This dissertation examines whether a degree earned abroad is less valuable for Asianimmigrants in the U.S. labor market than for White immigrants and, if so, the reasons for such disparities. Many studies have documented the existence of a foreign education penalty. However, the underlying mechanisms for the lower returns to foreign education are still being determined. Building on the demographic heterogeneity framework, this study aims to advance our understanding of immigrants’ experience in the labor market by investigating whether the lower earnings returns for Asian immigrants with foreign education stem from lower educational quality/transferability, as suggested by the human capital approach, or from biased practices in the labor market, as proposed by credentialism. Methodologically, this study will compare the earnings outcomes of Asian immigrants to those of U.S.-born Whites as well as foreign-educated white immigrants. Using ACS data from 2015-2019 on White and Asian workers aged 25-64 with bachelor’s degrees or higher, I analyze the impact of STEM majors and the English-speaking proficiency of the sending country to explore the effect of human capital transferability. Then, I examine the effect of a country’s GDP per capita and the rates of tertiary education to capture the effect of educational quality. To access credentialism, I compare the earnings differences for Asian immigrants who earn degrees in regions more culturally or historically similar to the U.S. to those degrees earned in other regions. Then, I examine the residual earnings difference between foreign-educated White and Asian immigrants to access queuing theory. Finally, I separate the study population into subsamples of men and women to investigate whether Asian immigrants’ labor market disadvantages are contingent on gender. Chapter 2 to 5 can be read as a stand-alone study that uses nationally representative survey data to study the aspects listed above. Results from these analyses show that the earnings disadvantage of Asian immigrants educated in foreign countries is largely due to the limited transferability of their human capital in the U.S. labor market rather than to credentialism. Returns to foreign education are higher for immigrants with STEM degrees or from countries where English is an official language. In addition to the human capital transferability, this study also shows that White immigrants seem to have an advantage over Asian immigrants if they were educated in places with longer linguistic and cultural differences compared to the United States. In addition, my findings support the explanation that female immigrants’ varied family experiences and migration paths are different from those of their male counterparts, thus leading to their notable disadvantages in the labor markets. The results indicate that establishing clear and transparent processes for recognizing foreign academic and professional credentials is a critical way to alleviate the lower returns on Asian immigrants’ foreign credentials. / Sociology

<p dir="ltr">The purpose of this paper is to highlight how racial stereotypes, such as the model minority stereotype, are contributing to the continued exclusion of Asian Americans in conversations concerning public health issues like alcohol use. The paper elaborates on potential reasons for the continued overlook of this subpopulation in the United States, highlights the overlooked diversity within the Asian American community, and points out the reality of negative repercussions of alcohol use and treatment barriers within this community. The paper emphasizes the need to shift away from reactive treatment care and towards culture-specific preventative interventions and treatments. Specifically, the paper explains why preventative interventions for Asian American college students can discourage both short-and-long term harm caused by alcohol use and highlights key individual and environmental factors to consider when creating preventative interventions and treatments.</p><p dir="ltr">With the growing need for culture-specific preventative treatments for alcohol use, nuanced explorations of the relationships between environmental and individual factors for Asian American college students is needed to better understand alcohol initiation and endorsement among this understudied population. As such, the goal of the current study was to examine the relationships between social identity stereotypes, descriptive norms surrounding alcohol use, and social media usage to see how their interactions influenced Asian American college student’s alcohol use. The current study confirmed that descriptive norms surrounding alcohol mediated the relationship between social media alcohol exposure and alcohol use. Additionally, generation status was found to be a significant individual factor that cannot be overlooked when creating treatment or programming for this population. The study highlights the importance and need for disaggregated Asian American data to develop a nuanced understanding of the epidemiology for alcohol use within this population. Practical implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.</p>

