Search

This paper problematises the engagement with heritage of immigrants and their new-homeland-born children, bringing together heritage and migration studies. It discusses the use of ancestral heritage in group identity maintenance strategies, and sheds light on minorities' participation in the heritage of the dominant population. The paper investigates how the ancestral heritage of immigrant minorities has adjusted to the circumstances of the new homeland, and how the elements of heritage of the dominant population were fitted within the festivity routines of minority families. Therefore, it attempts to grasp the transformations of heritage occurring as a consequence of adjusting heritage practices to the new settings. To do so, it employs a notion of 'heritage in becoming' that refers to the situational and processual character of recreating inherited practices within the circumstances of the present. The paper proves that the boundary between minority and majority culture in the heritage practices of individuals is blurred, discussing the transformations the traditional heritages of nations undergo under the influence of migration. The author attempts to answer the question of whether these new qualities can be accepted as part of a so-called multicultural heritage of nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do the results of research on the relationship between crime and immigration status differ depending on the type of data examined? This question is posed and answered affirmatively in a paper based on a systematic review of ten Danish studies published between 2008 and 2017. The current review is motivated by the seemingly widespread perception that immigrants/descendants are at greater risk for committing crime than others even after adjusting for systematic differences between these groups. Using five criteria of relevance, a systematic search resulted in the identification of ten pertinent studies. The ten studies are reviewed in the current paper and form the basis of the conclusion that research results differ markedly depending on the type of data examined. This implies that public perceptions about crime and immigration status may rest on shaky ground. Five potential explanations are suggested to explain the inconsistencies found in the studies reviewed. Finally, five recommendations for future research are suggested in order move research forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the 2001 Census Special Migration Statistics, this paper explores ethnic variations in the propensity to migrate, the effectiveness of net migration in redistributing ethnic populations, and the connectivity between places that results from ethnic migration. London has by far the largest concentration of ethnic minority populations in Great Britain and plays a key role in the national internal migration system. By decomposing the net migration balances of boroughs into those within and across London's outer metropolitan boundary, the paper reveals different spatial processes of decentralisation and dispersal as well as centralisation when comparing ethnic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada’s old age security (OAS), a flat-benefit public pension, is internationally lauded as an accessible and effective safety net for seniors. This paper explores discrepancies in OAS uptake using Canadian Census data from 1996 to 2011. Our findings demonstrate disparities in OAS uptake based on immigration status, language proficiency, and visible minority status, disputing claims of “universal” OAS provision. Multivariate analyses confirm a strong “immigrant effect,” with being in Canada for 20 years or less leading to lower rates of OAS utilization. They also confirm that those not proficient in Canada’s official languages are less likely to receive OAS benefits. However, the influence of racialized minority status is found to be spurious; after controlling for immigration status and official language proficiency, many racialized minority senior groups have higher odds of receiving OAS than White Canadians. We conclude with a brief discussion of the tradeoffs involved in considering a potential removal of OAS eligibility barriers for immigrants in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One decade after its introduction, the superdiversity concept introduced by Steven Vertovec has widely found echoes in migration research, but also in business studies, particularly those focusing on ethnic minority entrepreneurship (EME). In spite of conceptually embracing superdiversity in EME research, the multi-dimensionality of superdiversity in its original understanding appears to require further consideration. Dimensions currently overlooked in research at the nexus of superdiversity and ethnic minority entrepreneurship are: (1) ethnic but also religious and linguistic diversity of entrepreneurship, (2) entrepreneurial diversity regarding business-types and (3) incorporation of the characteristics of the city within its analytical unit. Based on an extensive site survey of ethnic businesses in Glasgow combining ethnographic assessment and available statistical data on the city districts, this paper reconceptualizes the entrepreneurial superdiversity to do justice to the on-going debates on superdiversity within migration research. In doing so, it proposes the Entrepreneurial Superdiversity Index (ESI), which is a viable method for approximating entrepreneurial superdiversity in cities. The ESI allows comparative analyses of entrepreneurial superdiversity