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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Selected Works

Sociology

Gender

Chien-Juh Gu

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Gu 2018.Pdf, Chien-Juh Gu Feb 2018

Gu 2018.Pdf, Chien-Juh Gu

Chien-Juh Gu

This study examines major social, economic, and cultural factors that sustain in-law inequality in Taiwanese transnational families. Data are based on life-history interviews with 16 Taiwanese immigrant women and ethnographic observations in a Midwest urban area. Findings suggest that middle-class immigrants’ abilities to host in-laws for lengthy periods and parents-in-law’s financial support for immigrant couples lead to the living arrangement of three-generation households in many immigrant families. Daughters-in-law in these households experience enormous stress because their mothers-in-law demand obedience. Traditional gender norms become moralized when the women’s husbands, mothers, and fellow immigrants reinforce Confucian cultural values of filial piety and …


The Resilient Self: Gender, Immigration, And Taiwanese Americans, Chien-Juh Gu Dec 2016

The Resilient Self: Gender, Immigration, And Taiwanese Americans, Chien-Juh Gu

Chien-Juh Gu

The Resilient Self examines how international migration re-shapes women’s senses of themselves. Chien-Juh Gu uses life-history interviews and ethnographic observations to illustrate how immigration creates gendered work and family contexts for middle-class Taiwanese American women, who, in turn, negotiate and resist the social and psychological effects of the processes of immigration and settlement. 

Most of the women immigrated as dependents when their U.S.-educated husbands found professional jobs upon graduation. Constrained by their dependent visas, these women could not work outside of the home during the initial phase of their settlement. The significant contrast of their lives before and after immigration—changing …


Racial Glass Ceilings, Gendered Responses: Taiwanese American Professionals' Experiences Of Otherness, Chien-Juh Gu Mar 2015

Racial Glass Ceilings, Gendered Responses: Taiwanese American Professionals' Experiences Of Otherness, Chien-Juh Gu

Chien-Juh Gu

This article examines Taiwanese American professionals’ interpretations of the glass ceiling to illuminate the manifestations of structural inequality at the micro-level of social life. Data are based on 40 in-depth interviews in the Chicago metropolitan area. Findings suggest that racial inequalities are experienced through race relations. Ethnic cultures construct relational fences along racial lines that designate the place of each group in the racial hierarchy. Although frustrated and alienated by their marginalized position, women and men use different strategies to negotiate the meaning of being an “other.” Women act confrontationally to transgress social boundaries, while men adopt acquiescent and coalitional …