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Anthropology study finds that immigrants from India and Vietnam become American over time

Immigrants in North Texas develop American identity by participating in ethnic community activities, then branching out to broader civic and political life

Whether contributing money to Boy Scouts, donating a statue of Gandhi for a Dallas city plaza, or successfully lobbying against flying Vietnam’s communist flag in a citywide international celebration, a new study shows that immigrants in Texas are involved in their communities.

In North Texas, immigrants from India and Vietnam develop and embrace their American identity over time — without shedding their culture of origin, as some say they should, according to a new anthropological study.

The research found that, for these groups, becoming a U.S. citizen is distinctly different from becoming American, say immigration experts Caroline B. Brettell and Deborah Reed-Danahay, the study’s authors.

For new Vietnamese and Indian immigrants, whether naturalized citizens or not, American identity deepens as they participate in activities, festivals and banquets at their churches, schools, temples, business and civic associations, and their social and cultural organizations, say anthropologists Brettell and Reed-Danahay.

The authors cite as an example Andy Nguyen, now a Texan, who fled Vietnam and arrived in the United States as a teenager. As a young man he was commissioned an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, went on to become a successful North Texas businessman and served primarily as an ethnic community leader. Later Nguyen ran as a Republican and won election to county government.

Caution: Don’t impose formal standards to force integration of immigrants
From their research, Brettell and Reed-Danahay conclude that policymakers should be cautious with any attempts to integrate, assimilate or incorporate immigrants. They recommend against imposing top-down standards on how citizenship should be expressed — such as requiring full English proficiency or focusing exclusively on formal political participation.

“A key contribution of our research is its emphasis on the fact that the civic incorporation of newcomers does not necessarily mean abandoning who you are,” says Brettell, an anthropology professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

“Immigrant communities have spaces and places that are already operating as viable arenas for expressing civic and political presence and for becoming American,” she says.

Participants in the three-year study were Indian and Vietnamese immigrants in the twin North Texas cities of Dallas and Fort Worth and surrounding suburbs. The region, known as DFW, is the largest metropolitan area in Texas.

Brettell and Reed-Danahay uncovered how North Texas Vietnamese and Indian immigrants develop their identity as Americans by engaging first within their own communities, where they practice and develop citizenship skills, which they then use in a broader American context.

“We view citizenship as the ways in which immigrants participate in the civic and political life of America,” Brettell says, “so they move over time from the periphery to the core of American civic and political life.”

Authors carried out three years of oral interviews and direct observation
Brettell and Reed-Danahay report the study results in their book, “Civic Engagements: The Citizenship Practices of Indian & Vietnamese Immigrants” (Stanford University Press, 2012).

The authors interviewed 67 first-generation Indian and Vietnamese parents, many but not all of whom are naturalized U.S. citizens. They also interviewed college students in their early to mid-20s whose parents were immigrants from either India or Vietnam and who either were born in the United States or arrived as young children.

The anthropologists asked participants what it means to them to be American, Indian, Vietnamese and Asian. They also asked about citizenship and participation in political, religious and civic activities.

The authors also conducted participant observation at a variety of community events, including voluntary association meetings, fundraising and other banquets, ethnic festivals, religious ceremonies, youth group meetings and political protests.

Dallas-Fort Worth region and Texas are a unique immigrant gateway
The number of foreign-born individuals has dramatically increased in Texas during the past 40 years as the state’s economy has boomed and diversified beyond oil. Both Texas and DFW attract highly skilled and well-educated immigrants to the telecommunications, health, education, transportation and financial industries.

After Mexicans and Salvadorans, Indians and Vietnamese are the largest groups of immigrants in DFW. The 2000 Census counted 47,090 foreign-born Vietnamese and 49,669 foreign-born Indians in DFW.

Brettell and Reed-Danahay found that for the most part both Indian and Vietnamese immigrants to the region first arrived elsewhere in the United States, then moved to DFW, often settling in suburbs.

Typically, Indian immigrants came voluntarily, seeking education, jobs and economic opportunity, although some came to join family members. Generally they have high levels of education and income, and typically already speak English, says Brettell, who conducted the Indian research.

