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This qualitative research study focused on Asian fathers living in the United States. It raised issues about the social perceptions of minority immigrants and provided alternative interpretations of the acculturation of Korean fathers who have been neglected in diverse social and educational discourses. In particular, this study looked at recent Korean immigrants who settled in America after 2008. By doing so, this work demonstrated the distinct demographical and socioeconomic hallmarks (e.g., better educational opportunities, economic prosperity, and cultural openness) of immigration in the United States. This study is organized into two sections: a general survey which gathered information about current issues and marginalization and clarified the stereotypes facing Korean immigrants; and in-depth interviews and participative observations which collected stories and reflections from and about Korean immigrant fathers. I endeavored to (a) observe the Korean father, the family member who is most neglected by academic discourse on immigrant families; (b) identify the concerns of the modern, minority immigrant; and (c) collect the voices of people who undergo acculturation or transformative adaptation of a new culture. The overall significance of this study is that it presents new understanding of the life patterns of Korean fathers who reside in the United States. Research participants showed a tendency to emphasize the role of a social safety network board for racial community while being individualistic in personal matters. Moreover, the social position of fathers has changed internally and externally. Internal changes engendered through specific social conditions such as identity, parenting, religion, father awareness, and food rituals and memory were analyzed as the main factors for completing the overall transformation. Lastly, the personal experiences or traits that appeared in the process of memory and consciousness were essential for creating the defining qualities of fathers in perceptions of the Korean father figure. Through a descriptive analysis, I uncovered what the four participants, who had different immigration trajectories, shared as commonalities and differences. Transformation by factors other than culture seemed to be an important variable. The interviewees’ anecdotes confirmed the roles of memory and individual response to a complex series of cultural adaptations and provided important implications.

This dissertation applies place-based assimilation theories to understand the role of the school and other community-based institutions in the lives of immigrant families in a small rural town. The rate of immigration is increasing globally and over time, more and more children and families will be immigrants, finding themselves in a new community, making it imperative to understand the lived experiences of immigrant children and families. For most migrant families with school-aged children the school is the first point of contact in a new community. Thus, the school is well positioned to assist families in the integration process providing them with vital information and connections to resource-rich community-based institutions. This dissertation explores the relationship between families and community-based institutions in Provincetown Massachusetts, a small, coastal, rural community with a significant immigrant population. It is a narrative inquiry that employs qualitative research methods, specifically semi-structured interviews and visual research methods including photographs taken by immigrant students and photo elicitation interviews to answer the following questions: 1) What role does the school play in the process of immigrant families integrating into a new community?; 2) How do community-based institutions help or hinder immigrant families accessing resources and developing a sense of belonging?; 3) In what ways has the current COVID-19 health pandemic affected the work of community-based institutions and immigrant families’ interactions with them? Newly arrived families to Provincetown face food and housing insecurity and a lack of access to health care. There is however, a comprehensive web of community-based institutions with programs and resources to meet those needs. Access to most of these resources requires a referral or connection from an agency like the school, so families are reliant on schools for connection to these institutions. The school has formal mechanisms in place to help families. There are also informal mechanisms in the school to help families. This consists of individual teachers who develop deep and lasting relationships with a particular student and assist this student and his or her family using their own time and resources. This dissertation also explored the ways in which immigrant children in Provincetown find belonging. The children reported that they find belonging in the natural environment, through enrichment activities such as art clubs and sports teams, and through participation in the tourism work force, either by helping family members or beginning to work on their own. There are many institutions that work with the school and families to provide access to this enrichment programming, but there are barriers to participation. Immigrant children are often prevented from participating in enrichment activities outside of school hours because they have to care for younger siblings or lack transportation to and from afterschool events. There is also a disconnect between institutions and families because some institutions struggle to communicate with families. Some institutions have tried to respond to these barriers by providing transportation and parallel programming for siblings. This study also found that the school was the most successful way for institutions to communicate with families because of the well established communication patterns, available translation services and presence of school personnel who have taken an active interest in the outside lives of students. Many solutions in Provincetown are place-specific and the experiences of families in Provincetown are atypical because there are several factors that make Provincetown unique. It is a tourist town with access to financial resources that can fund many institutions and opportunities. The town is small, making the relationship between families and institutions more personal so that individuals and institutions become more invested in the lives and outcomes of individual families in a way that would not be possible in an urban area.

This qualitative exploratory study sought to understand highly educated Iraqi and Syrian refugees’ perceptions of their learning experiences during economic integration in Luxembourg. This research sought to elucidate how these new migrants learned to integrate in a country with a long tradition of migration but little exposure to Arabic-speaking groups. Further, it sought to explore participants’ experiences of what knowledge, skills, and practices they required, how these were learned, what facilitators and inhibitors they faced, and the impact of identity and religion.In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 refugee participants who had arrived in Luxembourg since 2015 and from 10 professionals working in refugee integration programs. Additional data were collected from critical incident questionnaires and document analysis. Several key findings emerged from interviews. First, participants reported high professional status prior to their forced migration and gratitude toward Luxembourg for its support, despite their many challenges. Second, participants identified linguistic skills, market-relevant experience, Western qualifications, and adaptability as essential for integration, which (apart from academic qualifications) were learned informally. Third, timely professional exposure was a facilitator to integration, while Luxembourg’s multilingualism, job market, work regulations, and discrimination were inhibitors. Fourth, participants reported stigma and invisibility around their refugee identity. Their religious beliefs did not influence their economic integration. This research draws four main conclusions. First, migrants navigated the impact of wars which disrupted their lives alongside an uncertain present, fraught challenges and mixed feelings. Second, while linguistic skills, relevant academic qualifications, and adaptability were important, there exists tension between the non-formal learning refugee integration ecosystem failing to account for the informal learning that new migrants required. Third, while timely professional exposure facilitates economic integration, Luxembourg’s ‘equal-for-all’ (but pragmatically restrictive) frameworks and multilingualism delay new migrants’ integration. Fourth, there is little shared understanding among stakeholders on the impact of identity and religion in economic integration. The recommendations of this study are to (1) champion timely access of migrants to the job market through intensive language training and professional exposure; (2) assess fairness of employment frameworks for non-majority groups; and (3) reflect on an inclusive, fair, and diverse national adult education strategy.

