Mahalingam - Cultural Psychology of Immigrants

Cultural Psychology
of Immigrants

Cultural Psychology
of Immigrants

Edited by

Ramaswami Mahalingam
University of Michigan

Copyright 2006 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means, without prior written permission of the publisher.

First published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers

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Mahwah, New Jersey 07430

This edition published 2011 by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Cover design by Tomai Maridou

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cultural psychology of immigrants / edited by Ramaswami Mahalingam

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8058-5314-6 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 0-8058-5315-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. ImmigrantsPsychology. 2. Emigration and immigrationPsychological aspects. 5. Assimilation (Sociology) 6. Culture and globalization. I. Mahalingam, Ram

JV6225.C85 2006

305.006912dc22

2005044675

CIP

To
my school teachers

Vijaya, Kalyani, Subbulakshmi, Chandra,
Padma, Dalsi, Venkatraman, Karichankunju,
Natarajan, Ramaswami

&

students

Cheri, Eleanor, Hiro, Jan, Jana,
Jennifer, Joel, Mandy, Mark, Melita,
Ravishankar, & Sundari

Contents

Ramaswami Mahalingam

Bobbi S. Low

Silvia Pedraza

E. Valentine Daniel

Eleanor J. Murphy

Thomas F. Pettigrew

Victoria M. Esses, Joerg Dietz, and Arjun Bhardwaj

Teceta Thomas Tormala and Kay Deaux

Ramaswami Mahalingam, Cheri Philip, and Sundari Balan

Magdalena J. Zaborowska

Margaret Abraham

Patricia R. Pessar

Oliva M. Espn

Ramaswami Mahalingam and Jana Haritatos

Jaipaul L. Roopnarine and Ambika Krishnakumar

Karen Kisiel Dion

Min Zhou

Izumi Sakamoto

Ramaswami Mahalingam

Two pedagogical moments shaped the genesis of the book. Six years ago, I was teaching an undergraduate course on cultural psychology. I noticed that most of my students were children of immigrants. In the entire course, I allocated one week for the topic of immigration. At the end of the term, several students wrote in their evaluation forms that this course helped them to understand their parents better. Considering how little I covered immigration in my class, I wondered whether cultural psychology could indeed help us to understand the psychology of immigrants. If cultural psychology of immigrants were to be a different discipline, what it might look like? I realized that I needed to ground cultural psychology in an interdisciplinary framework to make it relevant to the study of immigrants. To get my intellectual feet wet, I applied for a Distinguished Faculty Grant at the University of Michigan to develop an interdisciplinary graduate seminar on culture and immigration. As part of the course, I envisioned a small speaker series where eminent scholars from the fields of sociology, anthropology and American culture could give talks to the graduate students about their work. In the middle of teaching the course, an exciting idea crossed my mind. Wouldnt it be wonderful to invite all the people we read during the course for a conference to initiate an interdisciplinary dialogue on immigrant research? With the help of generous funding from several units at the University of Michigan, I was able to expand my small speaker series into a full-fledged conference on immigrant psychology. Meanwhile, I also managed to develop an undergraduate course on cultural psychology of immigrants. The conference was held at the end of the semester. As part of the course, the undergraduate students attended the conference. Having read the works of all the speakers during the term, the students were among the most well-informed people in the audience.

The conference was as exciting as I thought it would be, and it generated several stimulating conversations. We had speakers from the disciplines of psychology, sociology, anthropology, social work, American culture, and Asian American studies. Although these scholars were familiar with each others work, this was the first time they were able to get together to share their work. Transcending the disciplinary and methodological boundaries, several themes about the complex dimensions of immigrants experience emerged. Intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and culture shape the cultural psychology of immigrants. Immigrants negotiate their social status in a new culture using a variety of personal, social, and cultural resources. Transnational ties play an important role in the making of immigrant selves. Immigrants are exposed to dual worldviews, cultural practices, and beliefs while negotiating their social positioning in the new cultural context. So far, these complex dimensions of immigrants have not been adequately examined in cultural psychological research.

This volume addresses this gap. Given the importance of immigrant studies to a variety of disciplines, this volume provides a fresh interdisciplinary perspective on understanding the cultural psychology of immigrants. Distinguished scholars from the fields of behavioral ecology, psychology, sociology, American culture, public health, social work, and anthropology examine the various cultural psychological consequences of displacement among different immigrant and refugee communities in the United States, Canada and Europe. There are four sections in the book: (a) Immigration, Globalization, and Transnationalism: Theoretical Perspectives, (b) Immigration and Race, (c) Immigration, Self, Gender, and Narratives, and (d) Immigration and Family.

The chapters in the Immigration, Globalization, and Transnationlism section provide a variety of theoretical perspectives on immigration. Bobbi Lows chapter provides a behavioral ecological perspective to study immigrants. Silvia Pedrazas chapter offers a historical overview of sociological research on immigrants. Using refugee narratives, Valentine Daniel discusses the complex phenomenological predicaments of refugees. Using Caribbean immigrants as an example, Eleanor Murphys chapter makes a strong case for understanding the significance of transnational ties in shaping immigrant health. Together these four chapters provide diverse theoretical perspectives to study immigrants and refugees.

The chapters in the Immigration and Race section examine racial discrimination of immigrants as well as immigrants discriminatory attitudes toward African Americans. Thomas Pettigrews chapter overviews research on anti-immigrant prejudice and discrimination in Europe and in the United States. Victoria Esses, Joerg Dietz, and Arjun Bhardwajs chapter investigates the role of prejudice in discounting immigrant skills in Canada. Teceta Thomas Tormala and Kay Deauxs chapter examines the complexities of racial and ethnic identity construction among Black immigrants. Ramaswami Mahalingam, Cheri Philip, and Sundari Balan compare first- and second-generation Indian Americans attitude toward African Americans. All the chapters in this section examine how racialization and racial positioning of immigrants shape discriminatory attitudes of dominant as well as immigrant groups.