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\"Grace after Genocide is the first comprehensive ethnography of Cambodian refugees, charting their struggle to transition from life in agrarian Cambodia to survival in post-industrial America, while maintaining their identities as Cambodians. The ethnography contrasts the lives of refugees who arrived in America after 1975, with their focus on Khmer traditions, values, and relations, with those of their children who, as descendants of the Khmer Rouge catastrophe, have struggled to become Americans in a society that defines them as different. The ethnography explores America's mid-twentieth century involvement in Southeast Asia and its enormous consequences on multiple generations of Khmer refugees\"-- Provided by publisher.

Immigration studies have increasingly focused on how immigrant adaptation to their new homelands is influenced by the social structures in the sending society, particularly its economy. Less scholarly research has focused on the ways that the cultural make-up of immigrant homelands influences their adaptation to life in a new country. In Ethnic Origins, Jeremy Hein investigates the role of religion, family, and other cultural factors on immigrant incorporation into American society by comparing the experiences of two little-known immigrant groups living in four different American cities not commonly regarded as immigrant gateways. Ethnic Origins provides an in-depth look at Hmong and Khmer refugees — people who left Asia as a result of failed U.S. foreign policy in their countries. These groups share low socio-economic status, but they are vastly different in their norms, values, and histories. Hein compares their experience in two small towns — Rochester, Minnesota and Eau Claire, Wisconsin — and in two big cities — Chicago and Milwaukee — and examines how each group adjusted to these different settings. The two groups encountered both community hospitality and narrow-minded hatred in the small towns, contrasting sharply with the cold anonymity of the urban pecking order in the larger cities. Hein finds that for each group, their ethnic background was more important in shaping adaptation patterns than the place in which they settled. Hein shows how, in both the cities and towns, the Hmong’s sharply drawn ethnic boundaries and minority status in their native land left them with less affinity for U.S. citizenship or “Asian American” panethnicity than the Khmer, whose ethnic boundary is more porous. Their differing ethnic backgrounds also influenced their reactions to prejudice and discrimination. The Hmong, with a strong group identity, perceived greater social inequality and supported collective political action to redress wrongs more than the individualistic Khmer, who tended to view personal hardship as a solitary misfortune rather than part of a larger-scale injustice. Examining two unique immigrant groups in communities where immigrants have not traditionally settled, Ethnic Origins vividly illustrates the factors that shape immigrants’ response to American society and suggests a need to refine prevailing theories of immigration. Hein’s book is at once a novel look at a little-known segment of America’s melting pot and a significant contribution to research on Asian immigration to the United States. JEREMY HEIN is professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire.

In a context of widening inequality and governmental persecution of undocumented immigrants, central questions concern the social mobility of new ethnic groups formed as a result of mass migration from Latin America and Asia—especially the growing number of children of immigrants now transitioning to adulthood. This article presents findings from merged samples of two research studies in Southern California, the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS-III) and Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles (IIMMLA). The focus is on the educational mobility of foreign-parentage (1.5-and second-generation) young adults of Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian origin. The author examines factors that facilitate or derail mobility, including the role of parental human capital and legal/citizenship status, family and neighborhood contexts, early school achievement, acculturation, incarceration, and teenage and nonmarital childbearing, compared to patterns observed among native-parentage (third-generation and beyond) whites, blacks, and Mexican Americans. The article then considers the relationship between acculturation and mobility outcomes and the resulting new patterns of urban ethnic inequality.

Southeast Asian youth are disproportionately represented in the juvenile justice system, and yet little is known about the correlates of their delinquency. Predicated upon segmented assimilation theory, the aims of this study were (1) to examine the relationship between linguistic acculturation and risk behaviors and (2) to investigate neighborhood effects on risk behaviors among a sample of 153 at-risk Southeast Asian youth and young adults recruited from the East Bay Area near San Francisco, California. Exploratory factor analysis from estimated Census data derived neighborhood constructs for concentrated disadvantage and immigrant concentration. A series of binary logistic regression models suggested that linguistic acculturation, neighborhood disadvantage, and immigrant concentration were not related to violence perpetration, arrest, or gang association. Males and those who had dropped out of school were more likely to report acts that are associated with delinquency. Findings suggest that scholars and policymakers should continue to use disaggregated ethnic data to implement culturally competent practices that are reflective of the respective groups’ cultural backgrounds and migration histories. Implications for further research and practice among children of Southeast Asian immigrants are discussed.

The contact hypothesis (Allport 1954) predicts that cross-racial interaction can produce social bonding under certain status, relational, and institutional conditions. We extend this classic theory on ingroups and outgroups using qualitative data on Cambodian and Hmong refugees' recollections of casual conversations about ancestry with black and white peers. To cope with affective trauma, these refugees have created personal narratives about forced emigration. They believe that white peers shared stories about immigrant ancestors from Europe to affirm or elicit their emigration narrative. The refugees rarely believe that black peers' talk about slavery and discrimination was a story-sharing gesture and felt uncomfortable discussing these issues. Yet the refugees also feel disappointed when recalling interactions with assimilated white peers who \"don't have a story to tell\" about ancestry. From these inductive findings, this article proposes the corollary discourse hypothesis to explain how sentiments about intergroup narration, and not just frequency of contact, amplify or diminish empathy and association in a heterogeneous society.