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Today, there are about 250 million international migrants globally, and the number is increasing each year. Immigrants have contributed to the global economy, bridged cultural and business exchanges between host and home countries, and increased ethnic, racial, social, and cultural diversity in the host societies. Immigrants have also been overgeneralized about, misunderstood, scapegoated, and discriminated against. Understanding what drives international migration, who migrate, and how immigrants fare in destination has valuable theoretical, practical, and policy implications. This dissertation consists of three essays on international immigration. The first paper aims to test a series of immigration theories by studying immigrant skill-selection into South Africa and the United States. Most of the research on the determinants of immigrant skill selection has been focusing on immigrants in the United States and other developed destination countries. However, migration has been growing much faster in recent years between developing countries. This case study offers insights into the similarities and differences of immigration theories within the contexts of international migration into South Africa and the US. This project is funded by the Hamilton Research Fellowship of Columbia School of Social Work. The second paper narrows down the focus onto Asian immigrants in the United States, studying how the skill-selection of Asian immigrants from different regions has evolved over the past four decades. Asian sending countries have experienced tremendous growth in their economy and educational infrastructure. The rapid development provides an excellent opportunity to test the theories on the associations between emigrants’ skill-selection and sending countries’ income, inequality, and education level. On the other hand, during the study period, the United States has had massive expansion employment-based immigration system, followed by cutbacks in immigration policies. I study the association between immigration patterns and these policies to draw inferences on how the changes in immigration policies have affected the skill selection of Asian immigrants. This research is funded by Columbia University Weatherhead East Asia Institute’s Dorothy Borg Research Program Dissertation Research Fellowship. The third paper centers on the less-educated immigrant groups in the US and investigates the gap in welfare use between less-educated immigrant and native households during 1995-2018, spanning periods of economic recessions and recoveries, changes in welfare policy regimes, and policies towards immigrants. I use “decomposition analysis” to study to what extend demographic factors, macroeconomic trends, and welfare and immigration policy could explain the disparities in welfare participation between immigrants and natives. This paper is co-authored with Dr. Neeraj Kaushal from Columbia School of Social Work and Dr. Julia Shu-Huah Wang from the University of Hong Kong. The work has been published in Population Research and Policy Review (doi.org/10.1007/s11113-020-09621-8).

This paper uses a sociological model to compare the residential energy consumption between immigrant students and native-born American students and to explain the difference by demographic characteristics, values, and specific attitudes. Further, it tries to explore whether the relationship between immigration status and residential energy consumption is mediated by value orientation towards frugality and specific attitudes towards energy conservation. The data of an online survey among native-born and foreign-born students at the University of Central Florida are used. The results suggest that immigrants consume less energy at home than native-born Americans, but the time stayed in the US doesn’t have an impact on the energy consumption of immigrants. In addition, the results do not show evidence that value orientation towards frugality and specific attitudes toward energy conservation mediate the relationship between immigration status and energy consumption at home.

Despite the challenges they face in K-12 schools, members of immigrant communities consistently express high educational aspirations, a commitment reflected in the rising numbers of immigrant and first-generation students enrolling in higher education throughout the United States. Though colleges and universities have worked to institute programs that better serve the needs of diversifying student cohorts, members of immigrant families continue to experience challenges once they reach college, including stress and social isolation, restrictions on their future employment, and the looming threat of deportation or family separation. This indicates that personal investment in education and nascent institutional reforms are not enough to mitigate the inequalities that shape educational access for historically excluded communities, raising questions about how immigrant families collectively navigate the challenges and opportunities of higher education. Drawing on 28 months of ethnographic research in the San Fernando Valley, a collection of suburbs north of Los Angeles, CA, this dissertation explores how students from mixed-status immigrant families navigate the transition from high school to postsecondary life. This multi- sited, longitudinal study utilizes in-person and virtual participant observation, semi-structured interviews, archival research, text analysis, and guided photo elicitation. In total, the study includes data collected from students, educators, and caregivers throughout southern California. Over the course of the dissertation, I explore how family dynamics, coupled with socio- political constraints, inform postsecondary trajectories. I further investigate how family dynamics shift in response to new institutional priorities, highlighting the informal advising networks that emerge among older and younger members of the “first-generation” student population. In re-conceptualizing higher education as a familial project, my dissertation makes three primary contributions. First, I show how the pursuit of postsecondary education responds to cultural narratives of sacrifice that provide students with a critical foothold when they face challenges in K-12 and college environments. Second, I unravel how the technocratic activities involved in applying to and matriculating in college require that students from immigrant families engage in strategic acts of disclosure that can exacerbate stress, anxiety, and feelings of non-belonging that persist throughout their time in higher education. Finally, I break apart the traditional notion of the “first-generation” student, showing how older and younger members of this population differentially experience the high-school-to-college transition and seek to pave the way for those that follow them.