Vietnamese came as refugees, primarily to escape communism and in search of freedom and democracy. More recently they’ve also come to join family members, says Reed-Danahay, who conducted the Vietnamese research.

On the surface there are a great many differences between these two Asian immigrant populations, say the authors. But the anthropological research revealed significant similarities in the way immigrants from both India and Vietnam engage in civic and political activities.

The researchers also found that homeland politics drives Vietnamese political activities among the first generation much more than it does those of Indians. Immigrants from India attempt to downplay the regional and religious diversity that is often divisive in their homeland.

“It was very moving to get to know Vietnamese who were former refugees who had suffered so much during and after the war,” says Reed-Danahay. “And yet it was a significant finding of this study that despite the hardships of their experiences, the first generation and subsequent generations are participating in American institutions and taking leadership roles in the same ways as are Indians who arrived primarily as economic migrants.”

Immigrants report their American identity shifts, depending on context
Despite a desire to belong and overcome feelings of otherness, Indian and Vietnamese immigrants reported that fellow Americans sometimes exclude them on the basis of their accent, their skin color and their ethnic characteristics. Many Vietnamese reported prejudice in the United States against Asians.

While there hasn’t been any sweeping anti-immigrant legislation in Texas such as in California, there have been a number of bills proposed at the state level aimed at illegal immigration, as well as some ordinances at the local level.

“The discourse is so dominated by the issue of illegality that we overlook what a range of immigrants are doing and how they are contributing and becoming Americans, including the increasing importance of Asians in the political process,” Brettell says.

Other findings of the study:

  • First-generation immigrants viewed becoming a U.S. citizen distinct from becoming American.
  • Situation or context can determine identity, immigrants report. They feel American when they are at work, eating out at McDonald’s, celebrating Thanksgiving, engaged in American sports or politics, traveling with their U.S. passport, and back in their homeland, where they realize they are now different from people in their home country.
  • 27 percent of Vietnamese fathers and 36 percent of Vietnamese mothers reported they rarely felt or identified as American, even though 76 percent of Vietnamese parents interviewed had become U.S. citizens. Some expressed that because they don’t look white, they’ll never be considered truly American. Some of the fathers had been soldiers and prisoners of war in their homeland, fleeing because of the Vietnam War.
  • More Vietnamese women than Indian women identify as American. Vietnamese women tend to work outside the home, while Indian women often stay at home, charged with sustaining the native culture.
  • Among first-generation Indian immigrants, 81 percent of fathers said they at least somewhat commonly identify themselves as American, compared to only 44 percent of mothers.
  • First-generation Indians and Vietnamese share ambivalence to the labels Asian and Asian American, citing vast differences between Asian countries, such as those created by historic animosities based on political repression. Their children, however, don’t reject those labels.
  • The children of immigrants are beginning to participate more directly in the American political process.
  • In DFW there are no clearly defined Vietnamese ethnic settlement enclaves, such as Little Saigon in Orange County, California. There are, however, spaces where immigrants interact, such as strip malls. Print and online ethnic newspapers are also important, particularly for Vietnamese immigrants, while radio media are important to the Indian community.
  • While some Americans want immigrants to speak English, the anthropologists found Vietnamese Americans who were sad their children weren’t fluent in Vietnamese.

“Both Indian and Vietnamese immigrants have learned to ‘talk the talk’ of civic engagement,” Brettell says, “as they refer to their ‘teamwork,’ ‘good neighborship,’ ‘giving back’ and ‘entering the mainstream’ — but they shape these to their own actions.” — Margaret Allen

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Culture, Society & Family Economics & Statistics Researcher news SMU In The News

Dallas Morning News: Texas interstates driving economy, growth

SMU cultural anthropologist Caroline B. Brettell is quoted in the March 6, 2011 issue of the Dallas Morning News in the section “From the Front Page,” an in-depth look at the news.

The article by reporters Michael E. Young and Ryan McNeill, “Texas interstates driving economy, growth” discusses a geographic analysis of the state’s population by the Dallas Morning News and how the major interstates are driving change and urbanization.

Brettell, a professor in the SMU Department of Anthropology, comments on the new model of urbanism with multiple centers.

Full story available to DMN subscribers.

