Immigration Practices Research Articles

Fertility behaviour of recent immigrants to Israel

The fertility practices of immigrants are a particularly interesting field of study for demographers, providing an insight into the fertility behaviour of individuals when both the society and the individual undergo a period of rapid change. This paper

Filipinos in Toronto: Residential Segregation and Neighborhood Socioeconomic Inequality

Filipinos are one of nine groups racialized as visible minorities. The degree of racialization varies, resulting in diverse spatial and socioeconomic patterns, processes, and adaptation among immigrant groups. The variation occurs because of (1) the conditions of immigrant departure, i.e., whether immigrants entered Canada as legal immigrants, state-sponsored refugees, or undocumented workers; (2) the initial resources or human and social capital that immigrants brought to Canada combined with their family structure; and (3) the social and economic conditions, including federal and provincial immigration policies and practices. The degree to which Filipinos are racialized compared to Chinese, South Asians, Koreans, Southeast Asians, Japanese, or other groups is related to the interaction of these factors.

Relaciones entre gente, cultura y lugar en el fenómeno migratorio contemporáneo: Los peruanos en España

This paper analyses the logics and mechanisms of belonging produced by contemporary migratory subject, through the case study of Peruvian immigration to Madrid, in concrete, the members of the brotherhood of El Senor de los Milagros (The Lord of Miracles). The results of this research tries to find out new connections among concepts such as people, culture and place, through the analysis of the immigrant discourses and practices present in the creation or crossing of symbolic frontiers in the immigrant receiving societies.

Muslim Organizations in Canada: Gender Ideology and Women's Veiling

This article examines the Muslim shaping of gender ideology around the veiling practices of immigrant Muslim women in Canada. Women's veiling is often attributed to the mobilization of traditional values against the universalizing influences of Western culture. This is also a common theme in mainstream sociological studies that conceptualize cultural politics as being split between the global and authentically local. However, the veiling practice can also be understood as part of the transnational dynamics of Muslim claims for cultural authenticity, rather than a locally rooted rejection of Western culture. Archival data and interviews are used to examine the interplay between the global configuring of gender ideology and the local cultural practices of Muslim immigrants. Analyzed in this way, veiling is seen as posing a paradigmatic challenge to the dichotomy of global versus local in sociological theory.

Travel Agency: A Critique of Anti-Trafficking Campaigns

This paper offers a critical evaluation of anti-trafficking campaigns spearheaded by some in the feminist movement in an attempt to deal with the issues of unsafe migrations and labour exploitation. I discuss how calls to “end trafficking, especially in women and children” are influenced by – and go on to legitimate – governmental practices to criminalize the self-willed migration of people moving without official permission. I discuss how the ideological frame of anti-trafficking works to reinforce restrictive immigration practices, shore up a nationalized consciousness of space and home, and criminalize those rendered illegal within national territories. Anti-trafficking campaigns also fail to take into account migrants’ limited agency in the migration process. I provide alternative routes to anti-trafficking campaigns by arguing for an analytical framework in which the related worldwide crises of displacement and migration are foregrounded. I argue that by centering the standpoint of undocumented migrants a more transformative politics emerges, one that demands that people be able to “stay” and to “move” in a self-determined manner.

The Gendered Biopolitics of Marriage and Immigration: A Study of Pre-1949 Chinese Immigrants in Thailand

This first attempt to include women in the pre-1949 history of Chinese immigration to Thailand examines the dialectical relationship between immigration and marital practices through a gender lens. It is argued that labour immigration is not simply an economic endeavour, but rather a complex process of cultural production in which Thai and Chinese regimes compete to produce gendered citizens.

Gender blind? Australian immigration policy and practice, 1901‐1930

This paper seeks to explore the nature of Australian immigration policies and practices, particularly their impact on women, from federation in 1901 to the cessation of large-scale assisted immigration to Australia brought about by the 1930s depression. The characteristics that influenced and affected female immigrants may have differentiated their experiences from those of male immigrants in the same period. Differential treatment of men and women has often been an unstated given in the formulation and implementation of immigration policies. It was as common to non-government organisations (of which there were, and still are, a great many associated with immigration and settlement), as to governments, both federal and state. Several inequities can be identified in the making and implementation of immigration and settlement policies, and in the access to government grants, concessions and services, not only in terms of race, ethnicity, class or occupation (which is well trodden ground in this field) but also in terms of gender.[1] Such differentiation is part of the broader framework of changing conceptions about the place and roles of women in Australian society and their expected contribution to the nation, but it has remained largely unexplicated in this period and field.

