Trespassers?: Asian Americans and the Battle for Suburbia

In the last half century, the suburbs of the largest American metropolitan areas have become home to the majority of their immigrant and minority populations. This is particularly true in high-tech regions. Spurred by the rise of tech giants, California’s Silicon Valley has become one of the fastest growing, and most racially and ethnically diverse regions in the United States. The region is particularly popular among highly skilled and educated immigrants from Asia.

As diverse migrants have settled in suburbia, its landscape has increasingly come to reflect their suburban American Dream and act as an important place to register their claims for equality and inclusion. In Silicon Valley, as Asian American newcomers have settled in the region’s predominately white, middle-class suburbs and invested in schools, neighborhoods, and shopping centers, conflicts and tensions over the changing character of landscape have frequently emerged.

Please join us for a discussion with Willow Lung-Amam, Ph.D., author of the new book, Trespassers?: Asian Americans and the Battle for Suburbia, which explores the dreams and struggles of Asian Americans as they have made their homes in Silicon Valley suburbia. The event will feature Dr. Lung-Amam and a panel of experts discussing the vital role of immigrants in shaping cities and neighborhoods across the United States.

The event is co-hosted with the Metropolitan Policy Center of the School of Public Affairs at American University and the University of Maryland’s School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

Speaker

Willow Lung-Amam
Assistant Professor, Urban Studies and Planning Program, and Director, Community Development, National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education, University of Maryland, College Park

Discussants

Katrin B. Anacker
Associate Professor, Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University

Michael Bader
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, American University

Audrey Singer
Senior Fellow, Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, Urban Institute, and Nonresident Senior Fellow, Centennial Scholar Initiative, The Brookings Institution

Derek Hyra
Associate Professor, Department of Public Administration and Policy, and Director, Metropolitan Policy Center, American University

Blair A. Ruble 
Vice President for Programs, and Director, Urban Sustainability Laboratory, Wilson Center