A Catalogue of Past Presentations

The process of immigration tears immigrant families out of their extended family and the social fabric. The family dynamics changes overnight. The support systems that they leave behind cannot be easily replaced in the new society. This presentation helps in identifying the specific needs of each group of immigrants and helps them survive better.

Coming of age and reaching puberty under acculturation pressures, in a new society is not an easy experience. This presentation walks bicultural teens through the challenging scenarios and offers them helpful tips.

Parenting takes a lot of effort and patience. This role becomes even more demanding for immigrant families. Settling down in a new society, finding a job for yourself, updating the language skills and the job skills, along with parenting roles and responsibilities, can be overwhelming. This presentation offers helpful tips for immigrant parents to meet the challenges of this role smoothly.

This presentation talks about the changing patterns of mainstreaming in America in the past, present and future. The mainstream society is seen as a symphony and all the cultures merging into the mainstream are seen as different instruments. When these cultures integrate with a cultural exchange reflected in acculturation and reciprocal acculturation, the symphony gets synchronized into a melodious orchestra.

This presentation is designed with techniques for faster mainstreaming of immigrants into American society with mutual understanding between the hosts and the guests promoting a smoother and shorter transition. This minimizes culture shock and makes immigration a positive experience for both the immigrants and the hosts.

This presentation offers a complete socio-cultural profile of Asian Indian immigrant families explaining who they are and what they have to offer as immigrant labor force to this new society, how their mainstreaming paces and patterns differ from the other immigrants.

Biculturalism is a normal phase in the cultural journey of immigrants when they switch societies. Prior to 1990s, it was a temporary issue. It’s shades kept getting lighter as they started gaining roots in America. But after 1990s due to the digital revolution the immigrants have the option of staying connected to their roots as long as they like. This presentation presents the pros and cons of this ongoing biculturalism and the paces and patterns of mainstreaming.

This presentation highlights the role strain and role conflict mothers face as single parents in binuclear families. It talks about the new responsibilities added to female gender roles without any of the traditional ones taken away. This adds more challenges to the already challenging role of these single mothers.

This presentation offers tips for breaking the ice and starting an interaction in a situation where factors like language and cultural barriers block the communication. This is helpful for foreign students visiting culturally different campuses as exchange students.

This presentation discusses the growing dysfunctionality and instability of our most important institution, the Family and its impact on our children and society. The presentation offers a sociological explanation to the challenges family as an institution faces as societies move into post modernism.

Role and responsibilities are rooted in customs and cultural practices. Violent behavior is acquired as a part o the growing-up experience. It one grows up in cultures that normalize family violence as any other accepted pattern of interaction, chances are that it becomes a normal part of behavior of the next generation. This presentation educates the immigrant families about cultural practices that are seen as family violence according to the American culture and informs the newcomers about their repercussions.

Culture shock is a normal and natural experience in switching societies. This presentation walks you through the transitional phase of adjustment and helps you expand your comfort zone smoothly in the new culture

This presentation discusses the impact of declining institution of fatherhood and its repercussions on American family and society. It presents an in-depth analysis of growth and development issues and parenting challenges in families where fathers are missing.

This presentation is designed as a workshop to address issues of culture sensitivity among mainstream American professionals and paraprofessionals who work with immigrant clients as teachers, doctors, lawyers, and social workers. It provides them with guidelines of approaching cross-cultural clients and servicing them in a way that enhances approachability and breaks cultural barriers.

This presentation addresses the mainstreaming challenges of young African Americans. It highlights their strength to bounce back as a most resilient minority against all the existing odds and become the part of the mainstream.

Obedience is a quality most parents instill in their kids. But sometimes smart kids can challenge the rules and question their parents. This is considered as disrespect by the parents. This presentation helps parents understand how they can stay in control when their children outsmart them.

Domestic Violence among immigrants can be triggered due to adjustment challenges, without the extended family around. This presentation is specially designed for social workers and other professionals working with victims of violence in immigrant families. It offers them successful intervention techniques to provide professional help to these families.

This presentation provides a picture of the world transformed from being colonized to globalized, requiring a new perspective for schools and institutions of higher learning that train the future labor force. It updates with the concept of sharing the planet as the playing field gets leveled and the world heads towards mutual dependence and coexistence.

This presentation offers a sociological analysis of the emerging Indian citizenship identity cutting across the caste, ethnic and religious lines in the post-partition India.

Issues relating to family and finances are interdependent. Tough economic times can be very challenging for the stability of the family. This presentation helps us understand this dynamic and strengthen the family relationships during tough financial situations.