"I have no time for potential troubles": Russian immigrant women and breast cancer screening in Israel.

The author's earlier study of Russian immigrant women's attitudes and practices related to the early detection of cancer has shown their low participation in breast screening activities, from BSE to mammography. Most respondents were educated women who acknowledged their personal risk, understood the role of screening, but still avoided preventive action. In this qualitative research, the gap between cognitions and behavior is explored further by means of in-depth interviews and focus groups with 34 women aged 50-74 who moved to Israel after 1990. All Israeli women of this age are entitled for screening mammography free of charge once every 2 years. The findings point to a low place of preventive health concerns in the personal agenda of female immigrants, loaded by the more immediate survival needs (income, housing, support of other family members, etc.). Other barriers include the lack of referral from primary care providers, fear of cancer diagnosis, apprehensions of irradiation and pain involved in mammography, fatalist general attitude towards health and illness, and mistrust of current cancer therapy. Many older women (60+), whose risks are actually higher, shared a false belief that breast cancer strikes younger women and they are already past the age of concern. Older informants avoided gynecological clinics because of male gender of most gynecologists, their poor command of Hebrew, and a belief that gynecological checkups are irrelevant and even shameful in their age. It is concluded that female immigrants, especially older ones, must be a special target group for preventive health interventions.

'A Chance to Bloom': Female Migration and Salvationists in Australia and Canada, 1890s to 1939

Migration is usually analysed as a function of state policy of sending and receiving countries in the context of global movements of people. Thus, despite their sponsorship and support of thousands of migrants, independent, voluntary, religious and ethnic organisations have often been marginalised in international migration studies. This article arises from a broader investigation into the role of such organisations in the peopling of Australia and Canada from the 1890s to 1939: their visions, relationships with governments, significance and legacies. The aim is to bring a new perspective to comparative migration and population research and to assess how far such organisations paralleled, or stepped outside of, the racialised, gendered and class structures of ofŽficial immigration policies and practices of the time. Here the focus is particularly on the place of women and girls in the migration schemes of some of the organisations operating in both Australia and Canada. The use of case studies such as the British Women’s Emigration Association, the Salvation Army and Dr Barnardo’s Homes provides an opportunity to examine the sexual distinctions implicit in these schemes and the direction of both women and men into what were seen at the time as gender-appropriate societal roles and occupations.

Commentary Cultural Brokerage in the Newborn Nursery

Cultural issues play an important part in our daily lives. Often, the cultural practices of immigrants differ from those of the U.S. community in which they now live. The cultural misunderstandings that can result occur in a variety of situations. This is the story of one such misunderstanding that happened a few years ago at a small suburban hospital nursery in a northeastern state.

Guide for Religious Professionals Addressing Immigrant Culture Conflict Adjustment Situations

With international immigration on the rise, the United States is becoming increasingly diverse as it admits more immigrants every year. However, in contrast to past inflows of immigrants to the U.S., many now entering the U.S. come from non-European nations, whose cultural values may significantly differ with U.S. mainstream cultural values. As a result, some immigrant cultural values are clashing with U.S. mainstream cultural values as found in U.S. social institutions. Thus religious professions and congregations who attempt to help immigrants adjust to U.S. society may need to address and cope with the dilemma that results when cultures clash. With this in mind, one important question can be raised: Is there a limit to the toleration of immigrant cultural practices? In the context of this question and after examining the problem of immigrant culture clash adjustment situations, this paper reviews and evaluates the arguments in the literature associated with two possible approaches that may begin to help guide or address culture clashes: cultural relativism or cultural universalism.

Transnational health resources, practices, and perspectives: Brazilian immigrant women's narratives.

This paper examines the representations of transnational health resources, practices, and perspectives in the narratives of Brazilian immigrant women. The results of this qualitative narrative research indicated that in taking care of their health, these Brazilian immigrants often relied on a combination of personal and collective transnational resources. They engaged in a variety of pre-migration and transnational health practices and demonstrated a high degree of personal responsibility for their health, although they frequently delayed or postponed seeking formal health care. In responding to health and illness concerns, these immigrant women moved back and forth across informal and formal health care systems, crossing multiple national, cultural, and health care system borders. Their stories illustrated the transnational nature of personal, cultural, and political perspectives on health and health care and highlighted the layered complexities of immigrant women's health practices and resources.

