This project focused on immigrants' perceptions of social services and social workers. The study employed the post positivist paradigm. The project was conducted with legal and illegal immigrants who received services at Bilingual Family Counseling Service in the city of Ontario, CA. The study found that the immigrants' perceptions about social service agencies and social workers were multi-determined by at least three elements: knowledge, experiences, and attitudes. The dynamic interaction between experiences and attitudes shaped the immigrants' perceptions. Most of the respondents had a positive attitude toward social workers and social services agencies.

The acculturation of alien groups and the degree of assimilation they acheved, is the subject of this study.

The recognition that women are not in a fixed position but are dynamic and active in any of the processes of migration and post-migration adjustment helps us to see the complexity of women's participation in migration. Using life history interviews, three Sri-Lankan womens' migration experiences are examined for the ways in which personal networks were utilized in various phases of the migration process and how social and human capital was transformed in the post-migration adjustment process. Though in some instances the data did not fully support Boyd's (1989) predictions of the ways in which personal networks affect migration, overall, both Boyd's and Kopijn's (1998) statements that social capital is transmitted and transformed in the migration process are supported. The analysis indicates that all three women were successful in their post migration adjustment in that they were able to retain a strong sense of identity while adopting new practices in the United States. / Graduation date: 2004

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This thesis concentrates on how nativism, through a series of discriminatory policies over the span of fifty years, influenced the creation of the Japanese American internment camps during the Second World War. By using the experiences of the first—and second—generations of Japanese immigrants, my thesis explores how nativism supported the creation of laws meant to preserve racial homogeneity, cultural superiority, economic segregation, and national security from the Japanese immigrants living in California during the end of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century