Immigration Diversity Research Articles

Theology of migration: From division to reconciliation

As the next US presidential election approaches, immigration once again emerges as one of the most heated issues in US political debates. While ideological differences over immigration are not new, the existence of such differing positions between and within parties highlights the deep-seated divisions within US society. Even more problematic is the current predominant narrative of immigration, which tends to foster further division while ignoring the diversity of immigration patterns and immigrants’ experiences that require holistic approaches. The dominance of a monolithic interpretation of immigration, focusing on a specific pattern and accompanied by the reproduction of provocative images and rhetoric in the media, exacerbates societal divisions and reinforces a single narrative of immigration characterized by hate and fear. In the face of societal division over immigration, this article argues that immigration can be a source of reconciliation rather than division when its inherent diversity is recognized, and its humanness is reclaimed through the concept of imago Dei, the primary definition of all human identity.

Overcoming origin-based preferences by selecting skilled immigrants? Preferences in immigrants’ national origin and social class in Quebec

ABSTRACT Although most liberal democracies have abandoned preferences for national origins in immigrant selection policies, large segments of the local populations continue to prefer immigrants that they perceive to be of similar cultural, religious, and ethnic backgrounds as them. What remains unknown is whether governments can count on the promotion of successful economic integration to ensure acceptance of the greater ethnocultural and religious diversity of immigrants that now settles in host-countries through what has been identified as building a middle-class nation. Relying on an original survey experiment of 2400 respondents in Quebec, we compare reactions to immigrants of different professional status and two national origins (France and Algeria) to investigate if certain types of economic immigration can reduce origin-based preferences. Our results show that origin-based preferences shared by majority group members can be attenuated, but not eliminated by selection based on social class. That said, expectations that immigrants will contribute to Quebec's economy translate into greater acceptance of immigrants of all national origins and social classes.

Businesses create more jobs in countries with higher share of immigrants because of skill complementarity

PurposePast and recent immigration flows have made societies increasingly more diverse, with important implications for the economy. This article investigates the empirical relationship between ethnic, and birthplace immigration diversity on job creation and entrepreneurship.Design/methodology/approachWe use multilevel modelling and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor adult population survey across 60 countries from 2001 to 2018.FindingsAs earlier literature, we find that people have a higher probability of becoming entrepreneurs in more ethnically diverse countries. Nonetheless, businesses located in more ethnically diverse countries hire fewer employees. Businesses, on the other hand, create more jobs in countries with a higher proportion of skilled and unskilled immigrants due to skill complementarity.Research originalityContrary to commonly held views, our findings suggest that ethnic and immigration diversity have opposing effects on entrepreneurship and provide important insights into the debate over the economic impact of immigration.

38 Burn Prevention and Education for Newcomers to North America

Abstract Introduction The experience of a city’s fire department suggested regions typically home to immigrant and multigenerational families show increased occurrence of fire calls. This study explored the incidence of fire calls in our city stratified by geographic ward and identified opportunities for fire and thermal injury prevention in immigrants. Methods This study was approved by our university’s research ethics board. Fire call data from 2016-2021 was used to characterize adjusted fire totals, civilian injuries, incident descriptions, sources of fire ignition, type of material, area of origin, and contribution to ignition of these fires by ward. ANOVAs were performed to reveal differences in fire characteristics between wards. High fire occurrence wards were classed as at greater risk and probable targets for prevention. To follow, an open ended interview was conducted with a newcomer organization in the city to elucidate factors that contribute to thermal injury risk in immigrants. Interview content was informed by a literature search around the factors and impact of burn injury in immigrants to North America, Europe, and Australia. Interview responses were thematically analyzed. Results The city is stratified into 14 wards, within which there are several communities described by income, education, immigration diversity and more. Between wards, total adjusted fire incidents were not significantly different (p = 0.119). Though, fire characteristics did differ regionally. Common fire incident descriptions included vehicle/structure, trash and cooking fires with less variability by ward in the number of cooking fires compared to the two former. Contributions to ignition were frequently human related. The supplementary interview highlighted individual burn risk as multifactorial. Cultural norms (notably cooking practices and equipment such as pressure cookers), inexperience (related to weather and frostbite risk), and participation in entry level jobs (including cooking) may impart increased burn risk to immigrants. Senior immigrants were noted to be specifically at risk for burns given their propensity to retain cultural cooking norms. Conclusions Newcomers may face increased fire and thermal injury risk that can be attributed to occupational hazards not specific to immigrants and adjustment to a new way of life. Given that many fires and injuries are connected to cooking, kitchen safety and environmental education becomes important to enable safer engagement in cultural practices. Follow up to this work includes matching high fire incidence wards to their resident immigrant groups for targeted prevention. Applicability of Research to Practice Inclusion of race and ethnicity in burn registries may assist in recognizing at risk groups for burn prevention and serve as a retrospective comparator to assess the impact of population specific burn prevention efforts.