CONSUMING SATELLITE MODERNITIES

Although the globalized world has multiple modernities, it retains a power vector which is centripetal to developed centres. I propose to use the concept ‘satellite modernities’ to refer to the magnetic sites between centres of high-modernity and developing modernites in the rest of the world. In developing countries, newly modernized cities are reproducing, hybridizing, and domesticating a simplified western modernity, a modernity that is in turn consumed by less developed cities and territories within the same regions. Throughout Asia, these satellite sites draw migrants from all over the region to realize the dreams of the global west in the relative security and comfort of regional localities. In this paper, I investigate the consumption histories and practices of immigrants who have crossed the cultural boundary of post-socialist China into the cultural spaces of Hong Kong in different periods of time. This is a mid-range theoretical exercise that attempts to ground such concepts as modernity, consumption, and identity formation in concrete boundary-crossing experiences of Chinese immigrants.

Maintenance and Change in the Diet of Hispanic Immigrants in Eastern North Carolina

The objectives of this descriptive, exploratory study were to assess maintenance and change in the food consumption, preparation, and purchasing practices of Hispanic immigrants currently residing in eastern North Carolina who had lived in the United States for no more than 10 years, and to identify underlying ecological factors and perceptions about food quality that shape their postmigrational food habits. The participants were 33 Hispanic immigrants: 8 males and 25 females. Qualitative data were collected using individual interviews and a focus group session. Findings suggest that these Hispanic immigrants struggle to retain their cultural food traditions and are consuming more high‐fat, high‐sugar foods than they did in their home countries. Improved economic status and school food service offerings are examples of factors that promote dietary change among children and families. These influences and identified misconceptions about food safety and freshness are important topics for culturally sensitive nutrition education for this population.

Forming Canada 's Ethnoracial Identity: Psychiatry and the History of Immigration Practices

Although most Canadians agree that theirs is not a perfect society, they see it as capable of perfection and take comfort in knowing that it is certainly better than most. The conservative implications of such a position are quite clear, and this is the basis on which we describe Canada as a nation in denial. It is a denial based on the myth of classlessness and general refusal to acknowledge the existence of systemic or structured inequalities along gender, racial, and many other lines. Our principal focus is the issue of racial inequality in the history of Canada 's immigration policies and practices, and we contend that denial is an intrinsic aspect of the national mythology of Canada as a benign, innocent country comprising the Great White North. We take a critical look at immigration entry restrictions that were aimed at ensuring a certain racial and ethnic purity in the new nation, what we call sanitization. To this end both the profession of psychiatry and psychiatric practitioners were enlisted. Thus, it was common to find that "lunacy and idiocy "were invoked as justifications for eliminating certain categories of potential immigrants. To this end psychiatry, eugenics, and "sanitary science "were closely connected, and their collective effect was to intensify boundaries of nation, citizen, and health. Social issues were transformed into personal defects associated with entire races through the use of terms like feeble-mindedness and degeneration. The seemingly unconscious infiltration of religious, color or moral polarities in the theories of the "new sciences "likewise became embedded in racist government policies, which served to inform the emerging national identity.

Self-medication practices in two California Mexican communities.

Although social scientists have taken up the study of medication use in both developing and developed nations, the medication practices of immigrants remain largely unstudied. In this study, qualitative research was employed in order to describe and compare self-medication practices in two California Mexican immigrant groups: families living along the border near Tijuana, Mexico, and migrant farm worker families residing in illegal encampments and substandard housing in San Diego's North County. Medication and health seeking practices were found to vary according to the specific political-economic, sociocultural, and geographic contexts in which different subpopulations of California Mexicans live. The California-Mexico border area was examined as an important context for considering self-medication behaviors, since it permits border-crossing into Tijuana for the purpose of buying Mexican pharmaceuticals at low cost without a prescription. The popularity of injections among California Mexicans and the cross-border purchasing of injectable antibiotics and vitamins are discussed as issues of particular relevance for immigrants living along the border.