within a specific city and potentially also between different cities internationally, which could be highly useful for policy-makers and planners alike. It also delivers grounds for developing a general index for superdiversity in further migration research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose an interdisciplinary framework to study perceptions of child sexual abuse and help-seeking among South Asians living in the United States. We integrate research on social marginality, intersectionality, and cultural psychology to understand how marginalized social experience accentuates South Asian immigrants' desire to construct a positive self-identity. Using model minority ideology as an example of such a construction, we highlight its role in silencing the topic of child sexual abuse within this immigrant community as well as its impact on attitudes towards professional mental health services. We contend that our framework, the idealized cultural identities model on help-seeking and child sexual abuse, provides a unique analytical model for clinicians and researchers to understand how South Asian Americans process, experience, and react to child sexual abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we compare the community engagement of minorities as measured by group recreational activity in Canada and the Netherlands--two countries with high immigration intake and high levels of ethnocultural diversity. Using logistic regression, we ask questions concerning the determinants of recreational participation, focussing on the degree to which differences are a product of minority status or of more general socioeconomic status. We also compare rates of participation in the two countries to see if there is an underlying difference, which can be explained by socioeconomic and demographic status. We find that sociodemographic characteristics are generally much stronger predictors of participation than characteristics associated with minority status, regardless of country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a comparative, cross-local and cross-national analysis of the involvement of migrants and ethnic minorities in public debates and mobilisation (claims-making) in their countries of residence. Local and national integration and citizenship regimes are seen as political opportunity structures that may stimulate, constrain, or channel the degrees and types of migrants' political involvement. Empirically, the paper draws on media content data for Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, as well as on extra-medial indicators of opportunity structures such as naturalisation rates and the relative strength of conservative parties. In a first round of analysis, 16 German regions and cities are compared. This analysis reveals important intra-local differences that are in line with the expectations drawn from the opportunity structure model. The results show a strong and consistent positive relation between the inclusive- ness of local incorporation regimes and the degree to which immigrants participate proactively in public debates on issues concerning them. By contrast, we find political orientations on the countries of origin of immigrants to be most prevalent in localities that offer immigrants few channels of access to the decision-making process and grant them little legitimacy in the public domain. In a second step, this analysis is extended to the Netherlands and the UK, showing that the magnitude of cross-national differences is much more important than that of local variation within each of the countries. Thus, the results contradict recently popular views that the nation-state has become largely irrelevant for the incorporation of immigrants and that postnational and local contexts have become decisive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why have immigrant integration policies in the Basque Country and Flanders been framed according to multicultural principles? This paper offers an addendum to rationalist and institutionalist approaches, arguing that we cannot make sense of multicultural policies in these two cases without considering the interplay between historical narratives that undergird the nation and elite decision-making. Narratives of cultural oppression have been essential for nationalist mobilization in the Basque Country and Flanders. In turn, the choice of multiculturalism over assimilation by sub-state elites made sense because it fits with their understanding of the nation as an oppressed group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds hold attitudes, values and beliefs surrounding health, illness and mental health issues that are not fully in harmony with Western approaches to health care. In particular, mental health services do not adequately meet the specific needs of CALD communities, a situation that is a violation of sound health care access and rights. A number of damning government reports highlight the inadequacies of the system. CALD groups that experience mental illness have the problem of dual vulnerabilities. They are disadvantaged on at least two fronts: The marginalization and stigmatization associated with mental illness and the access and utilization of services. This paper reviews the context of mental health service delivery in Australia. There is agreement that the needs of these people are only marginally being met at best despite individual and collective efforts to address the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mass media have long been seen as an important