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Preface
Much research has been carried out on immigrants and their experiences. However, not much study seems to have been done specifically on immigrant scholars as immigrants with experiences and challenges specific to themselves as denizens of academe. Like other immigrants, immigrant scholars often look different, sound different, have different mannerisms, and are usually in the minority; at least, that is how they are seen from the point of view of the host population, not excepting host academic populations among whom immigrant scholars work. However, the host social and academic communities where immigrant scholars work as professionals—as professors, researchers, and students—already have set identities that are framed by expectations, ethics, norms, ideologies, and a culture to which immigrant scholars are often admitted as total or near-total strangers. They have to learn, adopt, and adapt to the new in the cultural contexts they come into and might have to sublimate, suspend, discard, or adapt some old aspects of their self-identity and norms from back home in order to be able to operate effectively as balanced social persons and as effective professionals in their new host societies.