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The growing body of literature on ethnic businesses has emphasized the importance of small family-based businesses as a key form of immigrant adaptation. Although there have been numerous references to the importance of "family labor" as a key ethnic resource, few studies have examined the work roles and family dynamics entailed in various kinds of ethnic businesses.

Helping Out addresses the centrality of children's labor participation in such family enterprises. Discussing the case of Chinese families running take-out food shops in Britain, Miri Song examines the ways in which children contribute their labor and the context in which children come to understand and believe in "helping out" as part of a "family work contract." Song explores the implications of these children's labor participation for family relationships, cultural identity, and the future of the Chinese community in Britain. While doing so, she argues that the  practical importance and the broader meanings of children's work must be understood in the context of immigrant families' experiences of migration and ethnic minority status in Western, white-majority societies.

In urban American school systems, the children of recent immigrants and low-income parents of color disproportionately suffer from overcrowded classrooms, lack of access to educational resources, and underqualified teachers. The challenges posed by these problems demand creative solutions that must often begin with parental intervention. But how can parents without college educations, American citizenship, English literacy skills, or economic stability organize to initiate change on behalf of their children and their community?

In Mothers United, Andrea Dyrness chronicles the experiences of five Latina immigrant mothers in Oakland, California—one of the most troubled urban school districts in the country—as they become informed and engaged advocates for their children’s education. These women, who called themselves “Madres Unidas” (“Mothers United”), joined a neighborhood group of teachers and parents to plan a new, small, and autonomous neighborhood-based school to replace the overcrowded Whitman School. Collaborating with the author, among others, to conduct interviews and focus groups with teachers, parents, and students, these mothers moved from isolation and marginality to take on unfamiliar roles as researchers and community activists while facing resistance from within the local school district.

Mothers United illuminates the mothers’ journey to create their own space—centered around the kitchen table—that enhanced their capacity to improve their children’s lives. At the same time, Dyrness critiques how community organizers, teachers, and educational policy makers, despite their democratic rhetoric, repeatedly asserted their right as “experts,” reproducing the injustice they hoped to overcome. A powerful, inspiring story about self-learning, consciousness-raising, and empowerment, Mothers United offers important lessons for school reform movements everywhere.