mechanism in constructing and brokering relations between host and immigrant minorities. Their role has typically been portrayed as endorsing, if not, initiating racist imagery. New Zealand significantly altered its recruitment of immigrants in terms of source countries in 1986-87. The resulting superdiversity presents new challenges for the mainstream media. In the early phase of this recently enhanced cultural diversity, the mass media (here represented by the print media) contributed to a publically articulated racialisation. However, the growing engagement (embeddedness) of the media workers in the reality of this enhanced diversity was subsequently reflected in more nuanced and sympathetic reporting after 2000, thereby confounding classic approaches which stress the misrepresentation and underrepresentation of immigrants by the mass media. There remain important exceptions to this shift towards a broadly sympathetic representation of immigrants by the media; there is evidence of ongoing racist 'Othering' in news reporting and by particular journalists. This paper argues that there is evidence of a recent and partial transformation in the nature of media discourses concerning immigrants and immigration in New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews previous social science knowledge about non-English speaking background (NESB) immigrant communities in rural Australia with the aim of systematising what has been a diverse and fragmented literature. We propose a number of unifying themes which suggest the outlines of an emerging social science of ethnic minorities in rural Australia. These themes include demography; influences on NESB people's decisions to settle in rural areas such as cultural continuity, social exclusion and chain migration; access to resources and services; gender relations; intergenerational social mobility, and farming practices and natural resource management. In conclusion, we suggest that social capital is one theoretical approach that holds the potential to bring together aspects of the settlement experiences of immigrants in rural Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Watching the profound changes in the last decades in virtually any big city in Western Europe in the field of migration, minority and ethnicity, many national and urban governments in Europe fear for large spatial concentrations of immigrants who originate from non-industrialised countries. The basic assumption behind that attitude seems to be that large concentrations of (ethnic) immigrants would prevent their full integration and thus participation in society. Such a risk of insufficient integration would particularly be great when the immigrant population occupies the lower positions of the socio-economic ladder. However, two things should be investigated with care. First, what are the actual explanations for the social and spatial divisions that are encountered in cities? What does that imply for the (spatial) inequality in Dutch cities? Second, what can be said about the effects of recent changes that can be observed with respect to the explanatory dimensions in the Dutch context? How do these compare to the actual size and stability over recent years of the spatial patterns of immigrants? Popular images of the processes of immigration describe the development of 'ethnic ghettos'. These would particularly develop where state intervention in the spheres of housing and in many other spheres is small or, as in the Netherlands, is declining. This paper investigates whether that view does justice to the actual development, applying micro-level data on immigrant settlement patterns in the city of Amsterdam over the period 1994-99. It is argued that ethnic residential concentrations tend not to be stable and are just growing areal units, but many changes can be shown, which may reflect processes of housing careers and of integration in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the basic model of Blau and Duncan, this paper explores the process of stratification among Chinese immigrants in Chicago, and examines the effects of kinship assistance on the career cycle. It was found that while kinship assistance is an important resource to some immigrants during and after migration, it frequently obligates the immigrants to remain in the ethnic business, and thereby hinders their upward mobility. This study suggests the usefulness as well as the limitations of kinship assistance in the stratification process of ethnic minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As global efforts to address COVID-19 become more urgent, the public discourse on attitudes towards immigrants has also become more polarized. In such a heightened social and political context, we study the impact of intergroup contact in political jurisdictions with different shares of minority populations. Drawing on data from the Australian Election Study and the Census, we find that less intergroup contact with neighbours from minority birthplace, language and citizenship backgrounds is correlated with higher anti-immigrant sentiments. These results have significant implications for immigrant-receiving countries with existing legislation and policies that direct immigrants to move to areas of lower population density, lower presence of immigrants, and less previous exposure to international migration. The evidence presented in this study suggests that without sufficient political and policy sensitization to the issues for immigrants living in these areas, there could be detrimental