Marriageable us, undesirable them : reproducing social inequalities through marital boundaries

Previous efforts applying a one-identity-at-work model suggest that upward mobility serves as an engine for marital assimilation. This model allows for the identification of immigrant conditions for integration. However, it does not fully explain the racial and gender asymmetry associated with intermarriage. I am applying an intersectionality approach to addressing issues concerning when and how group differences affect the construction of marriageability, defined as marital boundaries based on us/ them distinctions. Drawing from interviews with 67 highly achieving, Chinese-speaking immigrants and their children residing in the San Diego area, I present evidence illustrating the interactive effects among race, ethnicity, nation, class, and gender. I found that although the immigrants from Taiwan are very similar to Chinese ones in terms of appearance, socioeconomic status, and cultural traditions, the former generally views the latter as unmarriageable them rather than marriageable us because of the group’s strong feelings and expressions of Taiwanese national identity. Yet, both groups show similar patterns in terms of redrawing their marital boundaries along race, class, and gender lines. Generally, white supremacy makes the immigrants embrace white people regardless of their class differences but disapprove darker-skin ones. Yet, one’s middle or upper-class background can make his/her undesirable racial and ethnic difference less visible. More important, the immigrants’ essentialist approach to care manifested by their evaluations of their in-law’s performance has sufficient power to undo marital boundaries, suggesting that gender trumps race and class on the family level. Finally, I found that morality serves as source of legitimacy for the immigrants’ marital preferences. I identify dynamic movement between marital and moral boundaries by showing an arbitrary relationship among perceived moral traits and group difference perceptions

Rare Variants in Ischemic Stroke: An Exome Pilot Study

The genetic architecture of ischemic stroke is complex and is likely to include rare or low frequency variants with high penetrance and large effect sizes. Such variants are likely to provide important insights into disease pathogenesis compared to common variants with small effect sizes. Because a significant portion of human functional variation may derive from the protein-coding portion of genes we undertook a pilot study to identify variation across the human exome (i.e., the coding exons across the entire human genome) in 10 ischemic stroke cases. Our efforts focused on evaluating the feasibility and identifying the difficulties in this type of research as it applies to ischemic stroke. The cases included 8 African-Americans and 2 Caucasians selected on the basis of similar stroke subtypes and by implementing a case selection algorithm that emphasized the genetic contribution of stroke risk. Following construction of paired-end sequencing libraries, all predicted human exons in each sample were captured and sequenced. Sequencing generated an average of 25.5 million read pairs (75 bp×2) and 3.8 Gbp per sample. After passing quality filters, screening the exomes against dbSNP demonstrated an average of 2839 novel SNPs among African-Americans and 1105 among Caucasians. In an aggregate analysis, 48 genes were identified to have at least one rare variant across all stroke cases. One gene, CSN3, identified by screening our prior GWAS results in conjunction with our exome results, was found to contain an interesting coding polymorphism as well as containing excess rare variation as compared with the other genes evaluated. In conclusion, while rare coding variants may predispose to the risk of ischemic stroke, this fact has yet to be definitively proven. Our study demonstrates the complexities of such research and highlights that while exome data can be obtained, the optimal analytical methods have yet to be determined

Marital boundaries and highly achieving immigrants: How upward assimilation can lead to intermarriage resistance

According to the ‘Asian American marriage paradox’, Asian-origin groups generally achieve upward assimilation, but experience different paths to marital assimilation, including marriage to white natives. The author uses the perceptions of a sample of successful Taiwanese immigrant parents regarding marriageable partners for their children to examine how integration can result in resistance to intermarriage with whites. An analytical framework called marital boundaries is proposed to show how differences between ‘marriageable us’ and ‘undesirable them’ are perceived by individuals who occupy different family positions. Data from 37 interviews with highly achieving Taiwan-origin immigrants residing in San Diego reveal a long-term effect of homeland politics on their Asian-centered hierarchies for preferred marriage partners for their children. Impacted by a growing sense of Taiwanese nationalism starting in the 1970s, many interviewees described a moral line between different Asian groups that helped them define their marital boundaries. The data provide evidence of a tendency among Asian immigrants to follow segmented assimilation paths based in part on transnational influences. The findings challenge assumptions found in the immigration literature that define intermarriage with whites as a form of social mobility, as well as descriptions of Asians as a single homogeneous category

