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Luggage to America: Vietnamese Intellectual and Entrepreneurial Immigrants in the New Millennium

Nguyen, An Tuan

Abstract Details

2013, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, American Culture Studies.
This dissertation is a historical and ethnographic study of new communities of Vietnamese immigrants in the U.S. Focusing on contemporary patterns of migration of intellectuals and a new entrepreneurial class in Vietnam, I argue that a distinctly new genealogy of Vietnamese migration to the U.S. was prompted and shaped by Vietnamese veneration for education and intellectualism and Vietnam’s 1986 social/political transformation. With a focus on the lives of (1) professional immigrants who brought with them human capital and (2) entrepreneurial immigrants who entered the U.S. with social capital, this study seeks to broaden the extant scholarship on Vietnamese Americans which traditionally tend to confuse Vietnamese immigrants with refugees. My research points out the ways in which new immigrants increasingly and dramatically reshape the face of Vietnamese America. It also renders visible the political and social contexts in which the American-bound migration of the more privileged and wealthier Vietnamese middle class is articulated with a revitalized Vietnamese-U.S. discourse of nation and empire. Together, the distinct social backgrounds, political associations, migratory trajectories, and immigrant lives of those who participated in this study illustrate an urgent need for Vietnamese American studies and Asian immigrant studies to permit a greater degree of conceptual flexibility for Vietnamese diasporic identity.
Sridevi Menon, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Radhika Gajjala, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Kristen Rudisill, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Lynda Dixon, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
444 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Nguyen, A. T. (2013). Luggage to America: Vietnamese Intellectual and Entrepreneurial Immigrants in the New Millennium [Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1368535151

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Nguyen, An. Luggage to America: Vietnamese Intellectual and Entrepreneurial Immigrants in the New Millennium. 2013. Bowling Green State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1368535151.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Nguyen, An. "Luggage to America: Vietnamese Intellectual and Entrepreneurial Immigrants in the New Millennium." Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1368535151

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)