social and political impacts to both immigrants and society more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtually all studies on inter-ethnic attitudes in Western Europe and North America find that higher educated individuals report greater tolerance towards migrants and ethnic minorities. The overwhelming evidence on this link has even led scholars to call for educational expansion as a policy measure to increase social cohesion in today's ever more diverse societies. But most of this evidence comes from cross-sectional correlations, and it is still unclear whether increasing education actually causes greater levels of tolerance. In this study, we follow a cohort of students aged 15 years over a period of 8 years from the German Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey (CILS4EU-DE). We focus on students who change from lower tracks into upper secondary and later tertiary education (the 'treatment' group) and compare them to a control group of similar students who stay in the lower track and leave school without entering university. Matching and fixed-effects panel regressions provide no evidence for a causal effect of changing into a higher educational track on subsequent prejudice towards ethnic minorities. We conclude that the descriptive difference between educational groups in their attitudes towards ethnic minorities is evident, but attending higher education per se does not seem to cause this difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the turn of the millennium, "integration" has become a predominant floating signifier in discourse and policy regulating the place of immigrants and minorities in European societies. This study analyzes a self-described "integration campaign" that used celebrity exemplars to promote the German language to immigrants and their descendants. This case demonstrates the interrelationship between celebrations of new German diversity and discourses that frame immigrants-and especially Muslims-as a potential threat to national life. This campaign combines two potent sites of symbolic cultural politics: language and the body. It uses racialized celebrity exemplars to articulate normative whiteness symbolized by standardized German. The campaign targets the imagined figure of the perpetual migrant who is beyond the reach of the German language and, thus, outside the regulatory and disciplinary control of majority society. While it is self-styled as a playful invitation to learn German, the content of the campaign, its theme song, and the press discourse about it use racialized celebrity bodies to affirm colorblind meritocracy while devaluing the lives of racialized "migrants"who are unable or unwilling to conform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surges of migration into Sweden and other European countries have raised needs to adjust civic education to provide Bernsteinian pedagogic rights of enhancement, participation and inclusion, both generally and in VET specifically. However, associated issues have received little research attention even in countries with colonial histories and longer traditions of immigration and non-native ethnic minorities. Moreover, most published empirical studies on race and ethnicity issues in VET have had Anglophone settings. Thus, research in other contexts is needed to broaden understanding and distinguish between general and context-specific aspects. This article addresses gaps in knowledge of the construction and significance of race and ethnicity in VET, particularly in Swedish contexts. First, it examines how critical understandings of being an immigrant, immigration and ethnicity are constructed in pedagogic practices in Swedish VET programmes, then analyses students' and teachers' discussion of these issues. Content related to immigration and ethnicity was sparse in monitored VET classes, but the presence of immigrants increased instances of both spontaneous and planned content. We conclude that pedagogic practices do not reflect the large increase in numbers of students in Swedish schools with immigrant backgrounds, and greater intercultural awareness is needed to safeguard their pedagogic and general democratic rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Race relations legislation was only introduced to Northern Ireland in 1997, 31 years later than in Britain. This article examines the obstacles and challenges faced by minorities there during the twentieth century. By providing a case study of Northern Ireland, the article shifts the focus away from British inner cities, emphasising that outlying regions - so often overlooked within the context of UK race relations historiography - also had to grapple with issues surrounding race and immigration. The article challenges the notion that Northern Ireland was exclusively white, showing how ethnic minorities there were repeatedly overlooked and excluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives:Type 2 diabetes is a chronic condition that affects nearly over three million Canadians, including immigrants. The timing of the first onset of diabetes has been linked to several other severe diseases. Yet, there is a dearth of empirical studies that examine the timing of the first onset of diabetes among Canadians, in general, and among immigrants and ethnic minority populations within Canada, in particular. Design:Applying event history techniques to the 2013 Canadian Community and Health Survey, we address this research void by examining factors that contribute to the first onset of diabetes among