How Homeland Politics Affect In-group Differences in Identity Formation among Contemporary Chinese-Speaking Immigrants

The immigrant identity literature, which describes various routes to a range of identity claims, suffers from an assumption of mutually exclusive “categorical identities.” In this study the author re-conceptualizes immigrants’ identity formation as a historical causal process involving relational “identity categories.” The sample consists of 56 highly achieving Taiwanese and Chinese immigrants with at least twenty-year lengths of stay. They respectively represent precedents and followers of contemporary Chinese-speaking migrants to the U.S. A major finding is that while Taiwanese immigrants tend to develop an exclusive identity formation process, the Chinese process entails inclusivity. I argue that this within-group difference has its roots in pre-migration conditions. Ethnic polarization in Taiwan has generated and sustained a political form of hyphenated-American identity, a process in which “Taiwanese,” “Chinese” and “Asian” are perceived as mutually exclusive categories of identity. The lack of an equivalent pre-migration event for Chinese immigrants has resulted in the formation of a culturally hyphenated identity in which “Chinese” is interpreted as a symbolic ethnicity that complements Asian panethnicity. By addressing the enduring effects of homeland politics on immigrant identity, this study challenges existing ideas on associations among time/length of stay, culture/common language, and immigrant integration

Marriageable Us and Undesirable Them: Asian Immigrants’ Marital Boundaries and the American Racial Divide

A growing number of intermarriage researchers are investigating parental influences on their children’s marital relationships, but no one has yet examined the effect of the intermarriage statuses of immigrant parents. In this paper I look at how Asian immigrant parents’ own marital decisions shape their understanding of their children’s marriageability and race in the U.S. I introduce an analytical framework that I call ‘marital boundary-making’ to show how differences between ‘marriageable us’ and ‘undesirable them’ are perceived by individuals in different family positions. I use data from 35 interviews with Taiwan-origin immigrant parents residing in San Diego to show how structural assimilation does not necessarily lead to white desirability, even among immigrants who have collectively achieved high socioeconomic status. I found that while the intermarried parents described a color-blind type of marital boundary that plays down race, the coethnic parents expressed a preference hierarchy with Taiwanese at the top. Neither group expressed a strong preference for whites. Further, even though the parents’ marriageable perceptions were inconsistent, their undesirable interpretations were identical—evidence of a black/non-black racial divide. The findings challenge the assumption commonly found in immigration studies that intermarriage with whites represents a form of social mobility

How Homeland Politics Affect In-group Differences in Identity Formation among Contemporary Chinese-Speaking Immigrants

The immigrant identity literature, which describes various routes to a range of identity claims, suffers from an assumption of mutually exclusive “categorical identities.” In this study the author re-conceptualizes immigrants’ identity formation as a historical causal process involving relational “identity categories.” The sample consists of 56 highly achieving Taiwanese and Chinese immigrants with at least twenty-year lengths of stay. They respectively represent precedents and followers of contemporary Chinese-speaking migrants to the U.S. A major finding is that while Taiwanese immigrants tend to develop an exclusive identity formation process, the Chinese process entails inclusivity. I argue that this within-group difference has its roots in pre-migration conditions. Ethnic polarization in Taiwan has generated and sustained a political form of hyphenated-American identity, a process in which “Taiwanese,” “Chinese” and “Asian” are perceived as mutually exclusive categories of identity. The lack of an equivalent pre-migration event for Chinese immigrants has resulted in the formation of a culturally hyphenated identity in which “Chinese” is interpreted as a symbolic ethnicity that complements Asian panethnicity. By addressing the enduring effects of homeland politics on immigrant identity, this study challenges existing ideas on associations among time/length of stay, culture/common language, and immigrant integration

How Homeland Politics Affect In-group Differences in Identity Formation among Contemporary Chinese-Speaking Immigrants

