“Choosing Ethnicity, Negotiating Race contributes mightily to our understanding of important issues that we ignored for too long, and still understand too little about. It is vital reading.”
—ADAM PERTMAN, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute 

“Choosing Ethnicity, Negotiating Race by Mia Tuan and Jiannbin Lee Shiao gives critical insights into the unique experience of Korean adoptees. This book provides depth of detail and background, making it one of the most complete resources available on this subject. As a first-generation Korean adoptee, much of what is described by adoptees in this book resonates with me. Tuan and Shiao have done an excellent job of providing supporting information and research, but let the voices of the adoptees tell their own stories of navigating the nuances of being a Korean American adoptee. The result is a profoundly good read.”
—SUSAN SOON-KEUM COX, Holt International 

“Choosing Ethnicity, Negotiating Race by Mia Tuan and Jiannbin Lee Shiao is a must read for scholars in the specialized field of transnational and transracial adoption studies and the larger field of ethnic and racial studies, as well as for all parties involved in international adoption practices, including birth and adoptive families, adoption agencies, and mental health service providers. Using in-depth interviews, Tuan and Shiao reveal the ways in which ethnicity, race, and culture overlap, intersect, and remain distinct in the everyday lives of adopted Korean Americans. They also expertly frame these experiences within H. David Kirk’s theory of shared fate, complemented by current sociological and psychological theory and research on adoption, ethnicity, and race. Equally, if not more, important, Tuan and Shiao make public the personal voices and narratives of adopted Korean American adults whose stories have long been appropriated by adoptive parents and adoption agencies.”
—RICHARD M. LEE, University of Minnesota 

“In Choosing Ethnicity, Negotiating Race, Mia Tuan and Jiannbin Lee Shiao give us a fresh and compelling analysis of how race can shape social experience even in the seemingly mos integrated places. With rich new interview material on Korean adoptees—the single largest category of foreign-born adoptees in the United States—Tuan and Shiao show how a racialized social order penetrates even the most intimate realms of identity and family. Rather than transracial adoption proving the irrelevance of race today, they show that it creates new and complex terrain on which matters of ethnic identity and socially imposed racial boundaries and hierarchies get renegotiated. This book makes a major contribution and is a must read for anyone interested in transracial adoption or the larger contemporary dynamics of race.”
—LAWRENCE D. BOBO, Harvard University

Transnational adoption was once a rarity in the United States, but Americans have been choosing to adopt children from abroad with increasing frequency since the mid-twentieth century. Korean adoptees make up the largest share of international adoptions—25 percent of all children adopted from outside the United States—but they remain understudied among Asian American groups. What kind of identities do adoptees develop as members of American families and in a cultural climate that often views them as foreigners? Choosing Ethnicity, Negotiating Race is the only study of this unique population to collect in-depth interviews with a multigenerational, random sample of adult Korean adoptees. The book examines how Korean adoptees form their social identities and compares them to native-born Asian Americans who are not adopted.

How do American stereotypes influence the ways Korean adoptees identify themselves? Does the need to explore a Korean cultural identity—or the absence of this need—shift according to life stage or circumstance? In Choosing Ethnicity, Negotiating Race, sixty-one adult Korean adoptees—representing different genders, social classes, and communities—reflect on early childhood, young adulthood, their current lives, and how they experience others’ perceptions of them. The authors find that most adoptees do not identify themselves strongly in ethnic terms, although they will at times identify as Korean or Asian American in order to deflect questions from outsiders about their cultural backgrounds. Indeed, Korean adoptees are far less likely than their non-adopted Asian American peers to explore their ethnic backgrounds by joining ethnic organizations or social networks. Adoptees who do not explore their ethnic identity early in life are less likely ever to do so—citing such causes as general aversion, lack of opportunity, or the personal insignificance of race, ethnicity, and adoption in their lives. Nonetheless, the choice of many adoptees not to identify as Korean or Asian American does not diminish the salience of racial stereotypes in their lives. Korean adoptees must continually navigate society’s assumptions about Asian Americans regardless of whether they chose to identify ethnically.

Choosing Ethnicity, Negotiating Race is a crucial examination of this little-studied American population and will make informative reading for adoptive families, adoption agencies, and policymakers. The authors demonstrate that while race is a social construct, its influence on daily life is real. This book provides an insightful analysis of how potent this influence can be—for transnational adoptees and all Americans.