immigrant and visible minority populations in Canada (N = 8905). Given the gendered patterns in the epidemiology of diseases and the differences in risk factors for men and women, gender-specific models were estimated. Results:Results showed that South Asian, Black and Filipino women developed diabetes earlier, compared to women from the UK. Similarly, South Asian, Chinese, Filipino, Black, South East Asian and Arab men developed diabetes earlier than men from the UK. A significant and important finding of this analysis was that the risks of developing diabetes vanished completely for Black and Filipino women, after accounting for lifestyle factors. For South Asian women, however, there was significant attenuation in their risks after accounting for lifestyle factors. The findings were strikingly different for immigrant men. Specifically, their risks of developing diabetes increased after accounting for lifestyle factors. Conclusions:These results suggest the development of gender-specific and lifestyle interventions, targeted at specific immigrant groups with increased risks of developing diabetes earlier in the life course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the ways in which Britain and the USA classify and analyse the integration of immigrants and their descendants. While both societies recognize racial differences in their official statistics and in the academic analyses of change over time, the USA tends to classify immigrants and their descendants by immigrant generation much more than Britain does. The importance of the concept of generation in American immigration research is highlighted and it is suggested that studies built on the importance of generation can illuminate social processes of integration in Britain. The complexities of defining and measuring immigrant generation are reviewed, including new developments in the measurement of generation that take into account age at migration, and historical period and cohort effects. Racial and ethnic minority groups formed through immigration may have very different characteristics depending on the average distance of their members from immigration – including the possibility of ‘ethnic leakage’, as more assimilated, later-generation individuals no longer identify with the group. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The primary purpose of this article is to demonstrate how immigrant/refugee women's access to health services is influenced by both immigration and health policies. The author argues that the wheel of health care must revolve along with the wheel of immigration. The application of health immigration policies that existed preconfederation, as well as health care interventions based on Eurocentric principles, limit minority women's accessibility to health services. An integrated dialogue between all levels of government, health care professionals, policy makers, researchers, and immigrant groups is critical to provide equitable access to health care to foster immigrant settlement in Canada's smaller communities and rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically examines how Malta, the smallest EU state, has developed specific 'small' or 'minimalist tolerance' discourses and practices in the education of ethnic minorities and immigrants. As a previous colony of Britain, now a 'new' host country with, relative to its size, the largest influx of undocumented immigrants, Malta faces particular challenges in adjusting to new forms of ethnic diversity. Whilst not arguing a path dependency, Malta's history of domination and its resort to Roman Catholicism as a marker of ethnic identity position it in particular discursive practices which generate 'small', minimalist, even negligible and negligent approaches to cultural and ethnic diversity in its schools. Starting with a brief history and an account of contemporary education policies, the article constructs the theme of 'smallness' through an analysis of the discourses of key education policy-makers and school principals. With contradictions between the declared policy objectives and the implementation, or lack thereof, in schools, there is a 'discretionary' model in place. The educational experience of ethnic minority and immigrant children is at the discretion of school principals and teachers and their 'classes of toleration' (Dobbernack and Modood, 2012:2). Obstacles to an expanded concept of tolerance derive mainly from a definition of the national identity as Roman Catholic, as well as specific 'smallness' discourses. On the ground, actors argue that the 'smallness' of Malta and its attachment to its Catholic identity makes it unable to move beyond this very minimalist toleration of ethnic diversity. The article deconstructs these discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last two decades of the 20th century, the normative debate on multiculturalism has been one-dimensional. It has deployed arguments related to cultural demands either linked to feminism and sub-cultural identities, immigration, or national minorities. Little attention has been given to the relations between these dimensions, and how they affect each other in putting forward demands to the nation-state. The purpose of this article is to set a research agenda on the interaction between cultural demands of immigrants and minority nations by reviewing three basic reliections of J. Carens, W. Kymlicka and R. Bauböck. