Challenges Of Immigration Research Articles

How population aging affects carbon footprints in US households: a comparative study with Japan

Abstract Demographic aging has emerged as a global societal concern, posing a challenge to decarbonization efforts. This study investigates the impact of demographic aging on household decarbonization by first quantifying age-bracket-specific household carbon footprints (HCF) in the United States (U.S.), and comparing them to Japan, a country facing the most serious aging issues among economically developed countries. To explore future challenges, an estimation of the effects of demographic shifts on HCFs to the late 2030’s using multi-regional input-output analysis. It was revealed that the highest per-capita HCF was associated with middle-aged (45–54) households, reaching 31.9 t-CO2eq/cap in the U.S., more than double the same age bracket in Japan. Due to an influx of younger immigrants in the U.S., future demographic changes are projected to increase the total HCF by 684.5 Mt-CO2eq from 2011 to 2038. In contrast, Japan is expected to see a decrease of 28.4 Mt-CO2eq from 2011 to 2040. The comparison between the U.S. and Japan highlights two distinct pathways resulting from future demographic trends, underscoring the need for CF mitigation efforts to target U.S. household demand specifically. In response to this, policy recommendations are proposed to reduce HCFs in the U.S., particularly in light of its aging and immigration challenges.

Disability and infidelity with a cross-cultural couple: an emotionally focused therapy case study

ABSTRACT This clinical case study delves into the therapeutic process of a cross-cultural couple, facing the intersection of disability and infidelity concerns. This intersection illuminates the intricate dynamics that arise when couples navigate both the complexities of disability and the emotional turmoil associated with infidelity. Utilizing Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), case intervention unfolded through three distinct stages, revealing intricate emotional dynamics, attachment styles, and communication patterns. The study explores the couples’ narrative, negative interaction cycles, and distinct emotional processing styles, considering complicating factors such as immigration challenges, cultural norms, and online infidelity. To strengthen bonds, the therapeutic approach promotes cultural sensitivity, intersectionality, and emotional connection. Despite time constraints and visa issues, the study highlights the efficacy of EFT in navigating the complexities of this cross-cultural couple. This case study contributes to the existing literature by examining the interplay of disability, infidelity, and cultural diversity within the framework of couples’ therapy.

Mental health challenges of recent immigrants in precarious work environments - a qualitative study.

Recent immigrants from racialized minority backgrounds and those who are not proficient in the local language are some of the most vulnerable members of society. Despite having postsecondary educational qualifications and permanent residency status, many are engaged in precarious employment. There is a scarcity of research that has explicitly focused on the work experiences and mental health challenges faced by these immigrants. Using a grounded theory approach and semi-structured face-to-face interviews, this study examined the work experiences and mental health challenges of 42 recent immigrant employees from two cities in Canada who were working in various industries and engaged in precarious employment. Eighty-one percent of the employee participants were overqualified for their jobs. Findings highlighted several ongoing mental problems that participants experienced, stemming from challenging physical and psychological workplace conditions, negative mindsets associated with their recent immigrant status, and other contextual factors and barriers. However, various coping strategies, both constructive and unconstructive, were used to address this mental distress. The study proposes a multidimensional approach to address workplace conditions to promote good mental health for these employees. This includes preventative programs for raising awareness among employers about the importance of recent immigrant employees' mental health and well-being and policy and legislation changes to ensure the employer's commitment to creating a safe and culturally friendly workplace. The approach also recommends that recent immigrant employees receive occupational health and safety training, learn about Canadian workplace norms and culture, and have access to professional healthcare services.

Afghan immigrants' perceptions of integration policies in Iran

AbstractIn the contemporary global context, the challenge of integrating immigrants into host societies has gained prominence. This paper delves into the perceptions and experiences of Afghan immigrants in Iran regarding immigration policies and laws. Employing a constructivist grounded theory methodology, the study aims to uncover participants' interpretations and the meanings attributed to immigration policies and laws. Grounded theory analysis, involving initial, focused, and theoretical coding, was employed to collect data. The results reveal that current immigration laws and policies in Iran have led to economic disparities, limited educational opportunities, social isolation, and identity challenges for Afghan immigrants. Iran's integration policies lean towards exclusion. Consequently, Afghan immigrants experience a weakened sense of belonging in the country. Therefore, our study suggests the importance of implementing integration theories and policies instead of those promoting disintegration. Such policies not only hinder immigrants' assimilation but also impede the overall progress of the host nation, thus undermining social cohesion.

