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A sociologist of international migration examines the Chinese American experience
Contemporary Chinese America
Immigration, Ethnicity, and Community Transformation
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Min Zhou, foreword by Alejandro Portes
"Contemporary Chinese America is full of richly detailed analyses and insightful interpretations. Most remarkable is the breadth and depth of the coverage. From New York’s Chinatown to California’s ethnoburbs and from entrepreneurship to gender, ethnicity, education, and intergenerational relations, this important book is an indispensable guide to understanding the experiences of Chinese immigrants and their children."
—Nancy Foner, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Hunter College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York
Contemporary Chinese America is the most comprehensive sociological investigation of the experiences of Chinese immigrants to the United States—and of their offspring—in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The author, Min Zhou, is a well-known sociologist of the Chinese American experience. In this volume, she collects her original research on a range of subjects, including the causes and consequences of emigration from China, demographic trends of Chinese Americans, patterns of residential mobility in the U.S., Chinese American "ethnoburbs," immigrant entrepreneurship, ethnic enclave economies, gender and work, Chinese language media, Chinese schools, and intergenerational relations. The concluding chapter, "Rethinking Assimilation," ponders the future for Chinese Americans. Also included are an extensive bibliography and a list of recommended documentary films.
While the book is particularly well-suited for college courses in Chinese American studies, ethnic studies, Asian studies, and immigration studies, it will interest anyone who wants to more fully understand the lived experience of contemporary Chinese Americans.
Excerpt
Reviews
"Through her sociological insight, Zhou's new book deepens our understanding of many aspects of contemporary Chinese America such as family, education, or enclave economy. Pushing the field to a new level, her scholarship is a must in race, ethnicity, and immigration studies."
—Haiming Liu, Professor of Asian American Studies, Cal Poly Pomona
Contents
List of Figures and Tables
Foreword, by Alejandro Portes
Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Personal Reflection on the Study of Chinatown and Beyond
PART I Historical and Global Contexts
1. The Chinese Diaspora and International Migration
PART II Immigration, Demographic Trends, and Community Dynamics
2. Demographic Trends and Characteristics of Contemporary Chinese America
3. In and Out of Chinatown: Residential Segregation and Mobility among Chinese Immigrants in New York City
4. Suburbanization and New Trends in Community Development: The Case of Chinese Ethnoburbs in the San Gabriel Valley, California, with Yen-Fen Tseng and Rebecca Y. Kim
PART III The Organizational Structure of the Ethnic Enclave
5. Immigrant Entrepreneurship and the Enclave Economy: The Case of New York City’s Chinatown
6. Chinese-Language Media in the United States
7. Chinese Schools and the Ethnic System of Supplementary Education
PART IV The Family and the New Second Generation
8. The Other Half of the Sky: Immigrant Women in Chinatown’s Enclave Economy
9. Negotiating Culture and Ethnicity: Intergenerational Relations in Chinese Immigrant Families
10. “Parachute Kids” in Southern California: The Educational Experience of Chinese Children in Transnational Families
PART V The Future of Chinese America
11. Rethinking Assimilation: The Paradox of “Model Minority” and “Perpetual Foreigner”
Appendix: Recommended Films on the Chinese American Experience
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author(s)
 | Min Zhou is Professor of Sociology and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Chinatown (Temple) and The Transformation of Chinese America, co-author of Growing Up American, and co-editor of Asian American Youth and Contemporary Asian America. |
Subject Categories
Asian American Studies
Sociology
Race and Ethnicity
In the series
Asian American History and Culture, edited by Sucheng Chan, David Palumbo-Liu, Michael Omi, K. Scott Wong, and Linda Trinh Võ.
The "standard" written histories of Asian immigrants to the United States have been imbued with Western cultural biases. As a critique and corrective to earlier work, Asian American History and Culture, edited by Sucheng Chan, David Palumbo-Liu, Michael Omi, K. Scott Wong, and Linda Trinh Võ, aims to develop a history of Asian Americans that is compatible with their own experience, that treats Asian Americans as agents of historical change and as creators of a new culture. In addition, this series intends to focus on the groups that are flourishing in the contemporary U.S.—Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese—about whom little has been written as well as to add to the substantial work done on the Chinese and Japanese in this country.