Settling in New Zealand’s Small Towns: Experiences of Minority Ethnic Immigrants

Small town New Zealand has, in recent years, experienced an increasing number1 and diversity of immigrants, with visible yet under-researched impacts for less populated regions that historically have been dominated by Pākehā (New Zealanders of European descent) and Māori populations. Using qualitative interviews with three ethnic sub-groups in the Clutha District and Southland Region—the Filipino, Samoan, and Malay communities—we investigate their experiences of settling in small towns. While there is considerable variation in the experiences and aspirations of these ethnic minorities, for each community we demonstrate how local and regional contextual factors shape life aspirations, support infrastructures and settlement trajectories. Particularly drawing upon informal networks and social capital immigrants mediate the considerable challenges they face. Our study also demonstrates the limitations of current policy support and initiatives. Indeed, while local authorities clearly have a significant role in creating the conditions for enabling immigrant settlement in small centres in Southland-Clutha, now the role of government services and community-based support also needs to be considered.

Birthplace diversity of immigrants, capabilities and export structure transformation*

Birthplace diversity of immigrants, capabilities and export structure transformation*

Considerations in Utilizing Translanguaging Practices to Meet the Language Needs of Maya Children in U.S. Schools.

Meeting the needs of Maya children in U.S. schools requires extensive training. Research is lacking in best practices to support students with intersectional identities. This article provides a roadmap centralized on Maya children's experiences, acknowledging the linguistic diversity of Maya immigrants, their language and cultural practices, and their integration into or exclusion from minoritized and White neighborhoods in the United States to provide a starting point for culturally responsive service delivery. Supporting the needs of Maya children requires an approach that values and recognizes their intersectional identities while developing collaborative relationships with students, families, and educators. Application of the roadmap will support to (a) identify educational obstacles faced by Maya children, (b) integrate translanguaging to support best practices for educational success, and (c) determine service delivery considerations for bilingual/trilingual, multicultural children. More research on the topic is needed to establish evidence-based practice guidelines to utilize a translanguaging pedagogy within speech-language pathology.

Multiple (il)legal pathways: The diversity of immigrants' legal trajectories in Belgium

A growing number of primarily qualitative studies have shown that the legal trajectories of immigrants in Western countries are often complex. However, immigrants’ long-term legal trajectories remain a blind spot in quantitative migration research.