EXCERPT:

By Michael E. Young and Ryan McNeill
Dallas Morning News

… Caroline Brettell, a professor of anthropology at Southern Methodist University, said the cities came first, but the interstates helped them to grow.

Now it’s all about the nodes at the ends of those highways,” she said. “That’s where the jobs are.”

Looking across the Dallas area, she pointed out places like State Highway 114 in Irving, the corporate offices edging the Dallas North Tollway in Collin County, and the growth in upscale suburbs like Southlake.

“We’re seeing these polycentric metropolitan areas now — the new model of urbanism with multiple centers,” Brettell said. “So cities look very different. For Dallas, this is something that has happened over the last 30 years. And it’s a problem for urban cores, because the dynamism has moved out and around the city center.”

It’s the highways, she said, that link everything together.

Full story available to DMN subscribers.

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Culture, Society & Family Researcher news SMU In The News

New York Times: Who Gets To Be An American?


EFE: “La inmigracion es una amenaza para los ciudadanos de Farmers Branch”

SMU cultural anthropologist Caroline B. Brettell is quoted in the Sept. 20, 2010 issue of “Upfront,” the news magazine for teens published jointly by The New York Times and Scholastic.

In the article “Who Gets To Be An American?” journalist Patricia Smith explores the 14th Amendment, which makes everyone born in the United States a citizen, but which is now under attack in the controversy over immigration.

Brettell, a professor in the SMU Department of Anthropology, comments on birthright citizenship in the article.

EXCERPT:

The 14th Amendment makes everyone born in the U.S. a citizen — including the children of illegal immigrants. But now, birthright citizenship is under attack.

By Patricia Smith
Ever since the 14th Amendment was passed in the aftermath of the Civil War, it’s been largely unquestioned that everyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen.
But, as the national debate over illegal immigration intensifies in an election year, birthright citizenship is being seriously questioned for the first time in almost 150 years.

“This surfaces every once in a while as part of a bigger debate — it’s usually more of a fringe discussion,” says Audrey Singer of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “What’s different this time is that people in Congress are talking about it.”

The Amendment was adopted in 1868 to ensure the citizenship of American-born former slaves and their children.

Opponents of birthright citizenship say it encourages continued illegal immigration. They contend that illegal immigrants are not under U.S. jurisdiction, as the Amendment specifies, and therefore their American-born children should not automatically be citizens.

“If you are an illegal immigrant, we clearly have not given you permission to reside here,” says Rosemary Jenks of NumbersUSA, a group that favors decreased immigration. “You are still subject to the jurisdiction of your own country.” …

… Some Republicans worry that the issue could backfire in the long term. “This type of position may help you win a few elections,” says Alfonso Aguilar of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, a group that tries to draw Hispanics to the Republican Party. “But you are damaging relations with the Latino community.”

The U.S. isn’t alone in offering birthright citizenship; Canada and most Latin American countries, including Brazil and Mexico, do so. But it’s much less common in Europe and Asia, where citizenship more frequently depends on whether a parent is a citizen.

“Birthright citizenship is particularly characteristic of countries in the ‘New World’ — settler societies that wanted people to come,” notes Caroline Brettell, an anthropologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

The 14th Amendment has played a critical role in the country’s history, says historian Gary Gerstle of Vanderbilt University.

Read the full story.

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Culture, Society & Family

Farmers Branch, Tx.: Case study shows immigrants seen as threat to white, middle-class “American” identity

Who belongs in America?


EFE: “La inmigracion es una amenaza para los ciudadanos de Farmers Branch”

Immigration has sparked a raging national debate about that question — including in the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch, Texas, the first U.S. city to adopt an ordinance requiring renters to prove they are legal residents.

Contrary to what many believe, however, race isn’t the only driving reason that some white, middle-class people feel threatened by immigrants, according to a new analysis by anthropologists at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Some white, middle-class people also perceive immigrants who are settling in their suburban communities as a threat to their class status and to their very identity as Americans, say anthropologists Caroline B. Brettell and Faith G. Nibbs.