MIA TUAN is professor of education studies, director of the Center on Diversity and Community, and associate dean of the graduate school at the University of Oregon.

JIANNBIN LEE SHIAO is associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon.

"Homelessness is a transient condition for most of those afflicted, but is a continuing frustration for urban policy. This provocative volume engages public health scholars as well as planners, policy makers, and economists in linking interventions to outcomes. We are reminded again of the importance of risk, uncertainty, and savings incentives on economic outcomes-in this case, the transitions in and out of homelessness. Detailed studies of mental health treatments offered to vulnerable populations confirm their overall importance, but suggest that their effects on homelessness per se are small. Reviews of policies designed to address populations at greater risk of homelessness illustrate the tradeoff policy makers face between programs highly targeted to vulnerable populations and the moral hazard these programs encourage. How to House the Homeless offers concrete ideas to reduce the incidence of homelessness and to help in the design of more effective long-run policies."
-JOHN M. QUIGLEY, I. Donald Terner Distinguished Professor and professor of economics, University of California, Berkeley

"This is the most rigorous treatment I know of the problem of homelessness. The chapters have excellent empirical analysis leading naturally to policy implications. How to House the Homeless is particularly successful at characterizing the extent that homelessness is, per se, a housing problem."
-RICHARD GREEN, director and chair of the Lusk Center for Real Estate and professor in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development and the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California

"How to House the Homeless sharpens our thinking about how housing policy can end homelessness as we know it. Its top-flight interdisciplinary group of authors offers a fresh review of key programs and policies including Housing First, subsidized housing, and land-use regulations. It is a must read for anyone who wants to understand fundamental debates in the field, challenging us to consider why assisted housing is the answer-and why it can never be the answer."
-SANDRA NEWMAN, professor of policy studies, Johns Hopkins University

How to House the Homeless, editors Ingrid Gould Ellen and Brendan O’Flaherty propose that the answers entail rethinking how housing markets operate and developing more efficient interventions in existing service programs. The book critically reassesses where we are now, analyzes the most promising policies and programs going forward, and offers a new agenda for future research.

How to House the Homeless makes clear the inextricable link between homelessness and housing policy. Contributor Jill Khadduri reviews the current residential services system and housing subsidy programs. For the chronically homeless, she argues, a combination of assisted housing approaches can reach the greatest number of people and, specifically, an expanded Housing Choice Voucher system structured by location, income, and housing type can more efficiently reach people at-risk of becoming homeless and reduce time spent homeless. Robert Rosenheck examines the options available to homeless people with mental health problems and reviews the cost-effectiveness of five service models: system integration, supported housing, clinical case management, benefits outreach, and supported employment. He finds that only programs that subsidize housing make a noticeable dent in homelessness, and that no one program shows significant benefits in multiple domains of life.

Contributor Sam Tsemberis assesses the development and cost-effectiveness of the Housing First program, which serves mentally ill homeless people in more than four hundred cities. He asserts that the program’s high housing retention rate and general effectiveness make it a viable candidate for replication across the country. Steven Raphael makes the case for a strong link between homelessness and local housing market regulations—which affect housing affordability—and shows that the problem is more prevalent in markets with stricter zoning laws. Finally, Brendan O’Flaherty bridges the theoretical gap between the worlds of public health and housing research, evaluating the pros and cons of subsidized housing programs and the economics at work in the rental housing market and home ownership. Ultimately, he suggests, the most viable strategies will serve as safety nets—“social insurance”—to reach people who are homeless now and to prevent homelessness in the future.

It is crucial that the links between effective policy and the whole cycle of homelessness—life conditions, service systems, and housing markets—be made clear now. With a keen eye on the big picture of housing policy, How to House the Homeless shows what works and what doesn’t in reducing the numbers of homeless and reaching those most at risk.

INGRID GOULD ELLEN is professor of public policy and urban planning at the New York University Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. 