Can a corporate well-being programme maintain the strengths of the healthy employee in times of COVID-19 and extensive remote working? An empirical case study.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the increase of working-from-home have drastically changed many aspects of work life, causing very negative effects on employees' physical and psycho-social well-being. Healthy organisations have healthy employees, who have at least five psycho-social strengths of engagement, self-efficacy, resilience, optimism and hope, which are reinforced by physical activity, relating to each other in a positive way and leading to numerous benefits for the company. These strengths are being weakened by the pandemic, and the aim of this empirical study is to analyse through a case study the effects of an updated corporate wellness programme in times of pandemic on these strengths of the healthy employee. The sample was of 251 employees, 91 women and 160 men. The instruments used were the International Physical Activity Questionnaire and the adaptation of the Healthy and Resilient Organization questionnaire. The results indicated that workers with high physical activity, higher seniority, well guided by supervisors, as well as a comprehensive (multi-component) well-being programme, not only physical but also psycho-social, and with the use of different digital tools (an App is not enough), can mitigate these negative effects. Whereas companies are grappling with reduced employee engagement among other harmful psychosocial and physical effects, this case study suggests that a good corporate well-being programme could help mitigate these detrimental consequences for their workforce and be helpful for the company to adapt to this rapidly changing workplace. This study considers the impact of immigration and ethnic diversity on government spending in 31 OECD countries over 25 years and compares the marginal effects for expenditures and revenues to approximate the fiscal burden. Results suggest that ethnic fractionalization, not immigration itself, has a negative impact on spending in the OECD. On the whole, immigrants tend to contribute more in taxes than they cause in expenditures, at least relative to the averages for the population as a whole, but this effect is reversed for immigrants from poorer countries.

Introducing Italy’s Intercultural Digital Media: Mapping the Landscape

ABSTRACT The paper focuses on a particular case of alternative media that emerged in Italy from the early 2000s offering alternatives to mainstream media coverage of immigration and cultural diversity. Involving practitioners of diverse immigrant backgrounds as well as of single Italian heritage, Italy’s intercultural digital media represent an under-researched media form with the potential to add complexity to and re-think the boundaries of the widely researched field of ‘ethnic minority media’. Drawing on a detailed mapping of the intercultural digital media landscape, the study critically examines the key dimensions of the platforms including the socio-cultural context of emergence, agenda, and organisational-economic structures. The analysis shows that while these platforms are geared towards more pluralist, inclusive and democratic media practices, the realisation of an inter-cultural media agenda grounded on common civic goals involves a careful cultural politics of negotiation with established discourses and funding resources. Furthermore, the transient nature of public and political debates situated in specific socio-cultural contexts determines the availability of funding opportunities and may limit the financial viability of the platforms. Overall, the study introduces and critically examines Italy’s intercultural digital media as an object of research potential by offering an insight into the possibilities and limitations of interculturalism in practice.

Talents and Cultures: Immigrant Inventors and Ethnic Diversity in the Age of Mass Migration

Abstract We investigate the importance of co-ethnic networks and diversity in determining immigrant inventors’ settlements in the United States by following the location choices of thousands of them across counties during the Age of Mass Migration. To do so, we combine a unique United States Patent and Trademark Office historical patent dataset on immigrants who arrived as adults with Census data and exploit exogenous variation in both immigration flows and diversity induced by former settlements, WWI, and the 1920s Immigration Acts. We find that co-ethnic networks play an important role in attracting immigrant inventors. Yet, we also find that immigrant diversity acts as an additional significant pull factor. This is mainly due to externalities that foster immigrant inventors’ productivity.

The Dual Role of Race and Immigration Among Ascending Neighborhoods in U.S. Metropolitan Areas.

The racial/ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of immigrants to the United States has grown since the 1990s, along with growing neighborhood socioeconomic inequality. Few studies explain how race/ethnicity and immigration interact to influence neighborhoods' socioeconomic ascent (increases in residents' household income, rents, property values, educational and occupational attainment). We draw on two decades of Census microdata, 1990-2010, to create synthetic cohorts that allowed us to measure the interactions between race/ethnicity and immigration on neighborhood ascent. We find that Black immigrants contributed the most to socioeconomic ascent in predominantly Black neighborhoods, while non-Hispanic newcomers-both immigrant and U.S.-born-contribute the most to predominantly Hispanic ascendant neighborhoods. All combinations of White/nonwhite and immigrant/U.S.-born contribute to the ascent of White neighborhoods with White immigrant newcomers to the neighborhood having the highest SES. The presence of White residents increases in nonwhite ascendant neighborhoods, especially neighborhoods in new immigrant destinations. The foreign-born presence grew more in all non-ascendant neighborhoods relative to ascendant neighborhoods of all types. Our analysis shows that immigration influences neighborhood socioeconomic ascent differently across racial/ethnic groups and in neighborhoods with differing initial racial composition. Our findings underscore the need to account for both race/ethnicity and immigration in order to explain the population processes underlying neighborhood change.