‘The question of the day’: The maintenance of racial rhetoric in Queensland, Australia: William Lane and Pauline Hanson as racial ideologues

Since the late nineteenth century Australian racial ideologues have identified retrogressive immigration policies and practices with the national interest. They have consistently argued that ethnic and racial diversity will led to rapid decay and national fragmentation. In the vast north‐east state of Queensland, the most racially diverse area of Australia historically, the arguments have been most persuasively articulated. Queensland has produced, not unsurprisingly, the most vehement and obsessive racial ideologues both on the left and right of politics. William Lane and Pauline Hanson, though separated by a century, both argue that the possibilities of imminent invasion from the north, the polluting effects on national strength from non‐British immigration and ethnic diversity will destroy national cohesion. The continued and widespread acceptance of these ideas demonstrates both the virulence and persistance of racial ideologies in Australia.

Disaggregating Turkish citizenship and immigration practices

There is a growing literature and academic interest increasingly questioning established notions of Turkish national identity and the boundaries of Turkish citizenship. The official formulation of Turkish national identity denies the existence of ethnic and cultural diversity in the country, the only exception being the religious minorities that were recognized in the Lausanne Treaty of 1923. The founders of the Turkish republic had embarked upon a modernist project that aimed to homogenize a society within the geographical area determined by the National Pact. A society that traditionally had been known as a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural one would be transformed into a uniform and homogeneous Turkish nation-state. A civic and territorially based formulation of Turkish nationalism became the ideological tool with which this was to be achieved. In 1924 following a fascinating debate concerning the definition of the term 'Turk', the parliament adopted Article 88 of the Constitution.' Accordingly, 'the people of Turkey regardless of their religion and race were, in terms of citizenship, to be Turkish' and as such would enjoy equal rights. This formulation has persisted across the 1961 and 1982 constitutions, and government officials frequently make references to it. The Turkish President, Siileyman Demirel, for example, in his end-of-the-year press conference in late December 1994 stated that the constitutions of the Turkish Republic did not specify origin, belief or language as the basis for citizenship or 'national belonging'. Membership to the Turkish nation merely entailed that one must be a Turkish citizen.2 Against such a formal definition of citizenship and national identity that emphasizes territoriality rather than ethnicity, actual state practice has been very different.3 The first signals of the gap that would evolve between the formal and substantive definitions of citizenship came as early as the mid1 920s. As the modernist project confronted growing challenges, the government increasingly resorted to policies that emphasized a preference for Turkish ethnicity and language. The initial civic or territorial conceptualization of Turkish national identity and citizenship became

Re‐reading citizenship and the transnational practices of immigrants

There is a well‐documented and increasing trend within industrialised countries towards strict immigration control, and for a growing emphasis on the value of citizenship. A parallel evolution is now discernible among immigrant populations, which argue for multiple identities and citizenships, backing up these claims with reference to the connections that immigrants maintain with their countries of origin. This article explores the extent to which these two trends are in conflict, and suggests that the traditional link between citizenship and nationality is undergoing a redefinition. A survey of the literature on transnationality forms the first part of the article. A portrait of the Haitian diaspora in North America serves to illustrate the interaction between immigrant and host society. A concluding discussion suggests a re‐evaluation of the discourse on transnationality. This shows that the terms employed to discuss the supposedly new phenomenon are riddled with imprecision and double meanings. ‘Transnational’ may or may not equal ‘international; it may construed as a threat to the nation state or, conversely, an opportunity for immigrant and host populations alike.

Islam, immigration and group recognition1

Islam generally, and Muslim immigrant communities in particular, have recently been targeted for criticism by Western academics and in popular Western media. This article explores the substance of these criticisms and weighs them against the beliefs and practices of Muslim immigrants in Western liberal democracies. The article addresses three distinct questions. First, what sorts of cultural adaptations is it reasonable for liberal democratic states and societies to expect immigrants to make, and what kinds of adaptation is it unreasonable to demand? Second, how vulnerable are Islamic beliefs and practices to the criticisms commonly leveled against them in the name of liberal democracy and gender equality? Finally, how strong are the parallels between the claims for political recognition and accommodation that issue from immigrant cultural communities and the claims for recognition and inclusion that issue from groups that have historically been marginalized within liberal democratic societies? Although the authors do not dismiss the notion that there may be tensions between the core commitments of liberal democratic societies and some Islamic practices, they conclude that these tensions are exaggerated by Western writers. Muslim communities generally pose no greater challenge to liberal societies than do other religious and immigrant communities. Western writers should be chary of rejecting their claims to toleration and accommodation too swiftly.