AAPI Nexus: Policy, Practice and Community

We are pleased to present this collection of essays. They tie together some of the most important overlaps between immigration studies and Asian American Studies, and they present collectively a compelling portrait of how Asian American communities have continued to change as a result of on-going migration trends. These essays remind us that new Asian migrants have enlarged and complicated the very definition of the term, “Asian American,” and they tell important stories about how class, immigration status, and settlement patterns have altered the communities and regions that have been so central to Asian American Studies scholars. In addition, the essays in this volume indicate the growing importance of Asian American topics and approaches within several academic disciplines and fields, including labor economics, qualitative sociology, studies of migration and acculturation, and discourses of globalization. These authors have a great deal to say about how skilled people in general can move across the world, how some can move back and forth across international boundaries with relative ease, even as poorer migrants try to survive economically in our major cities and search through difficult options in their attempts to settle in the United States. We begin this volume first by thanking all of the contributors for showing us their amazing work, and we thank the staff of the AAPI Nexus for giving us this rare opportunity to collaborate scholars and activists.