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Vietnamese young women from the third wave of immigration: Their struggle for higher education
Abstract
Throughout American history, people have come to the United States to escape intolerable conditions elsewhere and to seek a better life. After the collapse of the South Vietnamese government, hundreds of thousands of persons fled to Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Eventually, by the late 1980's and early 1990's most of them made their way to the United States (U.S. Department of State). There were three waves of Vietnamese immigration. The third wave, coming after 1982, was the most complicated as it included different types of refugees. A significant number of studies focus on the challenges of Vietnamese refugees in adapting to a new society. However, research on Vietnamese women is still very limited. The purpose of this study was to explore the educational experiences and life stories of sixteen Vietnamese young women who came to Welltown, Massachusetts during the third wave of immigration, and who were successful in pursuing higher education. The study looked for factors that influenced their academic achievements and the construction of their self-identities. The methodology used to collect the data was in-depth interviewing. The first interview concentrated on the participants' life experiences in Viet Nam until the day they came to the United States, and the challenges they faced to achieve academically. The second interview provided details and stories of their current living experiences. The last interview focused on the meaning of their experiences as Vietnamese female refugees in American society. Informal conversations with parents and teachers, a survey on parents' attitude on second language learning, and classroom observations were included as a means of triangulation to confirm and expand my interpretations based on the interviews' data. There were three main conclusions of this study: (1) according to their own accounts, all women saw education and the learning of English as important to their success. They also saw family playing an important role in their lives, (2) as a group, they made diverse career choices based on language proficiency in English not on their ability, and (3) each group faced particular challenges and based on their refugee experiences, other issues that affected their identity construction were discrimination inside Vietnamese community and at the workplace in the dominant culture, inappropriate curriculum and assessment in their schooling, and lack of career orientation. Implications of the findings of this study provide researchers and educators possible direction for supporting environment for female Vietnamese refugees in a multicultural society.
Subject Area
Bilingual education|Multicultural education|Minority & ethnic groups|Sociology
Recommended Citation
Truong, Hoa T, "Vietnamese young women from the third wave of immigration: Their struggle for higher education" (2001). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI3027265.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI3027265