los angeles – Asian American / Asian Research Institute

Refusing Death: Immigrant Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice in LA

March 6, 2023December 7, 2022 By Nadia Y. Kim

In Refusing Death, Nadia Y. Kim tells the stories of Asian and undocumented Latin@ immigrant women, finding that they are influential because of their ability to remap politics, community, and citizenship in the face of the country’s nativist racism and system of class injustice, defined not just by disproportionate environmental pollution but also by neglected schools, surveillance and deportation, and political marginalization.

Refusing Death: Asian and Latina Immigrant Women Activists on Race, Class, and Morality

February 25, 2022December 3, 2021 By Nadia Y. Kim

Prof. Nadia Kim in her new book, ‘Refusing Death,’ chronicles how Asian and Latina immigrant women activists for environmental justice in Los Angeles—namely cleaner, more breathable air—redefine racism and classism as a result of their struggles with environmental racism and classism, and their specific social positionings under neoliberal capitalism and white supremacy.

Labor Exploitation, Stigma, and Social Isolation of Chinese and Korean Immigrant Women Working in Illicit Massage Parlors

April 3, 2021December 11, 2020 By John J. Chin

This report, from researchers at Hunter College of the City University of New York and University of Southern California, aims to shed light on the experiences of Chinese and Korean immigrant women working in illicit massage parlors in Los Angeles County and New York City.

A Day in the Life, in the Age of COVID-19

March 17, 2021May 8, 2020 By Luis H. Francia

PANDEMIC BRINGS US TO PANDEMONIUM, not the center of Hell—Pandemonium in Milton’s Paradise Lost—but tumult, chaos, the upending of our quotidian lives due to the infernal virus, on which we have conferred the somewhat majestic title, Novel Corona Virus-19. Normalcy is a far-away country, and even with all its attendant and even discordant notes, seems … Read more

“We’re the New Citizenship”: LA’s Asian and Latin@ Immigrant Activists on Politics as Embodied and Emotional

July 6, 2020October 19, 2018 By Nadia Y. Kim

In recent decades under runaway neoliberalism, “foreignized” and unauthorized immigrants have increasingly made political inroads by way of grassroots community activism and by sidestepping the need for formal political channels and, at times, even dismissing them. By way of nearly four years of ethnographic observation, 49 in-depth interviews, and extensive document analysis, Prof. Nadia Kim … Read more

Reunification – A Documentary

July 16, 2018October 7, 2016 By Alvin Tsang

Filmmaker Alvin Tsang will screen and discuss his documentary, Reunification, a personal tale of confronting the delicate images of a once intact family affected by immigration. Alvin examines the legacy of his family’s immigration to Los Angeles from Hong Kong through family photos, old videos and interviews. Synopsis: When his mother and two siblings first … Read more