Immigration Opposition Among U.S. Whites: General Ethnocentrism or Media Priming of Attitudes About Latinos?

General ethnocentrism seems to be a powerful antecedent of immigration opinion, typically displaying larger effects than economic concerns. News about immigration, however, may focus attention on a particular group in a given historical moment. We predict group‐specific affect, not general ethnocentrism, should most powerfully shape immigration policy opinion in the contemporary United States. We test this expectation with content analyses of news coverage, survey data from 1992 to 2008, a survey experiment, and official statistics. First, we find that mentions of Latinos in news coverage of immigration outpace mentions of other groups beginning in 1994, the year when Proposition 187, a proposal in California to end most social welfare and educational assistance to illegal immigrants, garnered significant national attention. Second, while ethnocentrism dominates economic concerns in explanations of Whites' immigration policy opinions, attitudes toward Latinos in particular account for nearly all of the impact of ethnocentrism since 1994. Finally, journalistic attention to Latino immigration roughly parallels actual rates of immigration from Latin America, suggesting the media shaping of policy opinion around this group may be driven by real‐world demographic patterns.     

Cultural context, obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms, and cognitions: a preliminary study of three Turkish samples living in different countries

Previous research findings have suggested that recent cognitive accounts of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are valid across different cultural contexts for both clinical and nonclinical samples; however, there is evidence that cultural differences may have an impact on a number of cognitive variables. For this reason, immigration provides an exceptional opportunity for an examination of the role of cultural context in cognitions and possible changes in cultural characteristics. To this end, the present study examined the interrelationships between thought-action fusion, thought control strategies and OCD symptoms in three nonclinical samples, taking the immigration factor into consideration. Thus, the current study included three Turkish sample groups: those who remigrated to Turkey from Bulgaria, those still living in Bulgaria, and those that have always resided in Turkey. The findings of the study supported the role of thought and action fusion and control strategies in OCD symptoms in a cross-cultural context. To illustrate, worry, as a thought control strategy for OCD symptoms, was a common factor in all three sample groups. However, differences were also noted between the groups, despite having the same ethnic origin. Although they immigrated back to Turkey and have been living there for a considerable period of time, the Turkish remigrants retained similar characteristics to the respondents in Bulgaria on cognitions in general. Consequently, it may be suggested that cultural context might have a relative impact on certain correlates. A replication of these findings using different immigration groups and examining various cultural factors is strongly encouraged.     

Application of focusing‐oriented psychotherapy in dealing with issues of Asian immigrants: A single‐case study of a Korean immigrant in Japan

A single case study is presented of the successful application of focusing‐oriented therapy in the case of a Korean woman who migrated to Japan. The client had a host of problems related to the discrimination she faced from her own family and from Korean society for being female, as well as relationship and cultural difficulties in trying to adjust to married life in Japan. Through 10 sessions of focusing‐oriented therapy, the client was able to re‐examine her situation from a positive perspective and began to accept herself as a person, not necessarily as a woman or a Korean in Japan. Issues related to Korean women immigrants in Japan are explored and the related effectiveness of focusing‐oriented therapy for the particular population is discussed.     

Anti‐Immigrant Prejudice in Rising East Asia: A Stereotype Content and Integrated Threat Analysis

Immigration is a global phenomenon, yet comparatively few psychological investigations of anti‐immigrant prejudice have been conducted in East Asia, a region of high economic growth that is set to become a leading destination for international migrants. Over two studies, we examined Singaporean attitudes towards four prominent immigrant groups: Chinese, Filipino, South Asian, and Western immigrants. Each immigrant group was found to be associated with a unique attitudinal profile. Chinese immigrants, who are culturally the most closely related to most Singaporeans, were viewed the most negatively in terms of prejudice, stereotyped warmth, and realistic and symbolic threat. Westerners were viewed the most positively despite higher ratings of perceived competence, possibly due to Western cultural influence, whereas South Asians and Filipinos were viewed as being relatively unthreatening, possibly due to their occupation of undesirable social roles. Perceived threat—both realistic and symbolic—proved to be stronger predictors of anti‐immigrant prejudice than stereotypes. Implications for immigration policy in the region are discussed.     

The Tortilla Curtain: War on the Table of the Poor

Abstract :  This essay approaches the concept of borders from a geopolitical perspective, focusing particularly on the dividing curtain between the USA and Mexico. Corn serves not only as Ariadne's thread but also as a symbol of food in general, to be problematized and not taken for granted. The author highlights God's imperative for us to take the side of the poor: to satiate their hunger and quench their thirst. This stands in clear contradiction to the current evil economic system that has reduced food to a weapon of mass destruction, through the simultaneous overproduction of food and hunger.     

