Second-generation Asian Americans Research Articles

The Music of the Silent Exodus: Nunchi Bwa-ing and Christian Musicking in a Second-Generation Asian American Church

In 1996, Helen Lee dubbed the departure of second-generation Asian Americans from the non-English-speaking immigrant churches that they were raised in as the “silent exodus”. This nationwide phenomenon was taking place largely because first-generation churches failed to provide the second generation with culturally relevant care that would enrich their ethnic, national, and spiritual identities. Glory, the church of focus in this study, was founded by and is home to many silent exiles. In hopes of being an enriching church for second-generation Asian Americans, pastoral staff and leaders have created spaces within Glory for racial identity and faith to be in conversation with one another. However, in regard to the music of the church, they were stumped on what could be done to make it uniquely and proudly Asian American. This conundrum inspired a key question in this study: What is distinct about the way that Asian Americans worship God through music? This study argues that the worship music at Glory Church is distinctly Asian American not by what is sonically perceived, but rather by what is physically performed and collectively experienced. The Korean-English, or Konglish, term nunchi bwa-ing (눈치 봐-ing) is utilized as a keyword to describes Christian musicking in a multilingual setting and foregrounds the Korean/Asian American worshiping body. This study concludes by looking forward and arguing that Asian Americans ought to amplify their worship music to the larger Contemporary Worship Music scene as it has the potential to be a powerful site of intergenerational healing.

Am I American enough? A critical narrative exploration of Second-Generation Asian American teachers’ identity and belonging

The United States is in the midst of the largest migration since the turn of the nineteenth century, forever changing the demographics of the nation. This paper is concerned with the implications of this ongoing transformation for schools and the lives of teachers and students who labor and learn within them. In attending to this concern, this paper focuses on Asian Americans, a population that significantly contributes to this demographic shift and who have historically faced legal and formalized exclusion, compounding their relationship to the social imaginary of America. This contestation is even more pronounced for Second-Generation Asian Americans, whose belonging is additionally complicated by their status as American-born. This critical narrative inquiry presents stories of two Second-Generation Asian American elementary school teachers and shares the fraught negotiations of identity and culture that these teachers experience as they mobilize their identity in service of their students.

Second-generation Asian American Identity of Indians: Assimilating with Americans or Retaining Asian-ness or Beyond?

This article critically interprets the multi-dimensional Asian American identity of Indians in terms of their pan-ethnic identity formation as Asian Americans through cultural assimilation or merging with the host culture of Americans and retention or holding on to Asian identity. The identification of Indian Asian Americans will be determined by pan-ethnicity, gender and religion by the interview responses of Indian Americans, including the pan-ethnic identity of Indians in the Mar Thoma Church community, the second-generation Patel family’s union formation in terms of gender identity. Identity formation theories like acculturation and culture shock theories will be used to justify the claims made in the hypothesis. The analysis will be organized in terms of its beginning with the analysis of important factors of pan-ethnicity and then of gender and religion consecutively as part of thematic analysis and finally by statistical analysis. Results show the reasons include better professional advantages, which propel their choice of different identities and their future directives as part of the hypothesis of Asian American identity of Indians as they merge with the American identity as part of cultural assimilation, in other cases, retain their Asian identity beyond Americanized identity and sometimes go beyond both American, Asian identity to restate their Indian ethnicity. To conclude, the identity of Indian Americans remains in flux and keeps changing due to the requirements of the ever-evolving world.

Immigrant Indians’ identity in second-generation Asian American context: interpretation of ethnicity, gender and religion

