The Chinese in America : A Recently Accepted Old Immigrant Group

This thesis, "The Chinese in America: A Recently Accepted Old Immigrant Group," aims at testing the hypothesis that the transition of Chinese immigrants into an accepted ethnic group in mainstream America and their influence on the evolution of the American identity were mainly regulated by the United States economy. This hypothesis is rooted in the belief that their primary arena of ethnicization was the labor market, first the California labor market, then the national one. The Chinese were initially welcomed as cheap labor, but later, as California faced economic problems, they were the first ethnic workers to be pushed out of the labor market. Therefore, it makes sense to suggest that primarily economic discrimination, and not racial prejudice, made their acculturation slow and painful. After having tested this hypothesis throughout six chapters, each dealing with different experiences of their immigrant saga, I feel that this hypothesis can be verifie