Immigrant flows, settlement, and integration are shaped by nation-states, but Immigrant Agency: Hmong American Movements and the Politics of Racialized Incorporation by Sao Xiong Yang, reminds us that this is not always a one-way relationship. Laws and policies can also be shaped by immigrants. Typically, nations regulate population flows into and out of their territories, make and enforce laws about the process for acquiring citizenship, and determine the rights of citizens versus noncitizens. Such laws and policies, moreover, are typically designed to serve the interests of the society's most well-resourced and powerful interest groups. However, it is less well recognized that immigrants are not passive victims of these laws, but instead engage in collective action to change them, thus securing rights and resources for themselves and advancing their own integration.

Yang's book explores the remarkable case of Hmong Americans. The Hmong compose one of the least educated and poorest refugee groups in the United States. Yet this group defied the odds to secure rights for themselves, including the partial reversal of a 1996 law that severely restricted public assistance for immigrants, relaxation of the English proficiency requirement for naturalization, and the enactment of a new state policy to require Hmong history and contributions to the Vietnam war be taught in public schools. Yang's key argument is that Hmong Americans were partially successful in these mobilization efforts because of their “context of exit,” that is, the circumstances that led them to flee the Laotian highlands as refugees. As reviewed in the book, the Hmong were allies of the American military in the “Secret War in Laos,” but were later abandoned at the end of the war. Many embarked on harrowing journeys to refugee camps in Thailand and eventually were admitted to the United States as refugees. Hmong Americans framed their appeals around their military contributions and subsequent abandonment and thus gained the support of politicians to carve out exceptions for them. Despite these successes, however, Yang is careful to point out the ways in which Hmong Americans have been implicitly and explicitly racialized by the U.S. government. –J.VH.