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike many other groups living and working in Italy, Albanians have not gathered in communities. Moreover, only a minority of them have referred to home or diasporic media in order to recreate and sustain a positive sense of ‘ethnic’ belonging while living abroad. In fact, most Albanian migrants rely solely on Italian public and private television for entertainment and information. On the other hand, but in a sense consistent with the above picture, Albanian individuals and families seem to have integrated into Italian society better than many other migrant groups. They have developed family-based private networks of friendship and solidarity, which have generally increased the success of their migratory projects. Although some of these aspects can be understood as a consequence of their recent settlement in Italy, the peculiarity of Albanians' diaspora-in-the-making can be better explained by analysing the interaction between the two main roles Italian media have played in the mass migratory outflow that accompanied the process of Albanian post-communist transformation. Firstly, Italian media have articulated an aspect of Albanian people's identities that Albanian culture could not provide. Secondly, they have been the main source of information about Albanians living and working in Italy for Italians and Albanians alike, thus playing an active part in enforcing Albanian migrants' social exclusion and marginalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an effort to provide a more complex and multifaceted understanding of the process of spatial assimilation, this article explores alternative paths in understanding racial/ ethnic minority residential patterns. It scrutinizes patterns of contemporary Asian Indian and Chinese settlement in two metropolitan areas: Austin, Texas and Phoenix, Arizona. Though not particularly evolved in terms of their Asian immigrant settlement or dynamics, Austin and Phoenix represent the growing number of newly emergent Asian centers throughout the nation that have developed with the rapid rise of immigration from these two countries in the past several decades. The analysis utilizes records from the 2000 census to document and map Asian Indian and Chinese settlement within each metropolitan area and to investigate whether — and to what degree — each group is clustered or dispersed. The article then raises important questions about the consequences of concentration and dispersal for the incorporation of Asian Indian and Chinese residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The massive political upheavals of recent years in South-East Asia have given rise to an outflow of refugees from that region on a scale that has been equaled by only a limited number of refugee flows anywhere in the world in the post-war period. Certainly a substantial part of the total refugee flow has been contained within South-East Asia itself, as was the case with Vietnamese and Laotian refugees settling in Thailand in the 1950's after the final French withdrawal from the area, but a distinctive characteristic of the refugee flow out of South-East Asia has been the long distances involved. The objective of the present article is to examine the impact of a sector of the refugee population in creating a distinctive ethnic concentration area within a single European city, Paris, France and to consider how this area has developed in relation to established ideas on the evolution of Chinatowns. It is also possible to make certain statements indicating the extent of the comparability or difference between the Chinese community and other ethnic minorities in the city whose origins lie in very different migration processes.

The article presents a research report on some problems of data for the demographic study of immigration and of immigrant and minority populations in Great Britain, as of January 1, 1983. Citizens of colonies and of Commonwealth countries enjoyed an unlimited access, codified by the 1948 Nationality Act. Questions are routinely asked on the registration of births and deaths. There is no substitute for census data in analyzing the socio-economic and housing conditions of these groups of people, especially at local level. The direct routes to Ireland, including the border with Northern Ireland, are not covered by the International Passenger Survey or by Immigration control and therefore these figures published relating to Ireland are meaningless as an indication of migration flows between the two countries. The U.S. Office of Population Census and Surveys is inclined by the public position and constrained by the data available to be cautious and conservative in commenting on the data.

Attitudinal and behavioral data indicative of cultural integration support the hypothesis of decreasing race/ethnic differences. The study data were collected from immigrant Mexican-Americans and Negroes and a control group of Anglo residents at two points in time separated by eleven years. Tau is used to describe similarity or dissimilarity in race ethnic distributions within each year's data and as a measure of changing race/ethnic response across the eleven-year span. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how the educational system in Great Britain accounts for cultural diversity in view of recent immigrant groups. It is observed that the problems encountered by the immigrants and their children in Great Britain are common in various parts of the world. However, the educational responses to cultural diversity and their insufficiency can only be understood in terms of the unique characteristics of the British educational system.