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

博士论文改进补助金 - 哥斯达黎加的社会边界和文化认同：对尼加拉瓜移民福祉的影响

• 批准号: 0720216
• 负责人: Roy D'Andrade
• 金额: $ 1.35万
• 依托单位: University of Connecticut
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-09-01 至 2008-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0720216&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Improvement; Grant; Social

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.

研究生Marisa L. Prosser将在Roy G. D'Andrade博士的指导下进行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，二十年的尼加拉瓜移民浪潮挑战了移民和东道国人口之间的国家和个人身份概念。这项研究将建立在现有学术研究的基础上，这些学术研究表明，强烈的文化认同感可以防止移民面临的各种压力，特别是当它构成了融合了母国文化和东道国文化方面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身份形成并调节其对福祉的保护作用。该研究人员将在哥斯达黎加进行9个月的实地研究。研究的第一阶段将涉及对尼加拉瓜移民和哥斯达黎加公民样本的参与观察、半结构化和结构化访谈。文化共识分析（Cultural consensus analysis）定量地衡量被调查者之间的文化共享程度，将用于揭示认同的文化模型。在研究的第二阶段，一份调查将分发给大量的供者样本，以测试个人的文化一致性或他们个人接近共同身份模型的程度与各种心理健康标准测量之间的关系。本研究介绍了一种操作化身份建构的方法，并进一步了解移民如何在不同的文化条件下形成他们的身份。该研究将有助于完善有关移民福利和社会融合的社会科学理论。它还将为政策和项目提供信息，以促进移民人口的成功融合和适应，同时保护他们的福祉和独特的文化遗产。