Exploring Connections Between Existing Theoretical Frames and Methods in the Study of Everyday Cohabitation: Notes from Two Research Projects

ABSTRACT In a social and political context marked by increasingly polarized attitudes towards immigration and ethnic diversity, the paper uses the results of two research projects conducted ten years apart in Brussels and Montréal to reflect on methodological issues. The paper discusses two themes to show how to engage methodologically within a changing context, both theoretically and politically, and how various methodological choices might be used to fill some knowledge gaps. The first theme concerns the choice of research methods, and the type of knowledge they produce. The second theme addressed in this paper stresses the importance of paying more attention to the context where the research takes place, a process denoted here by the term situating. Two different interview methods are central to the discussion: in-depth interviews and ‘on-the-spot’ short interviews. The paper contrasts their use in relation with each project’s research objectives.

Immigrant Diversity, Institutional Quality, and GVC Position

This paper investigates the effect of immigrant diversity on a country’s position in global value chains (GVCs) and how this effect depends on the institutional quality of destination countries. We investigate this issue using data on 19 manufacturing sectors of 18 OECD countries over the 2000–2014 period. Fixed effects estimation results show that the impact of immigrant diversity on the GVC position is significantly influenced by the institutional quality of destination countries. Specifically, in countries with high (low) institutional quality, immigrant diversity is positively (negatively) associated with the GVC position. Moreover, the interaction effect of immigrant diversity and institutional quality on the GVC position is heterogeneous across immigrant groups and institutional dimensions. This study not only enriches the literature on the relationship between immigrant diversity and GVC position but also discusses new ideas that can promote GVC positions of real economics, which is essential for sustainable economic development.

URBAN immigrant diversity and entrepreneurial choice

Based on the national dynamic monitoring data of floating population, this paper investigates the impact mechanism and effect of immigrant diversity on entrepreneurial choice. The study found that the diversity of immigrants will significantly reduce the probability of individual entrepreneurship. The mechanism is that entrepreneurship itself is a relatively open process. In a complex and diverse city, the interpersonal psychological distance is widened and there is a lack of mutual trust and social identity, so entrepreneurship is significantly restrained In addition, this paper finds that compared with self-employed, entrepreneurs in the form of enterprise employers can benefit from diversity, which indicates that diversity promotes "Schumpeter" entrepreneurship; The impact of diversity will also vary according to educational skills and regional differences This paper empirically reveals the impact of diversity on Immigrant Entrepreneurship decision-making, which can provide profound Policy Enlightenment under the background of "Mobile China"

Ethnocultural diversity of immigrants' personal socialnetworks, bicultural identity integration andglobal identification.

There is some evidence that ethnocultural diversity encourages superordinate levels of categorisation, such as feeling identified with people globally. A remaining question is what type of engagement with diversity facilitates this link and why. We use immigrants' personal social network data and examine the link between global identification and ethnocultural diversity among closer relationships (i.e. strong network contacts, such as friendships) and more distant ones (i.e. weak contacts, including neighbours and acquaintances). Furthermore, following exposure to diversity, individuals may internalise more than one culture and differ how they integrate their multiple cultural socialisation into the self (i.e. vary in their degree of bicultural identity integration). We thus test whether relational ethnocultural diversity is linked to a stronger global identification through either cultural blendedness (i.e. combining two cultures) or harmony (i.e. perceiving two cultures as compatible). Relying on a culturally diverse community sample of 216 immigrants residing in Barcelona (53% female, Mage =31 years, SD=10.4), we found that ethnocultural diversity among strong (but not weak) contacts was associated with stronger global identification and that this association is mediated by cultural harmony (but not blendedness). These results attest to the link between having ethnoculturally diverse close social relationships and superordinate identification.

