FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
20 December 2005
PRESS CONTACT:  Melany Dela Cruz, Managing Editor, AAPI NEXUS
PHONE:  310.825.2974
BOOK ORDERS:  Ming Tu, 310.825.2968

"The UCLA Asian American Studies Center Publishes New Research on Employment/Work Issues of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders"

LOS ANGELES-The UCLA Asian American Studies Center, Los Angeles, announces the publication of the new issue of AAPI Nexus: Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders, Policy, Practice and Community (3:2, 2005).  Scholars, researchers, practitioners, and government officials within this volume examine racial discrimination in employment against Asian Americans, workers' rights, and economic parity in the global labor market.

Guest Editor, Deborah Woo, and Senior Editor, Paul Ong, aim for this issue (the first of two) on AAPI work and employment to "produce the knowledge that will help generate new policies and practices to better serve the cause of greater workforce equity and social justice."

Researchers PAULA CHAKRAVARTTY and SIRI THANASOMBAT and JOHN TRASVIÑA focus on the aftershocks of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 on Arab and South Asian Indian nationals and American citizens. In discussions of immigration quotas, U.S. sponsored-corporate work visas, the tech bust and 9/11.  CHAKRAVARTTY, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communications and the Center for Public Policy at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, looks at the impact of highly skilled South Asian nationals who comprise the majority of foreign-born workers in the IT (information technology) industry and their impact on American workers.  THANASOMBAT, the program manager at the Discrimination Research Center, a non-profit civil rights organization, launched in 1998 by the Impact Fund, and TRASVIÑA, the former director of the Discrimination Research Center and current Western Regional Director of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, document the effects of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the temporary employment industry, which the authors predict to be the fifth fastest-growing industry through 2012.

KARIN MAK, a New Voices Fellow at Sweatshop Watch, and GRACE MENG, a former Liman Fellow at the Asian Law Caucus and current law practitioner focuses on immigration law in New York, in their practitioner's essay, outline some ideas for improving programs that focus on workplace development. They propose renovations that are geared specifically toward immigrants.  In particular, MAK AND MENG are concerned about Chinese garment workers in California who are displaced by the global policy of lifting quotas on garment imports.

Other articles deal directly with employment discrimination against Asian Americans and Asian immigrants and propose various ways to aid them. The second practitioner's essay by STUART J. ISHIMARU, chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, searches for reasons why Asian Americans file comparatively fewer employment discrimination charges than do other minority groups and calls for more research that would explore the sociological factors in Asian Americans' perceptions and experiences of discrimination.

DON MAR, Professor of Economics at San Francisco State University, questions whether AAPIs have achieved economic parity with non-Hispanic whites in the labor market, by analyzing information about labor market participation, employment in management positions, self-employment, earnings and gender differences.

JULIAN CHUN-CHUNG CHOW, Associate Professor in the School of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley, KATHY LEMON OSTERLING, MSW, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley, and QINGWEN XU, Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Social Work at Boston College, argue that for Asian immigrants and refugees, there is a problematic mismatch, in terms of employment skills, between their country of origin and the U.S., in terms of welfare-to-work programs.  The authors call for the renovation of such programs with special consideration of the API population's needs.

Table of Contents for AAPI Nexus 3:2

Deborah Woo and Paul Ong, Message from the Editors, "AAPI Labor Market Status and Challenges"

Stuart J. Ishimaru, Practitioner's Essay, "Employment Discrimination and Asian Americans"

Karin Mak and Grace Meng, Practitioner's Essay, "Workforce Development: Its Potential and Limitations for Chinese Garment Workers"

Don Mar, "Asian Americans in the Labor Market: Public Policy Issues"

Paula Chakravartty, "Weak Winners of Globalization: Indian H-1B Workers in the American Information Economy"

Julian Chun-Chung Chow, Kathy Lemon Osterling and Qingwen Xu, "The Risk of Timing Out: Welfare-to-Work Services to Asian Immigrants and Refugees"

Siri Thanasombat and John Trasviña, AAPI Almanac, "Screening Names Instead of Qualifications: Testing with Emailed Resumes Reveals Racial Preferences"

Annual subscriptions for AAPI Nexus are $25 for individual subscribers, and $125 for libraries and other institutions. It is published two times a year.  Individual journals may be purchased for $13 per issue plus $4 shipping/handling and 8.25 percent tax for California residents. Make check payable to "UC Regents" and send to: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 3230 Campbell Hall, Box 951546, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1546. Visa, MasterCard and Discover cards also are accepted; include account number, expiration date and your telephone number. Orders and communications can be addressed to aascpress@aasc.ucla.edu or (310) 825-2968.

More information can be found on the center's Web site for AAPI Nexus.