Book Review: A Postcolonial Relationship: Challenges of Asian Immigrants as the Third Other

Book Review: A Postcolonial Relationship: Challenges of Asian Immigrants as the Third Other

“Do the right thing”: Immigrant perspectives of social worker support in the United States

AbstractSocial workers play a distinctive role in serving all communities, especially immigrants. Heightened immigrant stress and deteriorating well‐being have been reported amid recent anti‐immigrant socio‐political climate. Given the unique challenges of immigrants, they have distinct needs. In our study, we utilize data from a larger study including a sample of first‐ and second‐generation immigrants, to understand “How can social workers support immigrant communities?” In total, N = 265 participants responded to this prompt. We employed a content analysis approach to analyze participant responses. Our analysis yielded four main themes: (1) Resources for immigrants, (2) Doing right by immigrants, (3) Advocacy, and (4) Understanding immigrants. Our findings are timely in highlighting the diverse perspectives about immigrant needs in the current socio‐political climate. Study findings have implications for social workers as well as service providers/agencies that engage with immigrants.

Social Disconnectedness, Perceived Loneliness, and Cognitive Functioning: The Role of Neighborhood Environment.

Social disconnectedness and loneliness pose significant challenges for older Chinese immigrants. Yet, it remains unclear whether they are associated with an increased risk of cognitive decline in this population. This study aimed to investigate the association of social disconnectedness and loneliness with cognitive functioning and examine the moderation role of neighborhood contexts. This longitudinal analysis examined a sample of individuals aged 60 years and older from the Population Study of Chinese Elderly in Chicago (N = 2,044). Global cognition was assessed using the averaged z-scores of cognitive performance tests. Social disconnectedness was constructed using 5 indicators about structural aspects of social relationships. Loneliness was assessed with the R-UCLA loneliness scale. Neighborhood socioeconomic status (NSES) and neighborhood segregation index were constructed using 2010-2014 American Community Survey data at the census tract level. Individual perceptions about neighborhood environments were used to construct neighborhood cohesion index and neighborhood disorder index (NDI). Latent growth curve models with adjusted cluster robust standard errors were estimated. More loneliness was associated with a higher level of initial cognitive functioning (B = 0.030, p < .01), but also with a faster decline rate over time (B = -0.007, p < .01) after adjusting for covariates. High NSES and less neighborhood segregation buffered the negative effects of loneliness on cognitive decline, respectively. High NDI amplified the positive relationship between loneliness and initial functioning, but accelerated the rate of cognitive decline associated with loneliness. The study revealed that perceived loneliness, but not social disconnectedness, is a risk factor for cognitive decline among older Chinese immigrants. Living in a neighborhood with low socioeconomic status, more segregation, and high disorder elevated the detrimental effect of loneliness on long-term cognitive decline. Further research needs to investigate the complex interplay between social relationships, neighborhood environment, and cognition.

Albania and Kosovo-Albania Immigrants' Perceptions of Mental Well-Being and the Psychological Challenges Faced in Malaysia

