Events

The Success Frame and the Achievement Paradox: The Children of Chinese Immigrants and Vietnamese Refugees in Los Angeles, USA by Prof Zhou Min

Date: 07 Nov 2014
Time: 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Venue:

FASS Executive Seminar Room AS7 01-07
The Shaw Foundation Building (AS7)
NUS @ Kent Ridge Campus

Organisers:

This seminar is jointly organized by Centre for Family and Population Research, and Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.

CHAIRPERSON

Prof Jean Yeung, National University of Singapore.


ABSTRACT

This talk is based on my co-authored book manuscript, entitled The Success Frame and Model Minority Paradox: De-Constructing Asian American Exceptionalism (with Jennifer Lee, forthcoming in Russell Sage Foundation Press). In this study, we adopt an emergent approach to the role of culture in influencing socioeconomic outcomes among children of immigrants. More concretely, we posit that an immigrant group’s culture—institutions, frames, and mindsets—emerges and continually reforms as a result of unique historical, legal, institutional, and social psychological processes. By unveiling the ways in which these processes are linked, we show how the children of Chinese immigrants and Vietnamese refugees are able to override their ethnoracial and/or class disadvantages in ways that defy the traditional status attainment model to attain exceptional educational outcomes. We highlight the roles of immigrant educational selectivity, ethnic community organization, and host-society reception in affecting the development of group-specific cultural frames and practices, group-based stereotypes, and mindsets about achievement and success. We also discuss the achievement paradox of Asian Americans.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Zhou Min is Tan Lark Sye Chair Professor of Sociology, Head of the Division of Sociology, and Director of the Chinese Heritage Centre, Nanyang Technological University. Her main areas of research include international migration, immigrant integration/adaptation, the new second generation, ethnic/racial relations, ethnic entrepreneurship, Chinese Diaspora, and Asia and Asian America, and she has published widely in these areas, including 14 books and more than 160 journal articles and book chapters. She is the author of Chinatown (1992), Contemporary Chinese America (2009), The Accidental Sociologist in Asian American Studies (2011); co-author of Growing up American (with Bankston, 1998); and co-editor of Asian American Youth (with Lee, 2004).

REGISTRATION

All are welcome. Kindly rsvp to faspljm@nus.edu.sg by 6 Nov 2014.