Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant- Social Boundaries and Cultural Identity in Costa Rica: Implications for the Well-Being of Nicaraguan Immigrants

研究生Marisa L.Prosser将在Roy G.D‘Andrade博士的指导下，从事移民身份形成和民族主义的研究。她的重点将是哥斯达黎加移民适应和福祉的案例研究，在那里，长达20年的尼加拉瓜移民潮挑战了移民和收容人口中的国家和个人认同概念。这项研究将建立在现有的学术基础上，表明强烈的文化认同感可以抵御移民面临的各种压力，特别是当它构成融合了母国和东道国文化的双文化认同的一部分时。本研究还考虑了群体之间的社会关系如何影响认同的形成，并缓和其对幸福感的保护作用。这位研究人员将在哥斯达黎加进行为期9个月的实地研究。研究的第一阶段将包括对尼加拉瓜移民和哥斯达黎加公民的样本进行参与式观察、半结构化和结构化访谈。文化共识分析将被用来揭示身份的文化模式。文化共识分析定量地衡量了举报人之间的文化共享程度。在研究的第二阶段，一项调查将分发给大样本的告密者，以测试个人的文化和谐性或他们个人对共同认同模式的近似程度与各种心理健康标准指标之间的关系。本研究介绍了一种可操作的身份建构方法，并进一步了解了移民如何在不同的文化条件下塑造自己的身份。这项研究将有助于完善关于移民福祉和社会融合的社会科学理论。它还将为促进移民人口成功融入和适应的政策和方案提供信息，同时保护他们的福祉和独特的文化遗产。

Graduate student Marisa L. Prosser, supervised by Dr. Roy G. D'Andrade, will undertake research on immigrant identity formation and nationalism. Her focus will be a case study of immigrant adaptation and well-being in Costa Rica, where a two-decade wave of Nicaraguan immigration has challenged concepts of national and personal identity among immigrants and the host population. The research will build upon existing scholarship that suggests a strong sense of cultural identity can protect against a variety of stressors faced by immigrants, particularly when it forms part of a bicultural identity that fuses aspects of both home and host cultures. This study also considers how social relations between groups influence identity formation and moderate its protective effects upon well-being. The researcher will undertake nine months of field research in Costa Rica. The first phase of the the research will involve participant-observation, semi-structured and structured interviews among samples of Nicaraguan immigrants and Costa Rican citizens. Cultural consensus analysis, which measures quantitatively the degree of cultural sharing across informants, will be used to reveal cultural models of identity. In the second phase of the research, a survey will be distributed to a large sample of informants to test the relationship between individuals' cultural consonance or the degree to which they personally approximate the shared models of identity, and a variety of standard measures of psychological well-being. This research introduces a method for operationalizing the construct of identity and furthers an understanding of how immigrants forge their identities under varying cultural conditions. The research will contribute to refining social science theories about immigrant well-being and social integration. It also will inform policies and programs to foster the successful integration and adaptation of immigrant populations while preserving their well-being and unique cultural heritages.