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This collection brings together established and emerging scholars from the humanities and the social sciences whose work considers the daughters of immigrants. By showcasing these varied perspectives, the collection draws meaningful connections across national and ethnic lines while attending to the particularities of specific histories, locations, and migration journeys. The multidisciplinary nature of this project highlights the relevance and usefulness of varied methodological and theoretical approaches for understanding the diverse lived experiences of the daughters of immigrants, as well as how those experiences are theorized and represented. While each chapter contains its own argument, assumes its own conceptual and disciplinary viewpoint, and tends to specific national and ethnic origins and sites of immigration, each offers meaningful insight into the gendered positionality of the daughters of immigrants as mediated by the complexities of migration, kinship, and culture. Taken together, these contributions point to the nuanced ways national, ethnic, and gendered identity function, and how those not always well served by how these identities are constituted understand and navigate forces beyond their control.

In National (un)Belonging: Bengali American Women on Imagining and Contesting Culture and Identity, Roksana Badruddoja focuses on the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, citizenship, and nationalism among contemporary “second-generation” Bengali American women. Badruddoja engages in a yearlong feminist ethnographic study with a nationwide sample of 25 women in the U.S. to poignantly explore perceptions about daily social and cultural practices. Exploring the conceptual and theoretical perspectives of the social, economic, cultural, aesthetic, and political dimensions of transnational migrations, Badruddoja interrogates assimilation to depict the messy nature of diasporic movement and the resulting complexities of diasporic identities. Badruddoja demonstrates racialized identities are often part of a constellation of loyalties that are multiple, contradictory, constantly shifting, and overlapping

Winner of the 2023 Sarton Award for NonfictionMerging real stories with research and on-the-ground reporting, an award-winning journalist and immigrant explores multicultural parenting and identity in the USThrough her own stories and interviews with other immigrant families, award-winning journalist Masha Rumer paints a realistic and compassionate picture of what it's like for immigrant parents raising a child in America while honoring their cultural identities. Parenting with an Accent speaks to immigrant and non-immigrant readers alike, incorporating a diverse collection of voices and experiences to provide an intimate look at the lives of many different immigrant families across the country.With a compelling blend of empirical data, humor, and on-the-ground reportage, Rumer presents interviews with experts on various aspects of parenting as an immigrant, including the challenges of acculturation, bilingualism strategies, and childcare. She visits a children's Amharic class at an Ethiopian church in New York, a California vegetable farm, a Persian immersion school, and more. Through these stories, she opens a window to a world of parenting unique to multicultural families. Immigrant readers will appreciate Rumer's gentle message about the kind of ethnic and cultural ambivalence that is born of having roots planted in many different soils, while in these pages non-immigrants get a fly-on-the-wall view of the unique experiences of newcomers.Deeply researched yet personal, Parenting with an Accent centers immigrants and their experiences in a new country—emphasizing how immigrants and their children remain an integral part of America's story.

“Green Card Youth Voices: Immigration Stories from Madison and Milwaukeee High Schools” is a collection of thirty personal essays, and accompanying video narratives, written by students attending James Madison Memorial and Pulaski High Schools. In their own voices, these students from twenty two countries describe their childhoods, reasons for leaving, first impressions of this land, and dreams of how they will contribute to it. These digital and written stories highlight the resilience and courage of these new Americans as they face tremendous adversity to be a part of this country. From classrooms to book clubs, from the individual interested in learning more about his immigrant neighbor to the business owner looking to understand her employees and business partners, this book is an important resource for all Americans. The included video links, glossary, maps, and study guide add a multimedia dimension to this already dynamic collection.

Analysing US immigration and deportation policy over the last twenty years, this book illustrates how US immigration reform can be conceived as a psychological, legal, policy-driven tool which is inexorably entwined with themes of American identity, national belonging and white nativism. Focusing on Hispanic immigration and American-born children of Mexican parentage, the author examines how engrained, historical, individual and collective social constructions and psychological processes, related to identity formation can play an instrumental role in influencing political and legal processes. It is argued that contemporary American immigration policy reforms need to be conceptualized as a complex, conscious and unconscious White Nativist psychological, legal, defence mechanism related to identity preservation and contestation.Whilst building on existing theoretical frameworks, the author offers new empirical evidence on immigration processes and policy within the United States as well as original research involving the acculturation and identity development of children of Mexican immigrant parentage. It brings together themes of race, ethnicity and American national identity under a new integrated sociopolitical and psychological framework examining macro and micro implications of recent US immigration policy reform. Subsequently this book will have broad appeal for academics, professionals and students who have an interest in political psychology, childhood studies, American immigration policy, constructions of national identity, critical race and ethnic studies, and the Mexican diaspora.

