based adult media literacy programs for immigrant parents to help them practice their parental mediation skills in the host culture.