PurposeThis paper aims to interpret the multidimensional Asian American identity of immigrant Indians in terms of pan-ethnicity, gender and religion.Design/methodology/approachThe social construction and experience of race in the US and the intersection of multiethnic Asian American identity with race, gender and religion will be used in critically commenting on the interview of primary ethnic identity of Indian Americans including the pan-ethnic identity of Indians in the US as Asian Americans, the Mar Thoma Church community, the second-generation Patel family's union formation in terms of gender identity.FindingsThe future directives include Asian American Movement (AAM) which is trying to incorporate Indians as pan-ethnic identity assimilation and the process of holding American identity as primary identification of Indians.Practical implicationsPolicy recommendations are that the US Census Bureau should include Indian Americans as separate ethnic identity for Indian immigrants like the Chinese Americans. USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) should reform policies to include the wives of H-4 visa holders. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should provide secure living environment for Indian immigrants. The US Department of Labor should provide equal opportunities for women in their immigration policies.Originality/valueThis paper will critically analyze the interview results of primary ethnic identity and justify the hypotheses of Asian American identity of Indians, whether (1) they merge with the American identity as part of cultural assimilation or (2) retain their Asian identity beyond Americanized identity or (3) go beyond both American and Asian identity to restate their Indian ethnicity.

Millennial Fiction Meets the Campus Novel

Millennial Fiction Meets the Campus Novel Jeffrey J. Williams (bio) The campus novel has changed as campuses and their denizens have changed. Critics often treat the genre as a continuous one, harking back to Mary McCarthy's Groves of Academe (1952) and Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim (1954), and they sometimes still invoke David Lodge's Small World (1985) as a send-up of contemporary academic life. But anyone coming through university gates since the late 1980s has encountered a very different world from Small World, and fiction has likewise changed. As I've described in "The Rise of the Academic Novel" (2012) and elsewhere, we have seen a new age of campus fiction since then, one that responds to the ubiquity of higher education in American life. Rather than an ivory tower, universities are a hub for real estate, industry, banking, healthcare, sports, technology, and cultural enterprises. And with 80 percent of Americans attending college at some point and millions working in teaching and staff positions, higher education permeates our culture and society. A good deal of fiction has responded to its contemporary state, and several recent novels by millennials give an updated sense of the troubled experience of those working in the institution. Since the late 1980s the academic novel—and I distinguish the academic novel, those dealing with the lives of college teachers, from the campus novel, which I reserve for those dealing with undergraduate life, largely on campus—left the confines of a quaint subgenre, like the locked room mystery, to meld into the mainstream of literary fiction, with entries by writers including Paul Auster, Ann Beattie, Michael Chabon, Susan Choi, Percival Everett, Denis Johnson, Jonathan Lethem, Sam Lipsyte, Lorrie Moore, Joyce Carol Oates, Tim O'Brien, Richard Powers, Francine Prose, Richard Russo, and Jane Smiley. They have dealt with the culture wars, sexual politics, midlife crises, love and relationships, work, and the vicissitudes of the professional-managerial class—staples of mainstream fiction. Around 2000 the genre spawned a new branch, the adjunct novel, depicting, instead of the bumbling but lucky Jim, decidedly unlucky Jims (see my "Unlucky Jim," Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 2012). James Hynes has been a prominent portraitist of the unlucky in Publish and Perish (1997), A [End Page 14] Lecturer's Tale (2001), Kings of Infinite Space (2004), and Next (2010), which depict underemployed PhDs scrambling for decent jobs. The adjunct novel has spawned its own subgenre, with micro-press or self-published entries like J. Hayes Hurley's The Adjunct (2006), Alex Kudera's Fight for Your Long Day (2010), and Geoff Cebula's Adjunct (2017). Rather than the crux of the plot turning on tenure, as in McCarthy's Groves of Academe or to a degree Lodge's Changing Places (1975), the new crux is landing a decent academic job in the first place. The past five years have seen a further development: snapshots from the millennial generation. In particular, three well-received novels—Weike Wang's Chemistry (2017), which won a PEN/Hemingway Award; Brandon Taylor's Real Life (2020); and Christine Smallwood's Life of the Mind (2021)—depict the demoralized world of graduate student researchers—less students than underlings in a lab—and elite adjuncts. The protagonists, like their authors, come from the millennial generation (Wang was born in 1988, Taylor in 1989, Smallwood in 1981) and show the enforced holding pattern of those in their late twenties and early thirties. The problem is not that they have difficulties—that is a conventional spring of narrative action—but that they have little chance for a better future. Their positions stand in sharp contrast to that of their advisers, who in each novel is a successful academic, receiving grants and plaudits and jetting off to give talks, but who has little understanding of their advisee's plight. Chemistry depicts an unnamed chemistry graduate student who works in a lab but undergoes a breakdown, a breakup, and ejection from academe, finding recovery while tutoring math. In short, poetic paragraphs, it combines an academic story with one of second-generation Asian American experience in the shadow of her parents, first-generation Chinese immigrants. Real Life likewise portrays a graduate...

