Beyond “Culture Clash” Understandings of Immigrant Experiences

This article addresses the ways in which the experiences of immigrant youth and families in U.S. schools and society have been conceptualized primarily as conflicts between immigrant cultures and dominant U.S. culture. Exemplified by the discourse of culture clash or of immigrants being torn between two worlds, this prevalent understanding structures the experiences, cultures, and identities of immigrants as unchanging and fixed in time. This article illustrates the ways that culture and identity are constructed within the double movement of discourse and representation. It offers examples of how dominant representations create simplistic understandings of the identities of immigrant youth, as well as the ways youth are constructing new identities. Acknowledgments Bic Ngo is an assistant professor of immigrant education at the University of Minnesota. Notes 1See Fairclough (1992), CitationGee (1996), CitationMills (1997), CitationPopkewitz and Brennan (1998), and CitationWodak (1996) for more extensive discussions of discourse. 2See Ngo (2003) for more information about the study and methods. 3For a thorough explanation of the dominant stereotypes of Asian Americans, see R. Lee's (1999) Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture. 4All names of people and places are pseudonyms. 5A resource that examines this stereotype is Soe's film (1986), All Orientals Look the Same. 6Additionally, the U.S. Bureau of the Census included smaller Asian American groups within the category of “All Other Asians” in the 1980 Census: Bangladeshi, Bhutanese, Bornean, Burmese, Celbesian, Cernan, Indochinese, Iwo-Jiman, Javanese, Malayan, Maldivian, Nepali, Okinawan, Sikkimese, Singaporean, and Sri Lankan (CitationPang, 1990). 7For resources, see Web sites such as http:/immigrationforum.org/ and http:/www.mnadvocates.org.