Millions of people around the world have lost the freedom to remain in their homes or choose where they want to live. In fact, 1 in every 125 people in this world is a refugee. For many refugees, finding a new home is a long, tedious, and painful process. Many host countries that receive refugees suffer from overpopulation, housing shortages, and…

Since 1975, the United States has accepted more than 110,000 Laotian highlanders as refugees, the vast majority of whom are Hmong. The Hmong in America trace their Chinese ancestry back thousands of years, but their recent history is rooted in Laos where Hmong families escaped from China in the mid-1800s. It is difficult to overstate the culture…

Desperation and hope have always sent people from their homelands in search of a better life. The massive immigrations of the past two centuries have had large areas of thinly populated land to settle, but many such escape valves are being sealed, while population pressures mount throughout the world. A rising tide of newcomers and their…

This book examines the settlement process of undocumented migrant workers through an ethnographic study of a Houston (Texas) community of Mayas from a township in Totonicapan, Guatemala. The community is traced from its genesis in 1978, when a few men left the township in search of economic opportunity, to the complex effects of the 1986…