African and Islamic philosophy: Expanding the horizons of philosophical counselling

Philosophical counselling has traditionally utilized a limited number of philosophical traditions: Existentialism, Stoicism, and the employment of Socratic dialogues being the most common ones. Focusing on a limited number of philosophical views does not exploit the potential therapeutic value of many other philosophical traditions, and may enhance dogmatism. In this paper we illustrate the need for a wider philosophical toolkit by showing the potential value of two rarely-employed philosophical traditions: African and Islamic philosophy. From the plethora of issues in these philosophical traditions, we highlight the relevance of African philosophy to conflicts between social duties and individual desires, and the relevance of Islamic philosophy to conflicts between faith and reason. We then emphasize the relevance of these philosophies in the current social and political situation in the Western world in general, and in Europe in particular.     

‘Just black sometimes’, part 2: reflections on an adolescent's journey

In this second article about work at a refugee centre for unaccompanied minors in Berlin, the author discusses his encounter with Syrian and Afghani adolescents who were enrolled in the program. Issues around adaptation to a new culture are explored with attention to the dynamics of conformity and marginalization. The questions of what happens to adolescent refugees separated from their families, and how their identity formation is shaped by this burden is explored in relation to the author's meeting with a Syrian adolescent living in Berlin. To illustrate the long reach of a missing father who has been left behind, characters from Virgil's Aeneid are discussed to amplify heroic and spiritual aspects within father‐son relationships. The interplay between needing help and allowing for resilience is explored as an important aspect of refugees’ transitions, while also considering variables such as dependence and independence, foreign and familiar, being with or without family, and adjusting to the present and/whilst relating to the past; tensions between these alternatives can create various psychosocial challenges for adolescent refugees.     

Ecology of Sites of Confinement: Everyday Life in a Detention Center for Illegalized Non‐citizens

Drawing on almost 3 years of fieldwork, comprising qualitative interviews and ethnographic observations, this study provides an exploration into the detention of illegalized non‐citizens in Italy. Taking the largest detention center as a case study, the fabric of everyday life and the lived experiences of people, both detainees and professional actors, are the focus of examination. An ecological community psychology framework, with a focus on justice, guided the data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Findings highlight the oppressive qualities of detention, and its ripple effects on people's life spaces. Scarcity of resources, activities, and information created a very distressing environment for detainees, also enhancing feelings of powerlessness and frustration in professionals willing to assist them. Uncertainty and instability, rather than coercion or discipline, emerged as modes of governing and dominating. Bound in a different space and time, detainees were turned into unwanted and expendable others, their confinement becoming a means to extract profit from them. Yet, people languishing in these sites displayed an extraordinary ability to cope with, resist, and challenge the persisting conditions of injustice they endured. We conclude by highlighting the potential of the proposed framework, and discussing broader implications of our findings and avenues for research and action.     

The cultural preparedness model of aspiration and engagement: understanding the dynamics of integration

This paper uses the cultural preparedness approach to analyse the interface between the aspirations of immigrants and their engagement with systems of the host country. It draws upon interviews with 84 immigrants from 35 developing countries living in 9 high-income countries. Based upon Edmund Husserl’s hermeneutical phenomenology, two studies are presented to understand the disturbance of equilibrium in cultural preparation status experienced by immigrants as they try to find their way in a host country. Aspiration-Engagement themes and responses to the challenges of integration are discussed. A model of aspiration and engagement based on the cultural preparedness approach is proposed as a framework that guidance and counselling workers could use to help immigrants optimise their engagement with the systems of the host country.     

‘It's not racist. It's common sense’. A critical analysis of political discourse around asylum and immigration in the UK

This paper looks at a political speech given by the leader of the opposition party during the run up to the UK elections in 2005. Using this speech as a starting point, we attempt to trace the path of ‘racism’ within a text that makes explicit claims to being ‘not racist’. Drawing on a number of theoretical and methodological resources, this paper approaches the analysis by focusing on a number of conceptually heterogeneous elements that, in relation with each other, function to produce, re‐produce and stabilize ‘racism’. One of the difficulties commonly encountered in social psychological work, we would suggest, is that an explicit statement of allegiance to a particular methodological and theoretical tradition can also result in a restriction of theorization to a particular ‘level of analysis’. That is to say, a methodological process that constructs a pre‐given category, presets the criteria by which ‘racism’ can be identified and fixes the ‘level of analysis’ at which it can be studied risks ignoring the multiple points of contact at which ‘racism’ can be made visible or made to disappear. The concern here it that such a process can work to reinscribe the very ‘racisms’ we aim to disrupt. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.