The Social Adaptation Of Vietnamese American Immigrant Families Since1975

After the Vietnam War, a large number of Vietnamese fled to the United States, in just30years, the umber of Vietnamese Americans ranged from20,000to more than1200,000, became the fourth largest group of Asian population, and played a more and more important part in the United States. Since1975, there were three immigrant waves emigrated from Vietnam to the United States. Because the original immigrants came to as refugees, their special identity determined their immigration experience was different from other ethnic groups. Family was a significant part of social adaptation for immigrants. In the beginning, Vietnamese immigrants tried to replicate traditional Vietnamese family life, but in the process of adapting to the American society family had changed.This thesis focused the social adaptation of the Vietnamese immigrant family as the research subject, which is divided into four chapters for discussing. The first chapter mainly outlined three waves of Vietnamese immigrants to the United States, immigration causes, immigration composition and immigration characteristics. Then the U.S. government set up camps as the transitional policy and eventually implemented the dispersed resettlement policy. The second chapter traces three historical periods of family development in Vietnam before immigrated to the United States, and sums up the Vietnamese traditional family structure, family values, and the characteristics of the Vietnamese families. The Chapter three and chapter four are key chapters of this thesis, mainly discusses changes in Vietnamese immigrant families after immigrating to the United States and difficulties existing in the process of adapting American society. The third chapter first outlines how Vietnamese immigrants rebuilt family in the United States. Then analyzes economic status and social level of Vietnamese families and highlights changes in gender relationship, intergeneration relationship and marriage relationship in the process of adapting. The fourth chapter summarizes the positive role of families and ethnic communities in social adaptation and problems existing in Vietnamese immigrant families, such as domestic violence and intergeneration conflicts. Finally, I suggested some feasible measures to settle these problems.By systematically combing the history background of Vietnamese moved to the United States, traditional Vietnamese family life, social adaptation process of Vietnamese immigrant families and the role of family in adapting society and problems existing in immigrant families, we can find that these families were different from both Vietnamese families and American families. The social adaptation of immigrant families was a dynamic process full of changes. Generally speaking, traditional factors dropped gradually, Vietnamese immigrant families are becoming more and more Americanized.