BackgroundImmigrants who relocate to a foreign country often face numerous stressors and challenges as they try to assimilate to a new culture. This transition can often have a significant impact on their mental well-being. In this qualitative study, we aim to explore and examine the life experiences of 16 Albanian and Kosovo-Albania immigrants who have settled in Malaysia, as well as those who previously resided in Malaysia but are now living in Australia and Albania. ObjectivesThis study aimed to investigate two main objectives: (i) to explore immigrants’ psychological problems and how they perceive and approach mental well-being; and (ii) to identify the challenges and barriers that immigrants face in Malaysia. MethodsThe data was obtained using a qualitative phenomenological case study, using in-depth semi-structured interviews. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and thematically analysed. ResultsThe study's findings indicate that immigrants' mental well-being is positively affected by inner peace, happiness, fulfilling family needs, a balanced life, and self-improvement. On the other hand, challenges related to visa and employment pass issues, difficulty in securing employment status, feeling like a foreigner, and lack of family support have a negative impact on their mental well-being. ImplicationsThe study's findings advocate for targeted support programmes to address the psychological challenges of Albanian immigrants. Prioritising inner peace and self-improvement benefits their mental well-being. Policymakers are encouraged to prioritise reducing employment pass difficulties and fostering an inclusive job market to improve employment opportunities for this community.

Impact of Immigration Laws on Family Reunification: Narratives from Affected Families

The increasing complexity of immigration laws globally has profound effects on family reunification processes, often resulting in significant emotional, legal, economic, and social challenges for immigrants. This study aims to explore the impact of these laws on family reunification, specifically examining the personal narratives and experiences of affected families. The objective is to understand the multi-dimensional consequences of immigration policies on family dynamics and well-being. This qualitative study employed semi-structured interviews with 22 participants who have directly experienced the family reunification process under current immigration laws. Participants were selected through snowball sampling and outreach via immigrant advocacy groups, ensuring a diverse representation in terms of age, gender, and origin. Data collection aimed for theoretical saturation and was analyzed using NVivo software to identify themes related to the impacts of immigration laws on family reunification. Four main themes were identified: Emotional Impact, Legal and Administrative Barriers, Economic Consequences, and Social and Cultural Integration. Emotional impacts included stress, anxiety, loss, resilience, and effects on children. Legal and administrative barriers highlighted the complexity of legal processes, issues with accessibility of resources, and the implications of frequent policy changes. Economic consequences focused on financial strain, employment challenges, and housing instability. Social and cultural integration covered challenges related to cultural adaptation, community support, discrimination, stigma, and family dynamics. The study reveals that immigration laws intricately affect the emotional and psychological health, economic stability, and social integration of immigrant families. The findings underscore the need for policies that consider the profound human impacts of immigration laws, advocating for reforms that facilitate smoother and more humane family reunification processes.

Between Inclusion and Exclusion: The Representations of Illegal Immigrants and Refugees on Spanish Party VOX’s Instagram During the First Year of the War in Ukraine

Populist radical right parties, such as Spain’s VOX, transitioned from advocating explicitly racist and xenophobic ideologies to engaging in a cultural war. This change has gained particular prominence in Spain, given the dual challenges of immigration from Africa and the one resulting from the ongoing war in Ukraine. This study aims to analyze the contrasting representations of illegal immigrants and refugees on VOX’s Instagram account using Critical Discourse Analysis. The findings reveal that VOX characterizes illegal immigrants as young, African Muslim men frequently displaying aggressive or threatening behaviours. In contrast, refugees, consisting of Ukrainian white women, children, and elderly persons, are depicted as embodying civilized conduct.

Leadership Character of the Director General of Immigration: a Hope

The open selection for the position of Director General of Immigration at the Ministry of Law and Human Rights has become a historic moment with the opportunity for non-civil servants to be involved as candidates. This phenomenon illustrates that the public has high hopes for the Director General of Immigration who will be elected. The hope is that Indonesian Immigration will be more advanced and ready to face challenges. This is descriptive research using a literature study that uses various data and information related to Immigration issues, the selection of the Director General of Immigration and the challenges of Immigration in the future. The Director General of Immigration must be able to be an example (example), have sufficient experience (experience), educated (education), understand the environment and organizational values (environment) and be able to evaluate the program well (evaluation). Therefore, it is important to remind that the Director General of Immigration must understand the work culture of the organization, the ability to change for the better, the ability to make effective decisions, the ability to lead and communicate, the drive to be able to collaborate with strategic partners, equal opportunities in order to develop capacity, be able to achieve performance targets, maximize assets and potential, manage the quality of public services that are getting better and the ability to bring this organization to a better direction.

