Background/Context: Since 1975, 3 million refugees have resettled in the United States. However, researchers and educators know little about the lives of refugee children and families entering the American educational system. Much of the extant research groups refugee children in families with other immigrant groups, failing to recognize the…

Establishing a sense of affiliation to ethnicity is one of the most controversial issues for people who are displaced in countries that are far away from their motherland. The colonisation of the British over Asia and Africa in the nineteenth century resulted in the mass movement of Indian workers from India to Africa. These workers were brought…

This study explores the ways in which English-speaking immigrants negotiate new linguistic and cultural landscapes. I examine immigration and intercultural communication in a more complex and nuanced manner by researching the ways in which expatriates or "high-end" immigrants relocate and interact with host cultures. I conducted 11…

From 2006 to 2008, refugee resettlement agencies brought 4018 refugees to Chicago, Illinois. Using the example of the challenges faced by 14 refugee students from Burundi in adjusting to the U.S. school system, the authors call the attention of schools to the distinction between educating English Language Learners (ELL) and Educating Culturally…

As a guide to learning about other cultures, the first edition of this book used 100 critical incidents spread across 18 themes of human interaction. This edition has the same goal as the first edition, to improve formal efforts to prepare people for interaction with cultures other than their own, but it introduces a number of new incidents and…

This fact sheet is designed to give those working with newly arrived Cubans in the United States a brief refresher on Cuban geography and history, especially the history of Cuba's relations with the United States. It reviews events that have brought Cubans to the United States, and discusses the values newcomers are likely to have brought with…

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…

The Kurds are a distinct group of people who have inhabited the Middle East for as long as there have been written records. The Kurds are the second largest ethnic group in Iraq and Turkey and the third largest group in Iran. In 1975 and 1976, Kurdish refugees from Iraq were admitted to the United States after the failure of their attempt to…

The author relates the story of her parents' outmigration in 1955 from West Virginia to Chicago and their consequent assimilation experiences. The family's problems with self-identity, group identity, discrimination, hostility, cultural differences, and language differences are described and evaluated against the literature, economic factors, and…

Data from 1981, 1983, and 1991 to 1993 permit an analysis of the changes in stress, social resources, coping, mental health, employment, English proficiency, family reunification, consumer practices, and traditional and Canadian customs over the first decade of resettlement for Southeast Asian refugees in Canada. (SLD)

The immigrant population of Israel falls into two large groups: those of European descent and those from North African and Middle Eastern countries. Families from traditionally agrarian Arab countries generally have a lower socioeconomic status, and their children have difficulty competing in school with children from a more urban, industrialized,…

The refugee experience--migrating against one's will--is a source of immense psychological stress. This paper therefore draws on empirical findings and theoretical discussions from the psychological, psychiatric, nursing, social work, sociological, and anthropological literature in order to identify the major stressors encountered in the…

This publication provides autobiographical essays by students originally from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, all of whom arrived in the United States as refugees between 1975 and 1982. Following an introduction is an initial essay, "Becoming a Refugee, Being a Refugee, Ceasing To Be a Refugee," by L. Nguyen-Hong-Nhiem. The student essays are…

This study predicts willingness of refugees to acculturate to North American society based on selected demographic and psychological variables. The hypothesis is that most previous research on refugee adaptation has overemphasized sociological variables such as age, time in the country, and level of education and underemphasized psychological…

California has one of the most diverse societies on earth. Ethnic minorities comprise at least one-third of the state's people, and the society is becoming ever more diverse. It is estimated that by about the year 2010, California will have no majority ethnic group. The historical development of this diversity is traced from the arrival of…