ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the way family and kinship patterns change in the process of immigration—and why. Offering an interpretative synthesis, it emphasizes the way first-generation immigrants to the United States fuse together the old and new to create a new kind of family life. The family is seen as a place where there is a dynamic interplay between structure, culture, and agency. New immigrant family patterns are shaped by cultural meanings and social practices that immigrants bring with them from their home countries as well as by social, economic, and cultural forces in the United States.