The Risk Factors of Poor Mental Health Outcomes in Second-Generation Asian Americans

Poor mental health is a prevalent public health issue, especially among Asian American populations. Due to cultural barriers, Asian Americans may not understand the concept of mental health and may underutilize mental health resources. With Asian Americans being the largest and fastest-growing racial group in the United States, mental health research is essential to improving the well-being of future generations of Asian American generations. Having a better understanding of the determinants for poor mental health in Asian American communities is critical for effective public health interventions. This qualitative study examined how cultural and social expectations, gender roles, intergenerational trauma, and evolving attitudes influenced the mental health outcomes of six second-generation Asian Americans, one White American, and one Latinx American. Our findings suggest that Asian Americans have a greater burden to succeed academically compared to their white and Latinx counterparts. Furthermore, our study suggests that gender roles and intergenerational trauma may increase the risk of poor mental health outcomes for cisgender females Asian Americans and Southeast Asian Americans, respectively. Finally, our findings suggest mental health is becoming normalized which would ultimately improve mental health outcomes.

Second-generation Asian American women's gendered racial socialization.

Utilizing an intersectional framework (Crenshaw, 1989) and socioecological theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), we investigated the gendered racialized messages Asian American women receive growing up, otherwise known as gendered racial socialization, from their family, peers, and mass media. Consensual Qualitative Research was used to analyze interview data from 12 second-generation Asian American women. The results demonstrated that (a) family socialization messages included gendered racial discrimination, body image and physical appearance, marital/dating attitudes, role responsibilities and expectations, and academic/work expectations, (b) peer socialization included oppressive messages (e.g., physical objectification, denial of identity, lack of presence) and affirming messages (e.g., positive self-concept messages), and (c) mass media socialization included oppressive messages (e.g., lack of representation, stereotypical depictions), and affirming messages (e.g., messages about empowerment). These messages impacted Asian American women's views on their body image and physical appearance, self-esteem, career/work, mental health, and critical consciousness. Implications and findings of the need to dismantle interlocking oppressive forces are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Transnational Identity Formation in Korean American Literature: Catherine Chung’s Forgotten Country

The USA has always been a melting pot of different nationalities. Inevitably, this diversity has also been presented in its literature. Asian American literature, which is a fairly new subject of literary studies, presents one example of the States’ varied literary landscape. Some recurring themes studied in works written by authors from the Asian diaspora are hybridized identity, language, gender, trauma, and belonging. This paper also highlights the theme of identity and identity formation in connection with recent theories concerning transnational identities and second-generation immigrants, focusing on Catherine Chung’s Forgotten Country (2012). As searching for one’s own identity is a major part of the struggles of the adolescence stage, it is quite natural that questions of identity are emphasized in case of second-generation Asian Americans growing up in a culture distinctively different from that of their parents’. In the novel, the protagonist, Janie, clearly has bicultural identity, whereas her younger sister, Hannah, struggles with her Korean heritage, which she seems to reject. By the end, as a result of a homeland trip and their father’s death, both sisters comprehend more of their family’s past traumas and their homeland’s history, which enables them to acknowledge their Korean heritage and reclaim their lives.

The Time All San Francisco Fought Over School Fairness and Equality

Asian Americans have become a major factor in the debate over affirmative action and college/school admission policies. Yet most often their role is relegated to one side or the other of the argument - either grouped with other oppressed minorities, or else grouped with privileged white students. However, Asian Americans have their own agency and self-determination that requires attention. Beginning in the 1990s, San Francisco’s Asian American community resisted mainstream hegemony and charted their own course forward. This study uses a comparative approach towards these early Asian American activists, comparing and contrasting their motivations and actions with Black activists of the time, and also with a respected federal judge, scion of one of San Francisco’s wealthiest and traditional legal dynasties. News articles, notes and newsletters of Chinese American activist groups, internal school district reports, and 24 interviews are used to express how early generations of Asian Americans stood up to fight when they felt their version of the American dream was under attack, and how they focused on present-day tactical actions instead of future-looking strategies or past historical experiences. This study also reveals practical principles that these specifically Chinese American activists employed which may have applications for all groups resisting domination and/or assimilation. The methods and tactics employed by these second-generation Asian Americans that grew up in a community remade by the 1965 Immigration Act, helps us understand how the Asian American community has developed since then, and how it is continuing to move forward.

