Immigrant Customers Research Articles

The Invisible Tropical Tuber Crop: Edible Aroids (Araceae) Sold as “Tajer” in the Netherlands

AbstractEdible aroids (plants from the family Araceae) are among the top five most cultivated tuber crops globally, but their consumer acceptance is hindered by acridity. Aroids contain sap that severely irritates the throat and lips if not properly processed. However, no in-depth studies exist on acridity in edible aroids and how to diminish it. We used ethnobotanical methods to document the diversity of edible aroids available in the Dutch marketplace and how consumers handle acridity. We grew corms in a greenhouse to obtain additional morphological information and used flow cytometry to assess ploidy. We collected 73 samples and interviewed 71 people. At least three species, Colocasia esculenta, Xanthosoma violaceum, and Caladium bicolor, were sold under the generic name “tajer.” Different plant parts with various forms of processing were imported from diverse geographic origins and sold mainly to immigrant customers. Interviewees mentioned various processing methods to avoid and reduce acridity. We distinguished nine cultivar groups of Colocasia esculenta and four of Xanthosoma violaceum. Both Colocasia esculenta and Xanthosoma violaceum were also cultivated in Dutch greenhouses. We present the first report on edible aroids cultivation in northern Europe and draw attention to the lack of labeling and cooking instructions.

COVID-19 and immigration detention in the USA: time to act

COVID-19 and immigration detention in the USA: time to act

The Language Backfire Effect: How Frontline Employees Decrease Customer Satisfaction through Language Use

Extant marketing research holds that customers prefer frontline personnel to speak the customers’ first language. Furthermore, current managerial practices instruct frontline employees to either use the customers’ first language or, in international settings, to use English. Through five studies in different retail and service contexts, we identify situations where the opposite is true. The results of the first two studies suggest that if customers initiate contact in a second language, the frontline employee’s switch to the customer’s first language constitutes an identity threat leading customers to feel less satisfied; an effect we term the language backfire effect. Our third study extends these results to a domestic context to test for the impact of linguistic acculturation on how immigrant customers perceive frontline employees’ language switch. The fourth study replicates the findings in a real-life retail context. These results present a paradox for marketing research: although frontline employees switch to customers’ first language to accommodate them, these actions might not have the desired consequences. Having identified and described the problem of the language backfire effect, our final study introduces and verifies a managerially actionable solution: combining the language switch with a language proficiency compliment offsets the language backfire effect.

