David W. Haines

The Vietnamese experience in America

Preface Acknowledgments I. The Vietnamese Entrance into America The Fall of Saigon The First and Second Waves of Refugees Subsequent Waves of Refugee Peoples Refugees and Immigrants The Countries of First Asylum The Counries of Second Asylum II. Emigration to the United States The Flight Experiences in Transit Entry and Orientation III. Initial Resettlement U.S. Resettlement Policies Community Reception Community Conflict Vietnamese Culture in America Vietamese Religious Life Vietnamese Community Organizations Mutual Assistance Associations IV. The Vietnamese-American Community Adaptation and Stabilization Cultural Continuity The Boat People The Orderly Departure Program V. Societal Integration and Adjustment Employment Occupational Characterizations and Patterns Assistance Programs and Utilization Coping and Education Transportation Housing Health Care and Cultural Values Mental Health Problems Interethnic Competition Intraethnic Competition VI. Personal Adjustments and Self-Identity Language Acquisition Family Customs and Kinship Family Size and Characteristics The Emerging Family and Economics Changing Roles with the Family Courtship, Marriage, and Family Traditions Amerasians and the Resettlement Process The Celebration of Tet VII. Contemporary Vietnamese-American Society Stability and Fluidity An Emergining Model of Adaptation Achievement in America The Outlook for the Future Appendix Notes Suggestions for Futher Reading Index Illustrations follow chapter 4.

Family and Community among Vietnamese Refugees.

This article focuses on the maintenance, extent and structure of family and community ties among Vietnamese refugees in the United States. The findings from a series of field efforts in northern Virginia indicate the continuing and pervasive importance of both family and community. The family, in particular, extends well beyond the boundaries of the household, and is capable of furnishing significant amounts of emotional and practical support.

Refugees in America in the 1990s: A Reference Handbook.

Preface Introduction Refugee Resettlement in the United States by Philip A. Holman Patterns in Refugee Resettlement and Adaptation by David W. Haines The Refugees Afghans by Juliene G. Lipson and Patricia A. Omidian Chinese from Southeast Asia by John K. Whitmore Cubans by Joseph Coleman Eastern Europeans by Elzbieta M. Gozdziak Ethiopians and Eritreans by Tekle M. Woldemikael Haitians by Frederick J. Conway and Susan Buchanan Stafford Hmong by Timothy Dunnigan, Douglas P. Olney, Miles A. McNall, and Marline A. Spring Iranians by Mehdi Bozorgmehr Khmer by Carol A. Mortland Lao by Pamela A. DeVoe Soviet Jews by Steven J. Gold Vietnamese by Nguyen Manh Hung and David W. Haines Comparative Material The Origins and Initial Resettlement Patterns of Refugees in the United States by Linda W. Gordon Public and Political Opinion on the Admission of Refugees by Rita J. Simon Hardening the Heart: The Global Refugee Problem in the 1990s by Bill Frelick Documentary Films about Refugees by Beatrice Nied Hackett An Annotated Introduction to the Literature by David W. Haines Index

Ethnicity's Shadows: Race, Religion, and Nationality as Alternative Identities among Recent United States Arrivals

In recent decades, ethnicity has received increasing academic attention—and popular acceptance—as a core aspect of identity and one that is particularly relevant to immigrants. But is this notion of ethnicity salient to the immigrants themselves? This article provides a set of quantitative snapshots of the way new arrivals to the United States identify themselves and their children. The data—a set of annual surveys of recent refugee arrivals—suggest that in response to specific questions about “ethnicity,” newcomers often provide what from American perspectives are not “ethnic” responses. In particular, race and religion are frequently offered as ethnic identity. Furthermore, nationality can also override ethnicity. Parents, for example, sometimes categorize recent United States-born children as ethnically “American” even though the rest of the family retains its previous non-United States identity. Such identity choices reveal much about the starting point of migrant adjustment. They are also invaluable for the broader analysis of the logic, history, contingencies, and internal tensions of United States—and Euro-American—notions of ethnicity.

Transnational Migration in East Asia: Japan in Comparative Focus

This special two-day conference on migration, held May 31-June 1, 2007, at Japans National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) in Osaka, was one of the first and most comprehensive meetings of scholars on the full dimensions and implications of migration both to and from Japan. It was also a valuable opportunity to reconsider international migration from an East Asian vantage point ? and especially convenient for non-Japanese since the papers were written in English.l

Refugees in the United States : a reference handbook

Well researched and clearly written, for the student and also for the citizen who seeks heightened awareness of refugee issues. Reference Books Bulletin

“More Aware of Everything” Exploring the Returnee Experience in American Higher Education

At the intersection of the topics of migration and diversity in higher education lies the experience of people who grow up overseas, or who go overseas for education or military service, and then return as college students. This article addresses their experience, drawing from a series of exploratory interviews conducted—as part of a broader distributed research process on diversity—at one particularly diverse American university. The overseas experience, as would be expected, generally broadens student perspectives but also individuates them by first removing people from existing personal networks and established cognitive routines, then inserting them into new networks and cognitive patterns overseas, and finally reinserting them back into a “home” situation in the United States that is both familiar and now newly alien. The legacies of return thus include a resorting and reconfiguration of notions of self and identity as well as those of family, community, and nation. Overall, the process suggests a useful parallel between the student as traveler and the traveler as student. There is also a warning in this material that much human diversity involves very individualized experiences that may be overlooked in the more generalized literatures on education (especially higher education) and human mobility.

Reflections of Kinship and Society under Vietnam's Lê Dynasty

The understanding of Vietnamese society and social relations remains problematic. Even for recent times there is a dearth of research on basic facets of Vietnamese social structure. Scholars remain all too indebted to Hickeys study of Khanh Hau, which, dealing with a single and in some ways unique Southern village, can hardly be taken as representative given the wide regional and class differences characteristic of Vietnamese society. Moving backwards through time, the central elements of social relations become increasingly difficult to examine. The reasons lie both in an inevitable emphasis on what can loosely be called political history (e.g., the effects of French colonial rule, the resistance against that rule, the administrative problems faced by the early Nguyễn dynasty, or the recurring issue of war—and peace—with China) and the increasing narrowness of the documents available for study (i.e., the inevitability of reliance on official documents such as dynastic histories and legal codes).

Binding the Generations: Household Formation Patterns among Vietnamese Refugees.

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.

Letting “The System” Do the Work The Promise and Perils of Computerization

Review of a multiyear computerization project at a government agency reveals the ways in which technological changes both empower and vitiate the people and processes they are designed to improve. Although the transformation of this agency’s data-processing operations resulted in increased knowledge, productivity, and staff skills, the implementation of the changes affected different kinds of staff in distinct ways, particularly those who controlled the technology, those who used the technology to construct database tracking systems, and those who “consumed” the information provided in those data-bases. In particular, the technological changes engendered a greater visibility of work processes, thus sharply challenging the existing organizational hierarchy, which, in turn, undermined much of the potential of the changes.