Immigrants

Objectives: The study’s purpose was to examine the impact of somatic
symptoms and perceived neighborhood environment on depression
using a comparison among US-born and nonYUS-born free
clinic patients.

Methods: US-born English speakers (n = 99), nonYUS-born English
speakers (n = 89), and nonYUS-born Spanish speakers (n = 158) 18
years old or older (N = 346) were surveyed at a free clinic that provides
primary care to people without health insurance. Depression, somatic
symptoms, and perceived neighborhood environment were measured
using standardized instruments.

Results: US-born English speakers reported higher levels of depression
and a greater number of somatic symptoms than nonYUSborn
Spanish speakers and nonYUS-born English speakers. NonYUS
born English speakers reported lower levels of depression and fewer
somatic symptoms than Spanish speakers. Somatic symptoms and
perceived neighborhood satisfaction were related to depression.

Conclusions: Developing mental health services for patients in a free
clinic setting is needed; however, because of limited financial and
human resources, providing mental health services in a free clinic
setting often is difficult. Community-based health promotion programs
as supplements to efforts within clinical settings would be
valuable in improving the mental health of free clinic patients. Future
studies should implement collaborative pilot programs and evaluate
health outcomes.

Conceptualizing cultural openness as positive perceptions of immigration, this thesis explores three consecutive questions: (1) whether immigrants are more culturally open than natives; (2) whether these cultural openness gaps significantly vary across countries; and (3) whether certain institutional structures such as boundary regimes can explain this cross-national variation. Based on a theoretical framework emphasizing processes of socialization and identification as well as using and expanding the notion of boundaries, the main argument is that the self-identification of immigrants as at least partly belonging to the group of immigrants rather than fully belonging to the group of natives basically causes immigrants to develop higher levels cultural openness than natives, but that the pattern of self-identification driving this difference is contingent upon the inclusiveness of two specific institutional boundaries of the receiving society. On the one hand, by blurring the boundaries between immigrants and natives directly, inclusive integration regimes could be expected to reduce the salience of immigrants’ self-identifications as immigrants and pull them more into the native community, which should result in a smaller cultural openness gap. On the other hand, by blurring the boundaries between political majorities and minorities, inclusive power-sharing regimes could also reduce the salience of group identities, albeit in a more general way, leading to a similar result with respect to the cultural openness gap. However, based on a methodological and theoretical critique of these two arguments, a third alternative view is proposed. It is argued that the magnitude of the impact of the cognitive logics conveyed by power-sharing institutions on the patterns of identity formation of immigrants – and, subsequently, on the size of the cultural openness gap – varies with the inclusiveness of the integration regime which regulates the degree to which immigrants are effectively integrated into the society or even the native community. If integration policies are exclusive, immigrants would not be significantly exposed to the properties of these ‘internal’ societal boundaries, making the potential impact of power-sharing regimes less consequential. Covering 16 Western European countries as well as four rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS) – which is complemented by respective country-level data –, the empirical analysis systematically tests the various hypotheses by means of both bivariate analyses as well as more comprehensive multivariate multi-level analyses that control for a variety of relevant confounding and alternative individual- and country-level explanatory variables, including an additional cross-level interaction with the aggregate native level to test the robustness of the cross-level interactions implied by my arguments. In addition, several further robustness checks and diagnostics are performed. The results indicate that, while both first- as well as second-generation immigrants are indeed more culturally open, only first-generation immigrants display significantly varying cultural openness gaps across countries; and that this variation can be explained by my third, refined argument, which suggests that immigrants mostly differ in their perceptions of immigration when compared to natives in societies that effectively integrate them, but have very exclusive power-sharing regimes. This finding suggests that not only the boundaries between immigrants and natives, but also more general political boundaries within national communities matter for the patterns of identity, attitude, and group formation of immigrants. However, a critical review of my arguments and findings shows that the basis for valid causal inference is still limited in both theoretical and empirical terms; and I conclude by pointing to some possibilities for future research that could further explore and perhaps strengthen my arguments in a more convincing way.

This paper examines the challenges migrant groups that are new and
internally diverse face to participate and build community in host societies today. Qualitative research findings on Latin American migrants' experiences in Toronto, Canada, reveal that the group's participation is the result of a complexity of social and spatial processes. The paper contributes to current debates on the study of
immigrant integration in three ways: (1) by focusing on immigrants' collective forms of organising, (2) by responding to ongoing calls for a closer examination of intra-group diversity, and (3) by drawing on transnationalism research to avoid the use of essentialising categories in the study of immigrant groups that are internally diverse.

This article explores how social service providers in two small, geographically distinct cities-Portland, Maine, and Olympia, Washington-understand the importance of welcoming and incorporating new immigrants in their cities. We focus on how providers characterize their responsibilities, how they understand the importance of responding to new immigrants, and what they describe as the challenges and opportunities presented by recent immigration to their cities. Despite differences in Portland and Olympia, we find that providers in both cities combine a sense of moral responsibility to help immigrants, with an emphasis on the economic and cultural resources immigrants bring to cities. These insights expand recent immigration scholarship from a focus on immigrants alone to include the perspectives and logics of social service workers who are often their first points of contact in new places.

A sense of mastery or control is an essential life skill for persons to be able to deal with everyday challenges. Comparing the sense of mastery between immigrants and native-born Canadians using the 2008 General Social Survey (GSS-2008) data set, we seek to understand whether being an immigrant, particularly a visible minority immigrant, predicts lower levels of sense of control over life chances. The findings demonstrate that being born outside of Canada lowered the scores on the mastery scale for both Whites and visible minorities; however, the penalty of being a visible minority and an immigrant was much higher.

There is currently a dearth of research on the social networks of Malayali-Americans and Indian-American Christians. This paper aims to address at least a part of that issue. “Malayali” refers to those that originate from Kerala, India. The goal of this study is to elucidate the role of social support in Malayali Christian communities in the U.S., drawing a distinction and making a comparison between individuals who have a strong connection to the Malayali Christian community and those who have a lower connection to the community. Thirty- to sixty-minute ethnographic interviews and a 38-question online survey were used to collect data. Survey data reveals that the level of the respondent’s participation in their community is associated with the support they receive or can expect from the community. Individuals appear to find support from other Malayali Christians more often than from non-Malayali Christians, whether they attend an English-language church or a Malayalam-language church. In addition, fictive kin ties play a significant role in social support within the Malayali Christian community as close friends provide support traditionally derived from family members.