Singapore’s postcolonial ethnic revival in parks design

Either led by state, market or civil society, ‘ethnic revival’ — a process associated with multiculturalism — helped countries respond to last century’s challenges of immigration and identity formation. In postcolonial states, politics of multiculturalism negotiated colonial policies and their expressions in the built environment. In postcolonial Singapore, ethnic revival informed design and planning of its public park system. What aesthetic was used in postcolonial Singapore? How precisely does it reveal political ideas? Were these ideas and aesthetics general or specific to Singapore? How did local history influence that aesthetics? The paper situates Singapore’s postcolonial parks design, with its use of ‘multiethnic’ popular symbolism, within the discourse around the aesthetics of fast-growing urban environments of the mid-nineteen hundreds. It examines its contradictions and merits, casting a light on the consequences of postmodern culture for socio-political and economic gain: a state’s negotiation of local history and culture versus globalized trends; and the commodification of landscapes for tourism purposes and consequent ephemerality of urban imagery. The research examines the design of over 400 parks built between independence (1960s) to the late 1990s — the majority of those (90%) are sited in public housing estates, where 81% of the population of over 5.6 million lives.

Mapping framework conditions for societal participation of immigrants - a cluster analysis of medium-sized cities in Germany

Immigrants, or people who are read as such, face unequal participation opportunities. This is mainly due to poor host country language skills, inexperience with and barriers within administrative processes. Especially in cities beyond metropolises, scepticism through inexperience regarding immigration reinforces inequality. Although immigration to smaller cities is increasing, studies regarding this remain scarce. The goal of this paper is to examine spatial-structural conditions of participation opportunities for immigrants in medium-sized cities (MSC) and thus develop a basis for further research to address the particular challenges for immigrants in MSC. Therefore, I question the spatial patterns and characteristics of immigrants’ participation opportunities in MSC. Cluster analysis and mapping methods are used to analyse data relevant to societal participation at the municipal level with reference to immigration. The data refer to MSC in Germany, a country that plays a significant role for immigration in Europe. Six clusters with different levels of participation opportunities emerge. One of the main results are the regional disparities between the former FRG (West Germany) and the former GDR (East Germany) expected under hypothesis 1. Almost all MSC in the former GDR can be assigned to the cluster with the greatest challenges for immigrants’ participation. At the same time, according to hypothesis 2, other regional differences can be identified, which are manifested by political-administrative boundaries, but also extend beyond them. Rural areas do not necessarily offer worse conditions for immigrants’ participation than dense regions. However, the mapping shows two participation ‘belts’ in the southwest between the large cities Frankfurt am Main and Stuttgart and in the central northwest between the Ruhr region and Hanover. The two belts contain a large number of strong MSC with good framework conditions for immigrant’s participation. Especially in the ‘arrival’ belt between Frankfurt am Main and Stuttgart it covers MSC of widely varying sizes. Hypothesis 3 illustrates how local peculiarities also in the former GDR allow contrary developments and show the importance of further research.

Immigration and the conditionality of unemployment benefits in OECD countries

Advanced welfare states have placed more conditions on the receipt of social protection. This study examines the link between the strictness of unemployment benefit conditionality and immigration. Immigration might increase this through an anti-solidarity effect because it decreases the perceived deservingness of the unemployed and via a fiscal exposure effect where governments attempt to limit the negative financial consequences of immigration. This article examines this relationship by analysing data for 20 OECD countries from 1985–2012. It complements the literature on how immigration challenges welfare states by examining whether immigration affects not only their budgets but also how beneficiaries are treated. The results show that immigration is associated with stricter benefit sanctions. Moreover, unemployment benefits that are greater weaken this conditionality-enhancing effect of immigration. The effects stem largely from how EU countries respond to intra-EU migration, potentially because they are unable to restrict the access to social security of these migrants.

