Asian Americans in the Suburbs: Race, Class, and Korean Immigrant Parental Engagement

ABSTRACT

Drawing upon an ethnography of Korean American families in the Chicago suburbs, this article examines how Asian immigrant parents’ engagement is shaped by race, ethnicity, class, and the suburban context. Their children’s education was a driving force in parents’ decisions to settle in the suburbs. Once they arrived, parents were motivated by social mobility, first generation immigrant concerns, and racialized anxieties in their efforts to support children’s education. Parents sought to provide children with ethnic-racial socialization through Korean language school. Conversely, they turned to a private ethnic supplementary academy (hagwon) for both academic enrichment and access to white American cultural capital. Middle class Asian American parent engagement differs in both form and motivation from that of white middle class parents, demonstrating the continued relevance of race for class-advantaged Asian Americans in the suburbs.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In every instance when I asked for clarification about who they meant by “American,” participants responded that they were referring to white people. Other researchers have found that this is common among Asian immigrants (e.g., N. Y. Kim, 2008; Lan, 2018; S. J. Lee, 2005; 2009).

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Notes on contributors

Eujin Park

Eujin Park is a postdoctoral research associate in the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She studies educational equity, race, and immigrant issues, with an emphasis on Asian Americans.