Cultural Affiliation and Mental Health Disruptions of Second Generation Asian Americans in College

The subject of mental health is something that is often stigmatized and overlooked in conversations, and this holds especially true for people of immigrant backgrounds coming from places and cultures in which mental health is a topic that is not discussed and has not been widely recognized and regularly treated in the mainstream, such as in many Asian cultures. In my research, through literary analysis and four qualitative interviews, I delve into how the cultural identity of Second Generation Asian Americans (SGAA) plays a role in their mental health states as well as in their mental health care as they go on their journey in higher education in pursuit of “the American Dream”. Without proper recognition, prioritization, and treatment of mental health issues and without ways to find the root of a problem and address it in order to find better ways to cope, 2nd generation immigrant youths are at large risk to fall into harmful cycles that can be detrimental and injurious to their progress and their lives. I will delve into the how factors such as immigration stress, assimilation, cultural differences, dual identity, family pressures, racialization, and the model minority myth contribute to the higher risk of mental health complications for SGAA in college, threatening their ability to thrive and sometimes even to survive. Hopefully, with a better understanding of the social conditions that SGAA face in college, better systems of mental health support and treatment can be widely circulated to help future generations of SGAA understand and cope with their unique predicaments.

Resurgent Ethnicity and Residential Choice Among Second-generation Asian Americans in a Los Angeles Panethnic Suburb

We draw on forty-six in-depth interviews with residents of Cerritos, California, a middle-class majority Asian suburb in Los Angeles County to explore the meaning of resurgent ethnicity and the ways in which a racialized identity informs residential preferences and choice among second-generation Asian Americans. Findings suggest that second-generation Asian Americans are choosing to reside in a place that offers cultural and class-based amenities that reflects a multiethnic sensibility. They also make residential choices based on family ties to strengthen and maintain intergenerational relations and share mutual social and economic resources. For second-generation Asian Americans, this racially dominant but ethnically diverse spatial settlement also provides a sense of belonging, signifying the continuing significance of race among middle-class, acculturated racial minority groups. As U.S. ethnic populations continue to grow and continue the trend of suburbanization and segregation, understanding such places and their implications will become increasingly important.

Upholding Familism Among Asian American Youth: Measures of Familism among Filipino and Korean American Youth.

Although it is one of the core cultural values of Asian American families and an influential determinant of youth development, familism remains under-studied among Asian Americans and, despite crucial within-group heterogeneity, lacks subgroup specificity. This study describes the ways in which two major Asian American subgroups of youth, i.e., Filipino Americans and Korean Americans, maintain traditional familism. Specifically, this study constructed six self-report subscales of familism utilizing underused and new survey items and tested their psychometric properties. Using data collected from Filipino American (n=150) and Korean American (n=188) adolescents living in a Midwest metropolitan area, the measures were examined for validity and reliability for each group and, when appropriate, for measurement invariance across the groups. The main findings are that the finalized scales demonstrated solid reliability and validity (e.g., content and construct) in each group and some invariance and that core traditions, in the form of familism values and behaviors, persevere among second-generation Asian Americans, although familism was more evident among Filipino American youth than in Korean American youth. In both groups, subdomains of familism were not as discrete as found among their parents, who were predominantly foreign-born first-generation immigrants. The finalized familism scales were associated differently with several correlates including acculturation variables and youth outcomes. The findings are discussed with a call for further empirical research of diverse ethnic groups and immigrant generations to more accurately account for how family process interacts with cultural origin and acculturation.