The Islamic factor in the immigration process of the European Union

The article emphasizes the importance of resolving immigration problems in Western Europe in a timely manner, in particular, with regard to Islamic immigrants. Given the constant nature of immigration flows from the Muslim world, the authors call for the development and implementation of comprehensive measures to adapt Islamic immigrants to new working, living and cultural conditions in the host countries. The article also highlights the need to improve international and domestic cooperation in the field of human rights protection, ensuring equal access to education and social services. Additionally, the authors emphasize the search for alternative and innovative solutions to resolve conflicts arising from immigration challenges and the importance of involving all sides of society in this process.

Migration Trends in Armenia: Issues and Challenges

The article is dedicated to the study of the types of migration, the current challenges of emigration and immigration, and the reasons for migration in Armenia, as well as its consequences on the economy and demography. The methods of comparative studies, general scientific analysis, groupings, and generalizations were mainly used in the framework of the research. Emigration has become one of the most drastic challenges in Armenia for almost three decades. There are a lot of reasons for emigration to Armenia: social, economic, psychological, and security. From 2012 to 2019 about 91% of those who emigrated from Armenia were in the 15-59 age group, and more than 65% were in the 20-49 age group. The latter significantly influenced the formation of the age structure of the population. In other words, the negative impact of emigration has begun to be reflected in demographics as well.

The Life Experiences of Refugee Children and the Depictions of Their Experiences in Drawings: A Qualitative Study

ABSRTACT This study aims to investigate the life experiences of refugee children and examine the symbolic representations of these experiences in their drawings. In this study, the phenomenological research design, which is a qualitative research approach, was adopted. The study was carried out with 28 refugee children. The obtained qualitative data were analyzed through thematic coding. It has been found in this study that three themes “The Challenges of Immigration,” “Living in A Country Without War,” “Outlook for The Future.” Refugee children experience challenges in many aspects, including but not limited to education, economic status and social life. It has been determined that despite the challenges they face, refugee children have embraced their host country, that they feel safe, and that most do not want to go back to their home countries as they fear for their lives. In this study, it has been concluded that refugee children experience various asylum-related issues. In line with the obtained data, it is recommended to pre-determine the mental and physical problems refugee children may face, ensure their protection, minimize their asylum-related issues, produce national and international policies on their access to education, health, and basic services and take other relevant necessary measures. Practice Implications: This study contributes to our better understanding of what difficulties migration causes in children’s lives and how children experience this process. All the health professionals who have roles and responsibilities in the protection and development of the health of migrant children can take advantage from the results of the study.

IMG Track Offers Advice, Counsel, and Guidance for International Graduates

IMG Track Offers Advice, Counsel, and Guidance for International Graduates

Integration Challenges of Immigrants from Non-English-Speaking Backgrounds in Australia

Abstract Migrants have played a crucial role in shaping the history of Australian society and its development, particularly after 1975, when Australia formally dismantled its White Australia Policy and welcomed immigrants from around the world. Since then, millions of immigrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds have settled in Australia. This review aims to critically discuss the main challenges that many of these immigrants face as part of their integration process in Australia. For this research, various large and relevant databases were considered and searched. And by applying ‘inclusion and exclusion criteria’, fifty-six major articles published between 1975 to 2021 were selected for critical review and analysis. The findings of this research indicate that, while there have been changes to streamline the process of integration and improve services, five clusters of major challenges have confronted immigrants since 1975: the labour market, racism and discrimination, the language barrier, social connections and housing and accommodation.

The First Immigrants: The Migratory Roots of Biblical Identity

In order to engage more faithfully with the reality of migration in the modern world and the challenges of immigration in the United States today, we take a closer look at perspectives on immigration in Scripture. In the stories of their ancestors, the authors of Genesis describe their own origins as migratory, thereby claiming for themselves and their people an immigrant identity. To understand these migration narratives clearly, we construct a new set of lenses that view Israel’s ancestors as sedentary residents of Canaan—not nomads—who cross administrative borders and encounter different cultures, who are named immigrants ( gērîm)—not sojourners, foreigners, or aliens—by the authors in Genesis, and who experience the same kinds of crises—especially climate change—as modern immigrants who are forced to leave their countries of origin and relocate in destination countries.