All We Own Is Ourselves

All We Own Is Ourselves Noelle Garcia (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Email print-out, 2009. Courtesy of Noelle Garcia [End Page 405] What We Inherit In 2011 I created an exhibition titled What You Left Me, at the Clark County Cultural Center. I showcased photographs, artifacts, and documents that told the story of my dad. Or rather the exhibit told the story of my research on my father and my understanding of where he fit into the history of the United States of America. I exhibited his private documents, his letters, photos of him posing with his prison baseball team, and family portraits shot in a Nevada prison visiting area. One of the most important artifacts was a printout of an email I received from the Nevada Department of Corrections that described the crime my father committed that landed him in prison. Yet the exhibit’s aim was beyond the life of my father: it was a gesture or an attempt to tell a story of contemporary indigenousness. I wanted people to consider that the mistreatment of American Indians is not something that happened in the distant past. And I wanted to ask, why was I left with this resounding emptiness? When I planned this exhibition, I was uncomfortable. Was it okay to tell my dad’s story? As many love tragedy, I knew What You Left Me would get attention. Yet if he were alive, he would have been mortified. I was airing his, and our family’s, dirty laundry. During his life he never told me why he was in prison. If he didn’t want his daughter to know, I doubt he would want strangers to know. I was also concerned that one of my family members might hear of the show and reprimand me. I thought about my discomfort surrounding this project for a while. Legally, perhaps, I do “own” the rights to my father’s story. I inherited this painful story from him. I was born with a broken heart. Perhaps it was not only my right to tell this story, but it was my responsibility to tell this story in the context of a history that tries to disappear Native Americans. I wanted the viewer to consider why being Native American had anything to do with my father being in prison. I wanted the viewer to see the image of my father as a young boy in an Indian boarding school and ask how that trauma may have affected his future alcoholism and rage. In creating this exhibition, I asserted some power in a narrative where I was previously erased. My work asks audiences to recognize that how the US government treated my father shaped his predisposition to depression, substance abuse, and violence. Yet will audiences make a connection between my father’s histories of violence and, for example, the images of the children in US Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) camps? How will the young children forcibly taken away from their families develop into adulthood? Would a stronger collective [End Page 406] recollection of past forms of structural violence perpetrated by the state in any way create a stronger tool kit to intervene in contemporary, and parallel, atrocities? Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Detail from What You Left Me Installation (Prison Visit). Courtesy of Noelle Garcia Who Owns Your Stories? In 2014 I had an artist residency at ACRE Projects in a rural community in Steuben, Wisconsin. Many other artists in residence and staff members loved going tubing down the river. Although I was invited a few times, I said no. I was scared of water babies. Water babies are spirits in Paiute communities that pull people into the water. Why should Paiute folklore scare me? I’m not religious or spiritual. When I was little, the other Paiute kids would tell frightening stories about water babies. I never went water tubing. A few years later one of the white ACRE staff members drowned while tubing. Something in me whispered, “water babies.” I learned about water babies in Nevada. Do they exist also in Wisconsin? I met the ACRE staff member [End...

Attributions of service quality: immigrant customers’ perspective

PurposeThis study aims to investigate whether and how strongly cultural (mis)matches influence immigrant customers’ satisfaction, as well as if this relationship is mediated by cultural or service employee performance attributions. In addition, the authors test whether attributions differ depending on the service delivery outcome (success vs failure).Design/methodology/approachThe 2 (origin of service employee: Austria or Turkey) × 2 (service delivery outcome: success or failure) scenario-based experiment includes 120 Turkish immigrant customers in Austria.FindingsContrary to previous research, the results indicate that in an immigrant customer context, cultural (mis)match does not influence customer satisfaction. The service delivery outcome is a boundary condition. With a positive service delivery outcome, immigrant customers attribute the results to the cultural background of the employee if it is the same as their own, but they attribute success to employees’ performance if they belong to the immigration destination culture. For negative service delivery outcomes, neither cultural nor performance attributions arise.Originality/valueThis study is the first to focus specifically on immigrant customer behavior in a high-involvement service context. The results challenge the predictions of social identity theory and the similarity-attraction paradigm and highlight that the immigrant context is unique. In this context, attributions play a key role in determining customer satisfaction.

Expanding Carceral Markets: Detention Facilities, ICE Contracts, and the Financial Interests of Punitive Immigration Policy

On the night of November 8, 2016, once election results showed an almost certain presidential victory for Donald Trump, private prison stock values increased. Trump’s harsh anti-immigrant campaign rhetoric, followed by his attempted crackdown on sanctuary cities (and immigrants more generally), had the potential to expand the carceral market to greater shares of undocumented immigrants. We develop a theory of carceral market expansion, arguing that private actors seek to expand carceral markets—for profit—just as in any other market. This paper examines whether private companies, like Core Civic and GEO, that contract with Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) to operate detention facilities exert influence over federal immigration legislation in the 113th and 114th Congresses. Specifically, we examine (1) whether campaign donations made by private prison companies and other contractors to legislators (carceral lobbying hypothesis), and (2) having a privately owned or managed ICE detention facility in a legislator’s district (carceral representation hypothesis) increases the probability that legislators will co-sponsor more harsh immigration legislation in the U.S. states. We find strong support for the carceral representation hypothesis but limited to no support for the carceral lobbying hypothesis. Implications are discussed.

