THE DISPERAL AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION OF ASYLUM SEEKERS: BETWEEN LIMINALITY AND BELONGING

Asia over 150 years is a difficult task. Yang’s theory has to explain migration from China during the Gold Rush as well as migration of Chinese graduate students today. It is even more difficult to consider the impact of Asian immigrants on the American society, let alone their adaptation, when the label subsumes Cambodian refugees, Filipinos arriving through family reunification and Japanese company transfers. Yang’s solution is to address each of the major groups separately, with recourse to numerous tables of statistics, which could be improved by citing data sources and noting statistical significance of group differences. In the subsequent summary statements about Asian immigration, the vast diversity of experience is obscured in a quest to hold up a positive picture to those opposing immigration. The experience of the Indochinese is often swept under the rug in the process of telling one story. Yang has the unfortunate habit of throwing in the gender variable without neither incorporating gender into his theory nor explaining the significance of gender differences. He also seems to assume that Christianity among Asian immigrants signals conversion and adaptation to the American society. All this is not to say that there is nothing redeeming about Asian Immigration to the United States. On the contrary, the book brings together in one place all the latest data on this migration stream and its interaction with the host country. It is, as far as I know, unique in providing a comprehensive historical account alongside the contemporary story. Yang includes adoptees from Asia in his discussion and such interesting information as the effect of Asian immigration on health behaviour, food and sports in the USA. The book can certainly serve as a convenient reference, although perhaps not for an audience as general as the author envisions, given the dense and awkward statistical accounts and a proliferation of undefined acronyms.