Immigrants — with cultures and traditions different from white suburbanites — are viewed by some as an assault on long-standing symbols of American nationality, the researchers say. Those symbols include middle-class values and tastes, and the perception that Americans are patriotic and law-abiding, say the researchers, both in the SMU Department of Anthropology.

brettell.jpg
Caroline Brettell
nibbs_cropped.jpg
Faith Nibbs

“For many whites, American identity is wrapped up with being suburban and middle class, and when they see immigrants changing their communities and potentially threatening their class status, they react with anti-immigrant legislation,” says Brettell.

Class and culture
It’s true that for some whites, immigrants can represent competition for economic security and scarce resources, say Brettell and Nibbs — but in the suburbs they are also seen as a threat to the white, middle-class concept of “social position.”

Because of that, Brettell and Nibbs argue for greater attention to class and culture in the study of contemporary immigration into the United States.

The anthropologists base their conclusion on a close analysis of Farmers Branch, a suburb of almost 28,000 people. Farmers Branch made news in 2006 as the first U.S. city to adopt an ordinance requiring that apartment managers document tenants as legal residents.

For their analysis, the researchers looked at newspaper articles and blogs, conducted a lengthy interview with a key City Council member, carried out background historical research and analyzed U.S. Census data.

The research has been accepted for publication in the journal International Migration in an article titled “Immigrant Suburban Settlement and the ‘Threat’ to Middle Class Status and Identity: The Case of Farmers Branch, Texas.”

Flooding into suburbia
New immigrants to the United States are settling in major gateway cities like Dallas and making their homes directly in middle-class suburbs, say Brettell and Nibbs.

These suburbs — once called the “bourgeois utopia” where middle-class values triumph — are populated by white people who decades before fled the central cities to escape poor housing, deteriorating schools, and racial and ethnic diversity, the researchers say.

But when immigrants and white suburbs mix, the result can be explosive — as in the case of Farmers Branch. Whites view their hometown changing. And the changes feel very foreign to them — new religious institutions, ethnic strip-shopping malls, signs in languages other than English, and bilingual programs for education, health care and law-enforcement programs.

“Free and white”
The historic roots of Farmers Branch lie in a land grant designed to draw “free and white” inhabitants to the area in the 1850s, say the researchers.

Farmers Branch grew to 17,500 by 1970, and at that time there were 320 Hispanic surnames in the city. By 2000, however, the Hispanic population had grown to more than one-third of the total. By 2008, Hispanics were the largest demographic group, with 46.7 percent of the population.

Today, like many such cities, Farmers Branch sees its minority, elderly and low-income population growing faster than the national average, say Brettell and Nibbs.

The number of owner-occupied homes in Farmers Branch has fallen dramatically, from 87 percent in 1960 to 66 percent in 2000. Raw median income in 2000 was below what it was in 1970 dollars, adjusted against 2008 dollars, say the researchers.

“If you are a family with options, would you move into this neighborhood if presented with these figures?” asks Mayor Tim O’Hare in the journal article. O’Hare led the fight for the renter’s ordinance.

“Rule of Law”
Brettell and Nibbs say that white suburbanites have also invoked the “Rule of Law” in Farmers Branch and elsewhere.

“As the formulation of laws and their enforcement are disproportionately unavailable to ethnic minorities, and completely inaccessible to undocumented immigrants, the principle of Rule of Law has become a convenient weapon for the Farmers Branch middle class in their fight for status and the status quo,” say Brettell and Nibbs in the article. “Add to this a bit of the legacy of Texas frontier mentality and patriotism and you have a line drawn in the sand by those who stand for the Rule of Law as something absolutely fundamental to American identity and hence perceive illegal immigrants as a threat to that identity.”

In that way, the “Rule of Law” is a tool to exclude unauthorized immigrants and attempt to legislate a certain quality of life, such as English-only communication, as well as proof of citizenship to rent a dwelling, apply for food stamps or get school financial aid, say the researchers.

“Everyone is looking at race but not at class in the study of immigrants, and particularly in anti-immigrant backlash,” Brettell says. “We add to this literature the analysis of ‘Rule of Law’ as a newly rhetorical device that excludes illegal immigrants. Our article offers a new way of looking at this issue.”

Caroline B. Brettell is University Distinguished Professor in the SMU Department of Anthropology and Faith G. Nibbs is a doctoral candidate at SMU. — Margaret Allen