ABSTRACT
Economic adjustment and social adaptation constitute the principal challenges that confiront newcomers to a host society. Economic adjustment involves the ability of migrants to find employment, the attainment of self-sufficiency, and the transfer of home-country occupational skills to the new employment context. Kin relations and the organized ethnic community have contributed in key ways to the economic adjustment and social adaptation of refugees from Cuba and Indochina. Economic adjustment involves subjective as well as objective considerations. The income results are related to the different perceptions interviewed migrants hold regarding their relative economic status in the United States. The chapter identifies the factors that exert the strongest influence on economic and social adaptation among migrants from Iran and Ethiopia. Family-income level in the sending country is another pre-migration variable that generally is related to all three dimensions of economic adaptation. Educational level is another post-migration variable that is clearly related to economic adjustment among the three study communities.