Immigrant selectivity, academic culture and college enrollment among Asian Americans

ABSTRACT Asian Americans have advantages across numerous indicators for educational attainment and upward mobility. While researchers acknowledge the contribution of positive selective migration in Asian Americans’ academic success, the relationship of selective migration with academic culture has not been clearly studied. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study and the Barro-Lee dataset, this study shows that Asian parents’ relative attainment (i.e. the high relative educational attainment of parents compared to their non-immigrant counterparts in sending countries) predicts their children’s advantage in college enrolment over whites. More importantly, a considerable portion of the advantage in college enrolment from parents’ relative attainment operates through youths’ academic culture (i.e. parental educational expectations and youths’ effort, school behaviours, and attitudes). Relative attainment explains the advantage in college enrolment over whites only for the 1.5-generation rather than second-generation Asian Americans. This suggests that change in Asian Americans’ academic outcomes across generations appears to be driven by different factors for each generation rather than by gradual declines in the levels of the same factors across generations.

The Socioeconomic Attainments of Second-Generation Nigerian and Other Black Americans: Evidence from the Current Population Survey, 2009 to 2019

Second-generation black Americans have been inadequately studied in prior quantitative research. The authors seek to ameliorate this research gap by using the Current Population Survey to investigate education and wages among second-generation black Americans with a focus on Nigerian Americans. The latter group has been identified in some qualitative studies as having particularly notable socioeconomic attainments. The results indicate that the educational attainment of second-generation Nigerian Americans exceeds other second-generation black Americans, third- and higher generation African Americans, third- and higher generation whites, second-generation whites, and second-generation Asian Americans. Controlling for age, education, and disability, the wages of second-generation Nigerian Americans have reached parity with those of third- and higher generation whites. The educational attainment of other second-generation black Americans exceeds that of third- and higher generation African Americans but has reached parity with that of third- and higher generation whites only among women. These results indicate significant socioeconomic variation within the African American/black category by gender, ethnicity, and generational status that merits further research.

Deconstructing hyper-selectivity: Are the socioeconomic attainments of second-generation Asian Americans only due to their class background?

Recent studies by Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou claim that “hyper-selectivity” is the primary causal factor accounting for the high average educational attainment of second-generation Asian Americans. We critically assess hyper-selectivity, which has not been carefully evaluated in prior research. We argue that hyper-selectivity is inadequately conceptualized and is not clearly supported by data on immigration or income mobility. Hyper-selectivity ignores accumulated facts about Asian American family processes relating to cultural factors and educational attainment. Rather than being a class phenomenon, Asian cultural factors have important effects for most second-generation Asian Americans regardless of the socioeconomic status of their parents. Overemphasizing hyper-selectivity inadequately acknowledges the cultural heritage of Asian Americans and ignores the agency of immigrant Asian American families.

Negotiating the workplace: second-generation Asian American professionals’ early experiences

ABSTRACT Research on Asian American educational attainment suggests that a combination of immigrant hyper-selectivity and ethnic capital enables second-generation Asian Americans to succeed according to a narrowly-defined success frame. However, recent quantitative work suggests that ethnoracialized advantages within the educational system do not translate into advantages in the workplace. This study therefore examines second-generation Asian Americans’ experiences as they seek work in the labour market. I draw from 30 semi-structured qualitative interviews with 1.5- and second-generation Asian Americans in the New York City area, all of whom had entered the full-time workforce within the previous ten years. I find that these recent labour market entrants faced three major constraints and enacted several strategies in response. Family and community networks no longer provided the same ethnoracialized resources and network ties that might enable educational success; in response, workers mobilised institutional resources and peer networks. Once in the workplace, respondents experienced racialized microaggressions; in response, they minimised the role of race. Finally, they encountered negative stereotyping; in response, they worked to distance themselves from such stereotypes. Overall, these findings shed light on how ethnoracialized processes impact the presumed link between educational and occupational success.

Do second-generation Asian Americans face a systematic disadvantage in occupational attainment? Comment on Tran, Lee and Huang

ABSTRACTWe critically review and discuss several methodological problems with their analysis. Their definition of the occupational hierarchy is unclear, and their inadequate statistical models exacerbate the vagueness of their results. They ignore gender interactions, and the age range of their target population seems too narrow for their research concerns. Their interpretation of their own statistical findings on occupational attainment is fundamentally flawed although they refuse to acknowledge it. Their reported results cannot be replicated based on the information that they are willing to reveal about their analysis which suggests additional, undisclosed errors. In our reanalysis of their data using more appropriate methods, we find that rather than being systematically disadvantaged, the occupational attainment of most second-generation Asian Americans has either achieved parity with whites or has exceeded them after controlling for age, educational level, and survey year.