The intersection of Asian American identity and illicit substance use is greatly understudied in psychological literature, especially with matters of mental health and drug use being stigmatized by Asian cultural norms. However, with an increasingly alarming number of fatal drug overdoses by Asian Americans at electronic dance music (EDM) events, attention must be drawn to the needs of this unique population. The present study characterizes this community by drawing from data of 1,290 Asian American young adults who participate in the EDM scene. This study also hypothesizes the impact of acculturative stress and feelings of social belonging on MDMA usage patterns. Analysis reveals a population of largely East and Southeast Asian, 2nd generation, college-educated young adults with strikingly high usage rates of MDMA, an illicit drug linked to the EDM scene. Multiple regression models were created that could predict MDMA use through various measures related to acculturative stress and social belonging. Findings revealed the significant impact of acculturation, acculturative stress, mental health, peer relationships, and desires for social belonging on this population’s MDMA usage patterns, providing an important platform from which future research may launch much-needed additional studies of Asian American young adults and illicit drug use.

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<p>This dissertation investigates the traumatic legacies of colonialism, imperialism and authoritarianism in Southeast Asia, the diasporic conditions of Southeast Asian refugees in North America after 1975, and the relationship among literature, ethics, and reconciliation more broadly. Focusing primarily on contemporary novels that intervene in the cultural memory of the Cambodian genocide, the War in Viet Nam, and the World War II Japanese Occupation of Malaysia, my dissertation conceptualizes an intimate politics of reconciliation that routes the study of justice foremost through questions of affect, epistemology and ethics. An intimate politics of reconciliation, I argue, encapsulates a constellation of intimate memorial acts—ritual, testimony, collaboration, gifting, and narrative reconstruction—that operate within and against macro-political and juridical modalities of justice. My research highlights productive scenes of convergence between discourses of post-genocide reconciliation and alternative spiritual cosmologies, between refugee collaborative writing and theories of gifting, and between theories of forgetting and social and psychic reparation. In arguing that Southeast Asian diasporic genealogies paradoxically foreground the necessity of both remembering and forgetting in the collective work of reconciliation, this dissertation engages with and challenges two key theoretical paradigms in Asian American Studies—a politics of social justice premised upon a discourse of “subjectlessness” and a psychoanalytic paradigm of productive melancholia theory.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Untold Narratives: A Refugee Experience from Laos to Richmond, California is focused on the Mien refugee experience from Laos to Richmond, California. This thesis highlights the ways Cold War politics, the Secret War, and heavy industrialization have impacted Mien communities who have been displaced from their homelands into refugee camps, and again through sponsorship into the United States. This thesis looks at political theories that discuss inequalities that exist, particularly through environmental degradation and negative health impacts that Mien refugees are experiencing in their resettlement into Richmond, California. Due to the limited scholarly articles and documented narratives that are available in regards to Mien experiences, interviews were conducted to highlight the stories and experiences of Mien refugees paired with a historical background of their journey from China, to Laos, and to Richmond. Even in the face of so much struggle and hardship, many Mien people have been resilient and been successful in building community and fighting for justice.

Interdisciplinary integration and practice through meaning making and context can contribute to the reconsideration and revolution of research by supporting narrativesand creating space for public discourse. In researching my heritage as a Korean adoptee, I found that the literature has been predominantly from adoptive parents' perspective,focusing primarily on child and adolescent development. Lacking in the literature is the adult adoptee perspective, and specifically their experiential voices. This interdisciplinary thesis has three major purposes (1) to explore how transracial transnational Korean adoption affects identity formation, (2) to illustrate how mentoring relationships can be a means to address and reframe the theme of loss as experienced by an adoptee, and (3) to use interdisciplinary inquiry as a means of expression to make meaning and illuminate adoptee identity formation. Drawing from my personal experience as an adoptee, an artist, a researcher, and as an educational mentee I integrate past research findings, Scholarly Personal Narrative (SPN: storytelling), epistolary Scholarly Personal Narrative (eSPN: epistolary storytelling), and visual artistic research through jewelry/sculpture to describe constructing my adoptee identity. Images of the jewelry/sculpture are provided, while a public art opening displayed the series of work.