This extraordinary documentary provides an illuminating and richly discussible case study of immigrant acculturation in contemporary America. With keen sensitivity to detail and a sharp eye and ear for nuance, the film explores the lives of three teenagers as they come of age in Lowell, Massachusetts. Children of Cambodian refugees, the three teens inhabit a gritty blue-collar American world that is indelibly colored by their parents' nightmares of the Khmer Rouge. Traditional Cambodian dance links each of them to their parents' culture, but fast cars, hip consumerism, and young romance pull them even harder into American popular culture.Their parents fled the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia in the 1970s, trekking through the jungle to refugee camps in Thailand. In the early 1980s, they resettled in Lowell, a historic New England mill city now home to America's second-largest Cambodian community. For these immigrants, Lowell offered hope of safety and employment and a chance to rebuild some of what was shattered by the Khmer Rouge.But for their children, the city offers a dizzying array of choices -- many of them risky. Deftly interweaving scenes of great poignancy and scenes of engaging drama, \"Monkey Dance\" examines how the three teenagers navigate the confusing landscape of urban American adolescence and ultimately start to make good on their parents' dreams.Linda Sou is a freewheeling 17-year-old who struggles to overcome the shame cast on her family when her older sister was imprisoned for murdering an abusive boyfriend. Linda has been dancing since age three, when her father founded the Angkor Dance Troupe in an attempt to preserve traditional Cambodian culture. Over time, Linda is lured away from the dance troupe by the excitement of fast cars and hot dates. Her wild ways intensify until she and a friend are injured in a serious car accident. A trip to Cambodia with her family to meet her village relatives endows Linda with some perspective on her life and a new awareness of her parents' losses and sacrifices.Samnang Hor, an athletic 16-year-old born in a refugee camp in Thailand, is driven to achieve to make up for his two older brothers, who dropped out of high school because of their involvement with gangs and drugs. Sam works hard, and his mentors encourage him to see education as a way out of the ghetto. On the exciting day he receives his college acceptance letters, he also realizes that getting into school is only part of the challenge -- finding money to pay for it may be even more difficult.Sochenda Uch, a lanky, fashion-conscious 16-year-old, works a series of part-time jobs to pay for the necessities and accessories of teen life -- while his mother worries that he doesn't study enough. Hungry to reinvent himself, Sochenda drops out of Angkor Dance Troupe and becomes a backup dancer in a hip Cambodian-American band. Too many distractions soon take their toll: Sochenda's grades start to slide, leading him to be rejected from all the colleges he applies to. Only after another year-and-a-half of hard work does he begin to understand what success or failure means to himself and his family. Dance -- both traditional and modern -- is ultimately what makes a difference for the three teenagers. The Angkor Dance Troupe to which they belong provides rigor and structure in their lives. Sam performs the troupe's signature piece: the Monkey Dance, a traditional tale about a folk hero figure that has been electrified and transformed by Sam's addition of hip-hop choreography. Cambodian dance provides Linda, Sam, and Sochenda with a unique connection to their parents' culture at a time when many children of immigrants reject their traditional culture as irrelevant to their lives in America. By making the dance their own, the three teenagers forge a link with the past while also finding their way in America.

Much of the analysis of refugee and immigrant adaptation has stressed the interaction of prior experience with the requirements of life in a new country. For refugees, that interaction has often been jarring because of the after-effects of their flight and their relative inability to prepare for a new life in a new country. Yet refugees have often done rather well in economic terms in that new country. The reasons for that relative success have been phrased in cultural terms (e.g., the predisposition toward education) and in general socioeconomic terms (e.g., refugees as educated and skilled). This article examines a set of factors that lie between these customary cultural and socioeconomic categories. Specifically, the paper examines key features of household formation among Vietnamese refugees. An examination of historical data from southern Vietnam indicates patterns in household formation that appear durable over time yet are not shared across the breadth of Vietnam and cannot thus be viewed as \"cultural\" in the usual sense. A comparison of the historical data with recent national survey data on refugees in the United States indicates that these patterns continue among Vietnamese refugees and are - as compared to other refugees - distinctive to them. These patterns of household formation provide Vietnamese refugees with important options in adaptation to a new country.

McDonald and Balgopal examine the melting pot theory and cultural pluralism, placing these concepts within a historical context of the immigration process in the US, to show that the new immigrants have faced different issues while attempting to retain their ethnic identity compared to immigrants arriving prior to 1965.

This article shows how, despite differences in their economic integration, the Vietnamese, Cambodians and Loatians now living in the Quebec City area (Canada) have established, over the last ten to fifteen years, three distinct ethnic communities. It also explains how the specific structure of each community is either linked to the presence, among refugees, of relatively well-educated and economically successful individuals or to the activation of core cultural values, such as religion and sustained interpersonal relations. A limited comparison with other Indochinese communities puts into light some particulars and commonalities of the Quebec case.