Employee, branch, and brand switching: the role of linguistic choice, use and adaptation

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore how service employee choice and use of language to initiate and maintain conversation with second generation immigrant customers (SGIC) influence customer evaluation of the service encounter, and whether such employee acts may lead customers to employee switching, branch switching (i.e. switching from one to another location within the same brand) and/or brand switching (switching to another brand altogether).Design/methodology/approachA scenario-based between-subjects experiment of 4 (employee: match, adapt, bilingual, no adapt) × 2 (fast food, post office) × 2 (English, Spanish) was used to examine the SGIC response to service encounters in different contexts arising from employee choice and use of language. These scenarios were complemented with a series of measurement scales. The instruments, which were identical except in scenario sections, were administered on 788 second-generation Mexican American customers, resulting in 271 (fast food) and 265 (post office) effective responses.FindingsIn both service contexts, when employees initiated conversation that matched (English or Spanish) the customer expectations, the SGIC perceptions of interaction quality was higher as compared to other scenarios, leading to subsequent satisfaction and lower switching intentions (employee and branch). Similarly, interaction quality was higher for adapt scenarios as compared to bilingual or no adapt scenarios. Bilingual customers perceived higher interaction quality in bilingual/no-adapt scenarios when compared to monolingual customers. In both contexts, service quality and satisfaction were associated with employee switching and branch switching, but not with brand switching.Research limitations/implicationsBy utilizing interaction adaptation theory to conceptualize the effects of employee choice and use of language, the study grounds the model and the hypotheses in theoretical bases and provides empirical corroboration of the theory. The study also contributes toward understanding the service encounters from the perspective of an overlooked group of vulnerable customers: second-generation immigrants.Practical implicationsService research cautions service providers that a key factor in attracting and retaining customers is having detailed communication guidelines and empowering employees to follow those guidelines. The findings go a step further and underscore the critical role of communication from a managerial standpoint. It is in the interest of service organizations to develop guidelines that will govern employee choice and use of language during service encounters. So doing is commercially justified because unguided employee choice and use of language can result in customer switching and attrition.Social implicationsThe juxtaposition between assigned versus asserted identities is an important one not only in social sciences but also within service research. As service encounters grow increasingly multicultural, the need to educate employees on multiculturally appropriate communication etiquette rises in importance. The findings should encourage service firms and local governments to develop formal communication guidelines that begin with multiculturalism as a central tenet permeating all aspects of employee–employee, employee–customer and customer–customer communications. Service providers ought to take precautionary measures to ensure customers will be empowered to assert their identities in their own terms, if they wish so.Originality/valueThe study demonstrates how employee choice and use of language during service encounters may thwart SGIC, who might view such employee behaviors as acts of identity assignment and, consequently, feel stigmatized, marginalized and offended; and links such customer experiences to switching behavior through mediatory mechanisms.

Illuminating Agency: A Latin@ Immigrant Parent's Testimonio on the Intersection of Immigration Reform and Schools

ABSTRACTAnti-immigration reform has created a hostile and threatening climate for Latin@ immigrants and their families. Simple everyday acts that are often taken for granted (i.e. parents dropping off children at school, driving to the grocery store, etc.) became acts that threaten to separate families. As a result, many Latin@ families are currently “living in the shadows” — hiding their immigration status from any agency (including schools) or individuals that may pose a threat. Via the use of field notes and interviews, the author reconstructs one parent's (Blanca) experience cruzando la frontera/crossing the border, as well the moment when Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials appeared at her doorstep, and subsequent actions thereafter. By utilizing Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Latin@ Critical Race Theory (LatCrit), this study centers and prioritizes Blanca's experience navigating the intersecting space between seemingly disconnected immigration reforms and school policies and practices. In doing this, the author illuminates the moment when the convergence of immigration reform and the school resulted in a heightened awareness of parental agency.