New Asian American Voters: Political Incorporation and Participation in 2016

In 2016, Asian Americans represented the fastest growing racial minority group in the United States largely due to the flow of new immigration. As a result, Asian Americans are poised to be the next major bloc of new voters in the electorate. Yet, as a largely new immigrant group, institutional barriers—in particular, naturalization and registration—are important factors which need to be more thoroughly taken into account when explaining Asian American participation patterns. In this article, we show how scholars can adopt a different strategy of analysis that recognizes both institutional barriers to political participation through immigrant status and variation across national origin group. We argue that structural impediments to participation and national origin differences have not been fully accounted for in previous explanations of Asian American political participation. Our analysis shows that when Asian Americans are disaggregated by incorporation status (being registered to vote, eligible but not registered to vote, or noncitizen), we gain new insights about the factors that predict political participation. The findings from an analysis of 2016 election data feature the unique behaviors of Filipinos, Asian Indians, and the Vietnamese and highlight that second-generation Asian Americans are not necessarily more participatory than their immigrant counterparts.

“Forgetting” and “Re membering”: The Language of Stuttering and the Notion of “Home” in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Experimental Writings

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee (1982) explores what it really means to “forget” and “re member” historical memories and how this process of unlearning relocates the first- and second-generation Asian American speakers in the realm of language. Cha’s act of forgetting and re membering is not so much a psychological process as it is a physical and affective process of becoming. Through the intimacy between Cha’s half-autobiographical speaker’s sense of nation, body, and innovative language, Dictee examines how her Korean mother tongue, which once shaped the former generation’s presumed homogeneous historical/national memories, comes to enunciate alternative values and meanings in her more specific and concrete cultural realities. I first consider how the nation’s postcolonial situation after the Korean War engendered such a rigid and exclusionary form of national identity. The strict nationalist policies enacted in the 1960s and onward became another repressive ideology of dominance in which the voices of Cha’s in-between subjects could not be heard. In the second half of the article, I analyze how Dictee actively incorporates ideas of nationality, history, and identity into the Korean American speaker’s physical and innovative linguistic experimentations. Although the meanings that emerge from Cha’s affect-driven language appear to be personal and not shared or attributed to any kind of communal behavior, Dictee not only undermines essentialized cultural and national identities but cultivates more specific Korean or Korean American voices, histories, and perspectives. In particular, this essay focuses on Cha’s politics of language in Dictee. Following the theoretical leads of Juliana Spahr, Deborah M. Mix, Lisa Lowe, and Gilles Deleuze, I explore how Dictee’s experimental language becomes a form of survival for her in-between subjects and allows them to have more active voices and find new meanings of home, history, and family in the daily acts of forgetting and re membering.

The social roots of Asian American partisan attitudes

ABSTRACTAn important question in the study of Asian American political behavior is why members of this group, who have some Republican predispositions, are strong Democratic supporters. How do Asian Americans develop preferences for the Democratic Party? This paper considers this question through a theory-building case study of political socialization in Houston, Texas, a mixed-partisan area where many Asian Americans support Democrats. Using qualitative interviews and supplemental survey data, I examine voting behavior and partisan identification, developing a socially based explanation for high levels of Democratic support. I argue that Asian Americans develop Democratic preferences through interactions within peer groups. These peer groups vary in composition by generational status, leading to different reasons for Democratic support across generations. I find that first-generation Asian Americans primarily interact with fellow Asian immigrants. Relative to their children’s generation, they develop positive attitudes about conservative ideology but vote for Democrats because they perceive contemporary Republicans as ideologically extreme. In contrast, transitional-generation and second-generation Asian Americans have racially diverse peer groups. Rarely discussing politics at home, they develop pro-Democratic attitudes through interactions with liberal friends in educational settings.