The immigrant identity literature, which describes various routes to a range of identity claims, suffers from an assumption of mutually exclusive “categorical identities.” In this study the author re-conceptualizes immigrants’ identity formation as a historical causal process involving relational “identity categories.” The sample consists of 56 highly achieving Taiwanese and Chinese immigrants with at least twenty-year lengths of stay. They respectively represent precedents and followers of contemporary Chinese-speaking migrants to the U.S. A major finding is that while Taiwanese immigrants tend to develop an exclusive identity formation process, the Chinese process entails inclusivity. I argue that this within-group difference has its roots in pre-migration conditions. Ethnic polarization in Taiwan has generated and sustained a political form of hyphenated-American identity, a process in which “Taiwanese,” “Chinese” and “Asian” are perceived as mutually exclusive categories of identity. The lack of an equivalent pre-migration event for Chinese immigrants has resulted in the formation of a culturally hyphenated identity in which “Chinese” is interpreted as a symbolic ethnicity that complements Asian panethnicity. By addressing the enduring effects of homeland politics on immigrant identity, this study challenges existing ideas on associations among time/length of stay, culture/common language, and immigrant integration

Marriageable Us and Undesirable Them: Asian Immigrants’ Marital Boundaries and the American Racial Divide

A growing number of intermarriage researchers are investigating parental influences on their children’s marital relationships, but no one has yet examined the effect of the intermarriage statuses of immigrant parents. In this paper I look at how Asian immigrant parents’ own marital decisions shape their understanding of their children’s marriageability and race in the U.S. I introduce an analytical framework that I call ‘marital boundary-making’ to show how differences between ‘marriageable us’ and ‘undesirable them’ are perceived by individuals in different family positions. I use data from 35 interviews with Taiwan-origin immigrant parents residing in San Diego to show how structural assimilation does not necessarily lead to white desirability, even among immigrants who have collectively achieved high socioeconomic status. I found that while the intermarried parents described a color-blind type of marital boundary that plays down race, the coethnic parents expressed a preference hierarchy with Taiwanese at the top. Neither group expressed a strong preference for whites. Further, even though the parents’ marriageable perceptions were inconsistent, their undesirable interpretations were identical—evidence of a black/non-black racial divide. The findings challenge the assumption commonly found in immigration studies that intermarriage with whites represents a form of social mobility

Marriageable Us and Undesirable Them: Asian Immigrants’ Marital Boundaries and the American Racial Divide

A growing number of intermarriage researchers are investigating parental influences on their children’s marital relationships, but no one has yet examined the effect of the intermarriage statuses of immigrant parents. In this paper I look at how Asian immigrant parents’ own marital decisions shape their understanding of their children’s marriageability and race in the U.S. I introduce an analytical framework that I call ‘marital boundary-making’ to show how differences between ‘marriageable us’ and ‘undesirable them’ are perceived by individuals in different family positions. I use data from 35 interviews with Taiwan-origin immigrant parents residing in San Diego to show how structural assimilation does not necessarily lead to white desirability, even among immigrants who have collectively achieved high socioeconomic status. I found that while the intermarried parents described a color-blind type of marital boundary that plays down race, the coethnic parents expressed a preference hierarchy with Taiwanese at the top. Neither group expressed a strong preference for whites. Further, even though the parents’ marriageable perceptions were inconsistent, their undesirable interpretations were identical—evidence of a black/non-black racial divide. The findings challenge the assumption commonly found in immigration studies that intermarriage with whites represents a form of social mobility

Marital boundaries and highly achieving immigrants: How upward assimilation can lead to intermarriage resistance

According to the ‘Asian American marriage paradox’, Asian-origin groups generally achieve upward assimilation, but experience different paths to marital assimilation, including marriage to white natives. The author uses the perceptions of a sample of successful Taiwanese immigrant parents regarding marriageable partners for their children to examine how integration can result in resistance to intermarriage with whites. An analytical framework called marital boundaries is proposed to show how differences between ‘marriageable us’ and ‘undesirable them’ are perceived by individuals who occupy different family positions. Data from 37 interviews with highly achieving Taiwan-origin immigrants residing in San Diego reveal a long-term effect of homeland politics on their Asian-centered hierarchies for preferred marriage partners for their children. Impacted by a growing sense of Taiwanese nationalism starting in the 1970s, many interviewees described a moral line between different Asian groups that helped them define their marital boundaries. The data provide evidence of a tendency among Asian immigrants to follow segmented assimilation paths based in part on transnational influences. The findings challenge assumptions found in the immigration literature that define intermarriage with whites as a form of social mobility, as well as descriptions of Asians as a single homogeneous category