Crimmigration at the Local Level: Criminal Justice Processes in the Shadow of Deportation

In recent decades, authorities have adopted a number of programs that tether the criminal and immigration enforcement apparatuses in novel ways. This mixed methods case study assesses the impact of such programs on local criminal justice processes and outcomes in King County, Washington. Although the empirical research on the effects of such programs is scant, the emerging literature on legal hybridity suggests that the enmeshment of the criminal and immigration systems is likely to enhance the state's power to detain and punish. The quantitative results support this hypothesis: non-citizens flagged by immigration authorities stay in jail significantly longer than their similarly situated counterparts. Qualitative focus group interviews with prosecuting and defense attorneys identify four key mechanisms by which Immigration Customs and Enforcement detainers alter the incentive structure, impact decisionmaking, and extend jail stays for non-citizens. Together, these findings suggest that immigration law and the threat of deportation now cast a long shadow over local as well as federal criminal proceedings, and enhance penal pain for non-citizens. Implications of these findings for the “crimmigration” literature and research on the effect of citizenship status on criminal justice outcomes are discussed.

Professional dilemmas for caregivers in Turkish home care settings in Germany

While calling for culturally sensitive healthcare services in migrant communities, the international nursing literature on intercultural care predominantly describes nursing staff as lacking cultural competences and immigrant customers as lacking cleverness to navigate the labyrinths of national healthcare systems. Congruences in language, culture and religion in the customer-caregiver relationship can decisively improve the quality of care. However, they do not automatically guarantee smooth working processes in monocultural in-home settings. On the contrary, new problems occur here for Turkish caregivers which are unknown to the legions of native professionals who feel challenged by migrants and which go beyond differences such as age, sex, income or education. While no cultural or religious brokering is necessary between customers and personnel in the given context in Germany, new challenges arise when caregivers are expected to legally broker between customers and insurance companies or doctors. Conflicting expectations of customers and management as well as their own colliding social and professional roles put the caregivers in a quandary and must be competently managed.

Encounters with immigrant customers: perspectives of Danish community pharmacy staff on challenges and solutions

Encounters with immigrant customers: perspectives of Danish community pharmacy staff on challenges and solutions

Encounters with immigrant customers: perspectives of Danish community pharmacy staff on challenges and solutions

To explore the challenges that Danish community pharmacy staff encounter when serving non-Western immigrant customers. Special attention was paid to similarities and differences between the perceptions of pharmacists and pharmacy assistants. A questionnaire was distributed to one pharmacist and one pharmacy assistant employed at each of the 55 community pharmacies located in the five local councils in Denmark with the highest number of immigrant inhabitants. The total response rate was 76% (84/110). Most respondents found that the needs of immigrant customers were not sufficiently assessed at the counter (n = 55, 65%), and that their latest encounter with an immigrant customer was less satisfactory than a similar encounter with an ethnic Danish customer (n = 48, 57%) (significantly more pharmacists than assistants: odds ratio, OR, 3.19; 95% confidence interval, CI, 1.27-8.04). Forty-two per cent (n = 35) perceived that immigrant customers put pressure on pharmacy staff resources, while 27% (n = 23) found that the immigrant customer group make work more interesting. More pharmacists than assistants agreed on the latter (OR, 3.43; 95% CI, 1.04-11.33). Within the past 14 days, 86% (n = 72) experienced that their advice and counselling were not understood by immigrant customers, whereas 49% (n = 41) experienced lack of understanding by ethnic Danes; and 30% (n = 25) had consciously refrained from counselling an immigrant, whereas 19% (n = 16) had done so with an ethnic Dane. Use of under-aged children as interpreters during the past month was reported by 79% of respondents. Regarding suggestions on how to improve encounters with immigrant customers, most respondents listed interventions aimed at patients, general practitioners and pharmaceutical companies. Community pharmacy staff report poorer quality in their encounters with immigrant customers, including sub-optimal counselling and frequent use of under-aged children as interpreters. Our study also reveals certain differences across personnel groups, which may be explained by differences in level of education.

