In her ethnographic study of Lao American students at an urban, public high school, Bic Ngo shows how simplistic accounts of these students smooth over unfinished, precarious identities and contested social relations. Exploring the ways that immigrant youth identities are shaped by dominant discourses that simplify and confine their experiences…

This paper was written in anticipation of the International Conference on Indochinese Refugees (ICIR), held in June 1989 in Geneva (Switzerland). The ICIR was convened to respond to chronic refugee problems in the region, first addressed in the July 1979 Meeting in Geneva on the Situation of Refugees and Displaced Persons in Southeast Asia. It is…

This descriptive report summarizes data on students enrolled in the Des Moines Independent Community School District's English as a Second Language (ESL) program for Southeast Asian students. By law the district is required to provide special English instruction for students who have a limited command of English. Goals of the ESL program include:…

Examines methodological problems that metaphorical nonequivalence poses for cross-cultural survey research. Data from 1,105 urban ninth graders (including 105 Laotian Hmong) in St. Paul (Minnesota) illustrate problems of the translation of psychological instruments and the difficulties of administering a single instrument to culturally different…

The social practices described and analyzed in this report are based on a 2-year ethnographic study conducted in San Francisco and Sacramento (California) in neighborhoods that are home to five new immigrant groups: (1) Mexicans, (2) Chinese, (3) Vietnamese, (4) Mien (Lao), and (5) undocumented refugees from El Salvador. Interviews with more than…

In this article, I draw on poststructuralist work on "citationality" to elucidate an urban high school's student culture and intervention efforts with regard to LGBQ issues. I contend that the language, ideas and practices of LGBQ issues and awareness among students and staff "cite" or draw on broader (and often competing) discourses of normalcy,…

An experimental course on Asian American women, offered by the Department of Family life at the University of Minnesota is described. The curriculum innovation was designed in response to the Asian refugee settlement in the St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, area. The undergraduate course used a 1982 anthology containing works focusing on Asian…