Managing Multicultural Lives: Asian American Professionals and the Challenge of Multiple Identities

How do people handle contrasting self-conceptions? Do they necessarily compartmentalize their personal lives from their professional lives? Do minority and immigrant groups, in particular, act "ethnic" at home, "American" at work, "racial" in pan-ethnic spaces? Managing Multicultural Lives moves past this common assumption and demonstrates how minorities actually bring together contrasting identities.

Using the words and experiences of Indian American and Korean American professionals themselves, Pawan Dhingra eloquently shows how people break down the popular "margins vs. mainstream" conception of group identity and construct a "lived hybridity." He offers new insight into minorities' experiences at work, at home, and in civil society. These Asian Americans' ability to handle group boundaries fluidly leads them to both resist and support stratified social patterns. It also indicates new, more nuanced understandings of immigrant adaptation, multiculturalism, and identity management that pertain to multiple types of immigrant groups.

Pawan Dhingra is Associate Professor of Sociology at Oberlin College and Museum Curator (2011-2012) at the Smithsonian Institution.