Sounds of Surveillance: U.S. Spanish-Language Radio Patrols La Migra

Trade magazines credit radio’s unprecedented growth since the 1980s to booming Latino population numbers. I argue, however, that the immigration climate with its recurring public campaigns to legitimate racial profiling has transformed the character of Spanish-language broadcasts and with it, underscored the significance of sound-based media for Latino immigrant communities. The “catch 22” predicament of needing legal advice to secure documentation without being visually recognized privileges the medium of sound. In this essay, I point to Q&A shows with guest immigration attorneys as well as “la migra alerts” where listeners call radio stations to inform the public of Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) sightings as two instances in which immigrant communities use radio broadcasts to patrol the legislative developments and physical movements of ICE officials.

Our Nation's Immigrants in Peril: An Urgent Call to Social Workers

Social workers have always been at the forefront of work with immigrants. From our profession's earliest days working with immigrants at the Hull House in Chicago to the current immigration debate, our commitment to social justice has driven both our service and policy positions regarding immigration. Our values have not changed, neither have some of the more divisive and destructive aspects of the immigration debate. Historically a nation created by immigrants seeking respect for individual freedoms, the United States has a history of anti-immigrant rhetoric and public policies criminalizing immigrants or viewing them as a threat to U.S. security. The same themes that were raised in the 1800s are being raised today, but now with a focus on Latino immigrants and under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Since March 2003, the functions of the Immigration and Naturalization Service were transferred to the new DHS as three bureaus: Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Following immigration protests in May 2006, DHS and ICE have increased their raids, arrests, and deportations, creating a hostile climate for all immigrants regardless of their legal status and making undocumented immigrants, their families, and communities especially vulnerable. Given the heated debate on immigration, it would seem that the United States would have extremely high numbers of immigrants. In fact, only 11.7 percent of the current population is foreign born (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004), and of them 30 percent are naturalized citizens (Passel, Capps, & Fix, 2004). Children in immigrant families make up 20 percent of U.S. children, and four-fifths of them were born in the United States and are therefore citizens. Although people from all nationalities immigrate to the United States, the majority of immigrants are from Latin America. In fact, more than 53 percent of all foreign-born individuals are from Latin American countries, primarily Mexico (U.S. Census Bureau). Between 80 percent and 85 percent of the immigrants from Mexico initially enter the country as undocumented immigrants (Passel, 2005). It is this undocumented population that has led to controversial state and federal proposals. NATIONWIDE PROPOSALS Across the country, state legislatures and localities are grappling with immigrant policy. In 2007, more than 1,400 bills were filed addressing immigrant policy at the state level (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2007). Much of the state legislation has focused on increasing employer sanctions and denying public benefits on the basis of immigration status. In Texas, a bill was filed that would deny public benefits, such as state health insurance, to children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants. Arizona passed legislation to create harsh employer sanctions for businesses who hire undocumented workers. We believe both these bills are an attack on the Latino populations in these states. In addition to state legislation, the attack on immigrants has also surfaced within local communities. A suburb of Dallas, Texas, voted to prohibit landlords from renting to undocumented immigrants, who are primarily Latino in that area. When municipalities have moved to create local ordinances offering rights or protections to immigrants regardless of status, such as New Haven, Connecticut's, creation of a municipal card for city services or Chelsea, Massachusetts's, passing of a Sanctuary ordinance, ICE raids and detentions have immediately increased. Perhaps the most prominent debate over the past several years has occurred at the federal level. Ignited by fears of terrorism, immigration proposals have been considered that fail to balance security concerns with respect for constitutional protections, human rights, or equality. In 2005, Congress passed the Border Protection Anti-Terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act, which would have made it a crime to assist undocumented immigrants. …

Information grounds and the use of need‐based services by immigrants in Queens, New York: A context‐based, outcome evaluation approach

