Research on immigrants often points to the family as a source of support and a location for oppression. Using in-depth interviews with 38 first-generation immigrant Indians, this study adds to this literature by exploring families as sites of identity work where first-generation immigrants manage their gendered ethnic identities. Relocation into a new culture makes ethnic identity salient for the migrants, and they perform identity work to maintain this identity. However, because these identities are simultaneously gendered, enacting these reinforces gender hierarchies within families. Even though migration alters family structures, and especially family roles and responsibilities, individuals retain altered aspects of their roles that reinforce gender and ethnic identity. This identity work thus reinforces the observation that immigrant families can be both a source of strength and oppression. It provides a source of support from the Indian immigrant community while it also reshapes the gender inequalities embedded in Indian family structures.

The terms wife abuse and battered woman were coined in the 1970s. Although such naming is meaningful, these social constructions are restrictive so that only a narrow range of behaviors and people fit these labels. With the help of interviews with Hindu Asian Indian immigrants, this article highlights the importance of including the experiences of diverse groups of women in any analysis of domestic violence. Thirty people, 5 abused Asian Indian women who had sought help from support groups, 11 members of South Asian support groups, and 14 married, nonabused women living in a city on the east coast of the United States were interviewed for this study. The study challenges the popular perception of abused women, specifically South Asian battered women, as passive victims.

is a second generation dislocated Punjabi Sikh from West Punjab. While living in Delhi he got his exposure to History at the Centre of Historical Studies at the Jawahar Lal Nehru University in Delhi. At JNU, he came under the influence of Marxist professors, such as Bipan Chandra, Romila Thapar, K.N. Pannikar and Satish Saberwal. He also wrote his M. Phil, thesis on Bhai Vir Singh. From the style of his writing English as his second language, it appears he must have gone to an English medium school in Delhi where the elect and the elite sent their children in the 60's. At the Australian National University, he studied for his Ph.D. degree with Dr J.T.F. Jordan, who shaped his thoughts on Indian religion from an Eurocentric point of view.

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