Nancy Foner

A massive wave of immigration is currently sweeping across the US How do new immigrants, specifically the Hmong refugees from Laos, assimilate? This book first traces the stages of the Hmong refugee experience and then looks at how Hmong families are adjusting and adapting to their new lives in America. From a family-centered focus, the reader gains an appreciation for how the Hmong see their own adaptational process and how they represent and define their Hmongness in America. Sociologists and anthropologists. Part of the New Immigrants Series.

ix, 262 p. ; 23 cm

"In Not Just Black and White, editors Nancy Foner and George M. Fredrickson bring together a group of social scientists and historians to consider the relationship between immigration and the ways in which concepts of race and ethnicity have evolved in the United States from the end of the nineteenth century to the present."--BOOK JACKET

"Soaring immigration to the United States in the transitional years of the new century has awakened old fears and inspired new anxieties about the future cultural shape of this country. Yet we know little about the experience of recent immigrant communities. In this volume, nine anthropologists reflect on the history of studies of migration, evaluate anthropology's contribution to the field, and develop a research program for the future. Placing contemporary immigration in the context of globalization and transnational social fields, their essays demonstrate the importance of gender and particular urban circumstances to understanding immigrants' life worlds. Addressing issues of health care, education, and minority values and practices among Mexicans, Haitians, Somalis, Afghans, and other newcomers to the United States, the authors raise serious questions about the meaning and political uses of ideas about cultural difference." -- Back cover.