AbstractWe elaborate on Pettigrew's (1998, 1999) theory of information grounds while using an outcome evaluation approach enriched by its focus on context to explore the use of need‐based services by immigrants in New York City. Immigrants have substantial information and practical needs for help with adjusting to life in a new country. Because of differences in language, culture, and other factors such as access, new immigrants are a difficult population to study. As a result, little research has examined their predilections from an information behavior perspective. We report findings from a qualitative study of how literacy and coping skills programs are used by and benefit the immigrant customers of the Queens Borough Public Library (QBPL). From our interviews and observation of 45 program users, staff, and other stakeholders, we derived a grand context (in Pettigrew's terms) woven from three subcontexts: the immigrants of Queens, New York; the QBPL, its service model, and activities for immigrants; and professional contributions of QBPL staff. Our findings are discussed along two dimensions: (a) building blocks toward information literacy, and (b) personal gains achieved by immigrants for themselves and their families. We conclude that successful introduction to the QBPL—as per its mission, programming, and staff—can lead immigrants to a synergistic information ground that can help in meeting broad psychological, social, and practical needs.

Immigrant Place Entrepreneurs in Los Angeles, 1970–99

Proclamations of the death of Los Angeles’ growth machine are premature. These proclamations overlook the growing role of immigrant Korean and Chinese entrepreneurs in regional property development. Since 1970, Korean and Chinese entrepreneurs have seriously restructured Los Angeles’ morphology, creating hierarchically arranged residential and business clusters for co–ethnic immigrants. Koreatown and Monterey Park are the brand names most familiar to outsiders, but these prominent localities really coexist with a multiplicity of less well–known ethnic communities that owe their origins to immigrant property developers. The immigrant property developers use the classic methods of the growth machine: buy land cheaply, promote it in Chinese or Korean emigration basins, then sell it to co–ethnic immigrants at a profit. In the process, the immigrant property developers reduce the difficulty of immigration to Los Angeles at the same time that they enhance its perceived desirability. The success of the Chinese and Korean developers highlights the hazard of assuming, as is conventionally done, that ethnic residential clustering arises from leaderless social processes. In both these highlighted cases, entrepreneurial elites created residential clusters of co–ethnics from conscious, long–term plans that required political as well as economic savoir–faire. In so doing, the immigrant property developers joined the Los Angeles growth machine whose fortunes, admittedly, have been waning among the native born population of the region.La mort annoncée de la dynamique de croissance de Los Angeles est prématurée. Ce serait oublier le rôle grandissant des chefs d’entreprise immigrés coréens et chinois dans l’aménagement immobilier régional. Depuis 1970, ces entrepreneurs ont considérablement restructuré la morphologie de Los Angeles, créant des ‘agglomérats’ commerciaux et résidentiels hiérarchisés pour migrants de m?me ethnie. Si Koreatown et Monterey Park sont des noms bien connus des étrangers, ces lieux dominants coexistent en réalité avec une multiplicité de communautés ethniques moins renommées qui doivent leurs origines à des promoteurs immigrés. Ces derniers appliquent les mécanismes classiques de la prospérité: acheter le terrain bon marché, le promouvoir dans des bassins d’émigration chinois ou coréens, puis le vendre à profità des immigrants co–ethniques. Ainsi, les promoteurs immigrés facilitent l’immigration vers Los Angeles tout en en accentuant l’aspect attractif. La réussite des aménageurs chinois et coréens souligne le risque qu’il y a à supposer, comme bien souvent, que tout regroupement résidentiel ethnique naît de processus sociaux non dirigés. Dans les deux cas exposés, les élites commerciales ont créé des regroupements résidentiels de m?me ethnie selon des plans délibérés à long terme, impliquant un savoir–faire à la fois politique et économique. Ce faisant, les promoteurs immigrés ont rejoint la dynamique de croissance de Los Angeles qui, il est vrai, a vu décliner les succès au sein de sa population de souche.