This presentation is based on an empirical study of an ethnic group among Indian Muslims migrating after the disintegration of the princely state of Hyderabad, India. This is a group which was identified as Muslim, by religion and Hyderabadi, by ethnicity and Indian by nationality. The presentation highlights their distinct social and cultural identity and the emerging pan-Islamic consciousness in the new environment highlighting its paces and patterns of mainstreaming in American Society.

This presentation is a short introduction to my film Essential Arrival- Michigan’s 21st Century Indian immigrants, right before its screening and then followed by a short question and answer session after the audience has seen the film. 

This film seeks to broaden the discussion on immigration by turning attention to Indian immigrants, emerging and essential part of the immigration conversation. America is recognized as a ‘nation of immigrants. but that heritage is not just history: It continues to be built today. This film focuses on a new featured play on America’s immigration stage, Indian immigrants. Given the unique demands of this country’s new-age, hi-tech economy going forward, Indian immigrants, who hold disproportionate numbers of degrees in science and technology fields, stand to be only the primary driving forces of American progress in the 21st century.

It is a sociological analysis of immigration experiences of a highly educated immigrant family from India immigrating in the 1970s. There is an in-depth discussion on the issues around parenting, education and marriage of their children along with the issues of old age and widowhood.

This presentation discusses the process of immigration as a cultural journey and highlights the challenges immigrants face in balancing their past and present as they learn the new lifestyle and let go the old one.

This presentation is designed as a diversity training session for school teachers with immigrant children in their class. It offers tips to mentors of these students who are in continuous touch with their past culture and would remain bicultural permanently.

Motherhood is a culturally defined institution created and maintained by the checks and balances of a society based on its norms and traditions. It is a recognition that comes from cultural symbols and transcends a meaningful individual experience into a complete social institution. If an institution emerges in one society and is functioning in another it gets reduced to an individual experience. This presentation focuses on the cause and effect dynamics in this scenario.

Each wave of immigrants coming into American society at a different point of time, from a different society under different circumstances, chooses its own pace and pattern of integration into the  mainstream.

Immigrant parents have a big challenge to accept biculturalism and pick the best from both worlds and raise the children accordingly with a dual set of dos and don’ts. This presentation has some tried and tested tips for bicultural parents to help them deal with this challenge.

Immigrant adolescents gear up into adulthood without role models. This presentation offers tips to these teenagers and help them make smart decisions to self-navigate into adulthood.

This workshop talks about the hurdles immigrant parents encounter in raising children in a society they were not raised in. Parents in these situations cannot rely on the parenting tips they learnt from their own parents. Generation gap and biculturalism are the two factors they are confronted with at the same time. This presentation offers tips to make this task easier

Immigrants come from collective societies with limited resources, where their parents make big sacrifices to raise them and educate them. This presentation discusses old age problems of the parents of the immigrants when they move out to America leaving them behind by themselves.

Bilingualism and biculturalism in the globalized world are more or less a permanent phenomenon. Immigrants moving in America today have the possibility of retaining the culture and language of the society they are coming from, as they mainstream in American society. The reason being internet access. This presentation offers the new and effective ways of working with the bilingual and bicultural students and helping them achieve the American Dream while they stay in touch with their cultural past.

Intervention in any situation of family violence is not an easy task. It is even more complicated if the family is immigrant or bicultural. This presentation offers some general tips for successful intervention in situations of violence in such families so that the damage is minimized.

This presentation addresses the challenges of maintaining stability and responding to change among post 1990 immigrants under the pressure to jump start in a new society and establish financially and socially while adjusting to structural changes in the family.

As children become teenagers, the generation gap between them and their parents broadens. This is even more obvious in immigrant families. This presentation focuses on the teen conflict of these bicultural teens and the parenting challenges of their parents.

This presentation is a short introduction to my film- The Season in the Mist – A story of Sikhs in America, followed by a short question and answer session after the audience has seen the film.

This film is a story of Sikhs in America, an immigrant minority whose experiences provide important lessons for the polarized immigration debate today. There is a fog of misunderstanding today surrounding immigrants and the immigration debate.

Muslim Immigrants have an extra mile to walk when it comes to mainstreaming because of their religious differences. This presentation offers some important tips to work successfully with this added element of diversity, while they mainstream successfully and maintain their Muslim identity. It helps them be good Americans and good Muslims at the same time.

The focus for this workshop is social inclusiveness in American society in terms of ethnic variety due to race, religion and culture in an era of globalized world. The geographical, cultural and ideological boundaries cannot keep the people distanced or divided. Internet is bringing people closer by bridging this gap and evolving us into citizens of the world. This presentation discuses present day diversity in a new perspective.

This presentation is designed as dialogue between parents and teachers of immigrant children, helping them understand each other in terms of where they are coming from and what to mutually expect from the other group working with this first generation immigrants.