Traces the contemporary ethnic experiences of Japanese AmericansAs one of the oldest groups of Asian Americans in the United States, most Japanese Americans are culturally assimilated and well-integrated in mainstream American society. However, they continue to be racialized as culturally “Japanese” foreigners simply because of their Asian appearance in a multicultural America where racial minorities are expected to remain ethnically distinct. Different generations of Japanese Americans have responded to such pressures in ways that range from demands that their racial citizenship as bona fide Americans be recognized to a desire to maintain or recover their ethnic heritage and reconnect with their ancestral homeland. In Japanese American Ethnicity, Takeyuki Tsuda explores the contemporary ethnic experiences of Japanese Americans from the second to the fourth generations and the extent to which they remain connected to their ancestral cultural heritage. He also places Japanese Americans in transnational and diasporic context and analyzes the performance of ethnic heritage through the example of taiko drumming ensembles. Drawing on extensive fieldwork with Japanese Americans in San Diego and Phoenix, Tsuda argues that the ethnicity of immigrant-descent minorities does not simply follow a linear trajectory. Increasing cultural assimilation does not always erode the significance of ethnic heritage and identity over the generations. Instead, each new generation of Japanese Americans has negotiated its own ethnic positionality in different ways. Young Japanese Americans today are reviving their cultural heritage and embracing its salience in their daily lives more than the previous generations. This book demonstrates how culturally assimilated minorities can simultaneously maintain their ancestral cultures or even actively recover their lost ethnic heritage.

Good Girls Marry Doctors: South Asian American Daughters on Obedience and Rebellion, edited by Piyali Bhattacharya, is the first anthology to examine the multiple facets of daughterhood in South Asian American families. The voices in this volume reveal how a Good Girl is trained to seamlessly blend professional success with the maintanence and reproduction of her family's cultural heritage. Her gratitude for her immigrant parents'sacrifices creates intense pressure to perform and embody the role of the'perfect daughter.'Yet, the demand for such perfection can stifle desire, curb curiosity, and make it fraught for a Good Girl to construct her own identity in the face of stern parental opinion. Of course, this is not always the case. Certain stories in this collection uncover relationships between parents and daughters that are open and supportive while also being exacting. Many of the essays, however, dig into difficult truths about what it is to be a young woman in a world of overbearing cultural expectation. Good Girls Marry Doctors is filled with honest stories, difficult and joyous, heartbreaking and hilarious, from a diverse array of powerful women. These narratives combine to expose struggles that are too often hidden from the public eye, while reminding those going through similar experiences that they are heard, and they are not alone. Contributers: Ankita Rao, Ayesha Mattu, Fawzia Mirza, Hema Sarang-Sieminski, Jabeen Akhtar, Jyothi Natarajan, Leila Khan, Madiha Bhatti, Mathangi Subramanian, Meghna Chandra, Natasha Singh, Nayomi Munaweera, Neelanjana Banerjee, Phiroozeh Petigara, Piyali Bhattacharya, Rachna Khatau, Rajpreet Heir, Roksana Badruddoja, Sayantani DasGupta, SJ Sindu, Sona Charaipotra, Surya Kundu, Swati Khurana, Tanzila Ahmed, Tara Dorabji, Tarfia Faizullah, and Triveni Ghandi.This collection is filled with stories that put into words the feelings and struggles that isolate daughters of the diaspora.... There is pain. There is trauma. There is also humor and hope. In short: there is truth. Every story, every word comes from a place of vulnerability and pain — from a struggle toward self-understanding and self-acceptance. These are the voices of women who have fought to be themselves and who have chosen to come back to their pain in order to offer a helping hand to the young girls and women who still inhabit that painful space. —Karen Marrujo, Poetry International

For several decades, Mexican immigrants in the United States have outnumbered those from any other country. Though the economy increasingly needs their labor, many remain unauthorized. In Parents Without Papers, immigration scholars Frank D. Bean, Susan K. Brown, and James D. Bachmeier document the extent to which the outsider status of these newcomers inflicts multiple hardships on their children and grandchildren. Parents Without Papers provides both a general conceptualization of immigrant integration and an in-depth examination of the Mexican American case. The authors draw upon unique retrospective data to shed light on three generations of integration. They show in particular that the “membership exclusion” experienced by unauthorized Mexican immigrants—that is, their fear of deportation, lack of civil rights, and poor access to good jobs—hinders the education of their children, even those who are U.S.-born. Moreover, they find that children are hampered not by the unauthorized entry of parents itself but rather by the long-term inability of parents, especially mothers, to acquire green cards. When unauthorized parents attain legal status, the disadvantages of the second generation begin to disappear. These second-generation men and women achieve schooling on par with those whose parents come legally. By the third generation, socioeconomic levels for women equal or surpass those of native white women. But men reach parity only through greater labor-force participation and longer working hours, results consistent with the idea that their integration is delayed by working-class imperatives to support their families rather than attend college. An innovative analysis of the transmission of advantage and disadvantage among Mexican Americans, Parents Without Papers presents a powerful case for immigration policy reforms that provide not only realistic levels of legal less-skilled migration but also attainable pathways to legalization. Such measures, combined with affordable access to college, are more important than ever for the integration of vulnerable Mexican immigrants and their descendants.