BRENDAN O’FLAHERTY is professor of economics at Columbia University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Ingrid Gould Ellen, Jill Khadduri, Brendan O’Flaherty, Edgar O. Olsen, Stephen Raphael, Robert Rosenheck, Sam Tsemberis

"From varieties of low-wage labor market experience-far more nuanced than one might expect-to their impact on workers' children, to the publicly available and/or privately arranged support sys tems, Making It Work sews together a rich tapestry of market work, child development, and family support, concluding that low-wage employment need not be inimical to quality child development."
-CHOICE MAGAZINE

"Making It Work combines the precision of scientific experiments with the breadth of ethnographic methods to yield a penetrating picture of low-income mothers working at low-wage jobs while struggling to raise their children. Here we find the specific job-related factors, including work schedules and wage levels and changes that have impacts on both the mother's and children's well-being. The implications for public policy are enormous."
-RON HASKINS, senior fellow, Economic Studies, and codirector, Center on Children and Families, Brookings Institution

"Making It Work provides a much needed examination of the role that parents' employment plays in the developmental pathways of children in working poor households. It shows us that the working poor are a diverse group that experiences many different trajectories through the labor market, each of which imposes different pressures (and positive impacts) on kids .... This volume is an eye-open ing examination of the nexus of work and child-rearing. The careful research design, the combina tion of survey data and ethnographic observation, and the judicious treatment of the research results combine to make it required reading for anyone who is serious about the long-term prospects for the children of the poor."
-KATHERINE S. NEWMAN, Forbes '41 Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University

"In the wake of welfare reform, many low-income mothers have gone to work. Making It Work provides numerous insights, based on both quantitative and qualitative evidence, into the circumstances under which work does or does not benefit low-income mothers and their children. It suggests that with the right supports-wage supplements, child care, and reliable transportation in particular-many of these mothers can be successful with positive benefits for their children as well. What is needed is a national commitment to provide the kind of supports that these mothers had as voluntary participants in a carefully evaluated demonstration program in Milwaukee during the 1990s."
-ISABEL V. SAWHILL, senior fellow, Economic Studies, and codirector, Center on Children and Families, Brookings Institution

Low-skilled women in the 1990s took widely different paths in trying to support their children. Some held good jobs with growth potential, some cycled in and out of low-paying jobs, some worked part time, and others stayed out of the labor force entirely. Scholars have closely analyzed the economic consequences of these varied trajectories, but little research has focused on the consequences of a mother’s career path on her children’s development. Making It Work, edited by Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Thomas Weisner, and Edward Lowe, looks past the economic statistics to illustrate how different employment trajectories affect the social and emotional lives of poor women and their children.

Making It Work examines Milwaukee’s New Hope program, an experiment testing the effectiveness of an anti-poverty initiative that provided health and child care subsidies, wage supplements, and other services to full-time low-wage workers. Employing parent surveys, teacher reports, child assessment measures, ethnographic studies, and state administrative records, Making It Work provides a detailed picture of how a mother’s work trajectory affects her, her family, and her children’s school performance, social behavior, and expectations for the future. Rashmita Mistry and Edward D. Lowe find that increases in a mother’s income were linked to higher school performance in her children. Without large financial worries, mothers gained extra confidence in their ability to parent, which translated into better test scores and higher teacher appraisals for their children. JoAnn Hsueh finds that the children of women with erratic work schedules and non-standard hours—conditions endemic to the low-skilled labor market—exhibited higher levels of anxiety and depression. Conversely, Noemi Enchautegui-de-Jesus, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, and Vonnie McLoyd discover that better job quality predicted lower levels of acting-out and withdrawal among children. Perhaps most surprisingly, Anna Gassman-Pines, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, and Sandra Nay note that as wages for these workers rose, so did their marriage rates, suggesting that those worried about family values should also be concerned with alleviating poverty in America.

It is too simplistic to say that parental work is either “good” or “bad” for children. Making It Work gives a nuanced view of how job quality, flexibility, and wages are of the utmost importance for the well-being of low-income parents and children.

HIROKAZU YOSHIKAWA is professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

THOMAS S. WEISNER is professor of anthropology in the Semel Institute of the Department of Psychiatry, and in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

EDWARD D. LOWE is associate professor of Anthropology at Soka University of America.

CONTRIBUTORS: Johannes M. Bos, Faye Carter, Noemi Enchautegui-de-Jesus, Anna Gassman-Pines, Erin P. Godfrey. Eboni C. Howard, JoAnn Hsueh, Vonnie C. McLoyd, Rashmita S. Mistry, Sandra Nay, Valentina Nikuklina, Amanda L. Roy.