Political conflict in Asia and the Pacific, along with labor needs in the United States, have catalyzed different waves of Asian and Pacific Islander immigration from the nineteenth century to today. In the second half of the twentieth century, conflicts and decolonization in Asia and the Pacific have led to upheavals of various kinds—military, economic, social, and environmental—that have developed into complex migratory and refugee flows that involve stops at refugee camps in multiple countries and states.

Employers and community networks have often helped to accelerate immigration for a number of different ethnic groups. These groups are often associated with specific businesses or employment, from American Samoans connected with Fort Hood in Texas to Hmong American farmers in Florida. South Asian male immigrants began to enter in large numbers in the 1990s for employment in information technology (IT) positions through the H1-B visa program for “specialty occupations,” and South Asian-owned motels, half or more Gujarati-owned, extend across the South as in other parts of the country.

This module focuses on two migratory flows: the Chinese population in Mississippi in the 1870s and the Marshallese population in northwest Arkansas in the 1980s. Each case study shows how US foreign policy in Asia and the Pacific, as well as US labor needs, caused and increased migration. We will learn how these communities formed and found work in particular industries, and how they changed over time. Rather than thinking of these communities as “in-between” Black and white southerners, we consider the network of relationships the Chinese and Marshallese communities forged and navigated in their contexts.