Social capital in the urban context: Diversity and social contacts in Chilean cities

ABSTRACT This study examines the relationship between social capital and neighborhood diversity in Chilean cities. We propose that differences exist between hierarchical forms of diversity, which might erode social trust, and cultural differences that might foster new social links in heterogeneous communities. In Chile, strong material inequalities represent the main form of hierarchical differentiation, while south-to-south immigrants convey qualitative differences based on race, ethnic origin, or cultural practices. In contrast to most Western industrialized countries, where material and ethnic differences tend to converge, they appear to be uncoupled in Chile, explaining the presence of immigrants at different levels of the social hierarchy. We analyze original data from a Latin American country with high domestic inequality. Multilevel models nested at the city level reveal that social capital is negatively correlated with socioeconomic diversity, but positively correlated with immigrant diversity, suggesting that uncoupling these differences has a positive effect on social capital development.

General Aspects and Perspectives of Immigrant Diversity in Organizations

More than 10% of the world's working-age population are migrants. Migration issues are particularly relevant in Europe, as 2.7 million people came to Europe in 2019 alone. According to the report “WWWforEurope”, the quantity of research investigating cultural diversity is on the rise, the authors of the report Dohse and Gold (2014) have also noted that cultural diversity affects critical economic variables - economic growth, innovation, and the social welfare. Therefore, Gelfand et al. (2017) argue that research on organizational behavior should include more theories of cultural diversity. There has been little such research in Lithuania, so this article aims to analyze immigrant diversity perspectives in Lithuanian organizations. The qualitative empirical research was conducted using expert interviews. Content analysis was conducted using NVivo software. The results show that Lithuania has a low level of immigrant diversity, but therefore there is currently a growing interest and awareness related to this topic. Immigrant diversity is occurring in international organizations, globally born companies, organizations expanding into foreign markets or organizations founded by immigrants themselves. Two types of organizations (according to immigrant diversity perspectives) were categorized: 1) monolithic organization (this type is more prominent, based on resistance and “discrimination-and-fairness” paradigms and highly related to the cultural context of the country); 2) multicultural organization (focus on “integration-and-learning” and “access-and-legitimacy” paradigms).

Perceptions of Bosnians in St. Louis

Perceptions and attitudes towards immigrants shape their adaptation and acculturation experiences. For immigrant youth, these perceptions also influence their developing sense of self and how they navigate different social contexts. Considering the growing diversity of immigrants and their places of settlement in the U.S., however, the empirical focus on native Whites’ perceptions of immigrant newcomers does not adequately reflect the range of potential in-group/out-group configurations. We know very little, for instance, about native minorities’ perceptions of White newcomers in different receiving contexts. The experience of Bosnian youth in St. Louis provides a unique case for examining perceptions of White newcomers in a nontraditional immigrant gateway, characterized by a sharp racial binary in its native population. Data for the present study includes i) qualitative interviews with 62 s-generation Bosnian youth and ii) a quantitative survey of non-Bosnian adult residents in St. Louis. Results show that overall, St. Louisians have positive views of Bosnians. This finding is complicated, however, by somewhat less favorable perceptions among Blacks than among Whites and the fact that most respondents indicated limited contact with Bosnians. In their interviews, Bosnian youth revealed that they use subtle cues such as mannerisms and shared cultural knowledge that are largely invisible to natives, to differentiate between groups. While our findings indicate that Bosnian youth may simply pass as Whites in their daily interactions with non-Bosnians, the results raise important questions about the extent to which these perceptions influence actual social networks and socialization patterns.

The Secular Diaspora in Canada

Abstract Almost all the existing research in the subfield of nonreligion and secularity studies has focused to date on majority populations (Whites from Christian family backgrounds) in North America and Europe. Using data from the 2011 National Household Survey and the 2013–2017 General Social Surveys, this research note is a first step towards better understanding the ethno-racial and immigrant diversity within the nonreligious population of one nation, Canada. A further emphasis is placed on socio-demographic trends among these different nonreligious groups, as well as their various experiences when it comes to the presence or absence of spiritual beliefs and practices in their lives away from organized religion.