How Middle-Class Social Workers Shape The Value Of Working-Class Women In Immigration Communities In America From The19^th-20^th Century

America is a country built by immigrants. Since the arrival of May Flower, many immigrants settled on this land. As the country developed, many immigrants became citizens. They distinguished themselves from later settlers, such as those came for gold rush and railway construction after the mid19th century and Cambodian refugees in the late20th century. They also utilized social services, welfare policies to instill the mainstream values in the newly arrived immigrants.Since the mid19th century, social workers set up welfare institutions, social groups or immigrant communities and offered assistance. These social workers were from middle-class, white or other ethnicities that accumulated wealth as early immigrants. They not only cared about the immigrants, but carried out social welfare policies.This thesis believed that in social practices, the middle-class offered humanitarian help by providing immigrant women with shelters, child care, language trainings, while they also used the social service and social welfare system to influence immigrant communities. By changing immigrant women, they transformed the immigrant communities, which played key role in assimilating immigrants into American mainstream value system.The current thesis aims to study how middle-class social workers imposed their idea upon immigrant women and how they utilized social work to achieve this purpose, and the thesis also attempts to reveal the nature and the effect of these social services.The current thesis will study cases of three influential communities between the19th century and the20th century, namely the Hull House of European immigrants in Chicago, Chinatown in San Francisco, and Cambodian community in San Francisco Bay Area.The study focused on the reading and interpretation of the primary and secondary materials. Chapter Three analyzed the background and characteristics of the social work and social welfare between the mid-19th century and the late20th century. Based on analysis of historical materials, Chapter Four will adopt the social work classification proposed by Kristi Anderson which categorizes social work in three communities into human service, capacity building, pro bono counsel and political advocacy. Chapter Five will reveal the major finding of this thesis, to be specific, how the middle class impose their value system upon working-class immigrant. While the thesis acknowledges the contribution of some humanitarian help, it will also point out some negative impact of some social work and social service.The thesis concluded that the middle-class women’s contribution in providing humanitarian help like shelters, food, opportunities to find a job and make a living could not be overlooked; however it was inappropriate for them to utilize the help as a condition and force immigrant women to accept American middle-class value and beliefs, such as the rules, independence, norms in family life and social life, Christianity, etc.The thesis referred to the "problematization" theory from Encountering Development:The Making and Unmaking of the Third World and pointed out that in the process of providing social service, American middle-class discovered and created "problems" and utilized the social welfare system to force immigrant women to become the needed group in social service and programs. In this process, they imposed middle-class value and beliefs upon immigrants, which from the lens of class and culture, was one-way and hegemonic.On the one hand, the middle-class treated the working-class unequally. They used their own class agenda to shape the value and beliefs of immigrant women. They helped these immigrants and influenced their self-awareness, family role and social position. On the other hand, the imposition of values reflected the superiority of American culture over that of other nations. They "problematized" the immigrants’ difficulties of integrating into American society,"shaped" them rather than respected their culture, which reflected the hegemony of American culture over other countries in this "internal colonization".Besides, while providing humanitarian help, these social workers did not respect the liberty of immigrant women and regarded them as a tool to further influence the whole immigrant community. Thus, it was impossible for immigrant women to achieve real identity and pride of working-class, happy family life, community development and culture diversity.Based on the summary of the social service for American immigrant women from the middle19tn century to late20th century, the current study attempted to provide a new perspective for understanding American immigrant community, and analyze American immigrants from the angle of social work.