Los Angeles | Research Briefing: Survey of Asian American and Pacific Islander in CA

New research highlights the experience of Asian American and Pacific Islander workers in California struggling with poverty.

Research, politicians, and philanthropy often group Asia American and Pacific Islanders as one demographic, even though they represent a diversity of countries and speak more than a dozen languages. The lack of community-specific data often masks very different experiences and perspectives for AAPI populations.

This was true for 2018 research that The James Irvine Foundation commissioned about California workers, so in 2019 Irvine commissioned an additional survey of Asian American and Pacific Islander workers for nine AAPI communities: Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, Hmong, Japanese, Korean, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders, South Indian, and Vietnamese. The research and its development and promotion have provided noteworthy lessons for philanthropy working with and on behalf of AAPI communities.

Discussion topics:

• Experiences and perspectives of different AAPI workers in California, many of whom struggle with poverty
• Surprising findings and notable takeaways from the research
• How philanthropy and researchers can better reach out to and learn from different populations typically excluded in data

Speakers:

• Fontane Lo (introductory comments), Senior Officer for Impact Assessment & Learning at The James Irvine Foundation
• Robert Jones, CEO of PRRI
• Karthick Ramakrishnan, Director of AAPI Data and Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside