Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Diasporic Networks and Processes of Incorporation among the Hmong in the US and Germany

在卡罗琳·布雷特尔博士的指导下，南卫理公会大学研究生费斯·尼布斯将研究难民人口如何融入他们所移民的东道国社会。她将通过两个苗族难民人口，类似的背景和从一个单一的农村网站在东南亚，谁已经在两个不同的民族国家，美国和德国定居的比较案例研究追求这个问题。在每个研究地点，研究人员将采访苗族的样本，并研究苗族与美国和德国公民的互动，与官员体现的不同国家政策，以及他们的散居网络资源和人际关系。这些微观层面的数据将与相关的汇总统计数据和档案数据结合起来。将通过使用社会网络分析方法调查和分析散居网络。为了研究社会过程的重要性，在肯定外地苗族文化，研究人员还将进行参与观察两个主要的苗族事件，一个在欧洲和一个在美国。研究人员提出的假设，随着时间的推移，即使在第二代难民在东道国，散居网络（与其他地方苗族的国际联系）将继续发挥重要作用，并产生抵制当地融合的认同感。如果被证明是真的，这项研究将挑战更常见的论点，即东道国文化中的学校教育和社会化会显著影响年轻的第一代，特别是第二代散居人口的身份。因此，本研究将有助于发展动态的、多层次的移民融入理论模型。这项研究还将有助于为移民人口制定更适当的社会政策，并将有助于社会科学家的教育。

With the guidance of Dr. Caroline Brettell, Southern Methodist University graduate student Faith Nibbs will conduct research on how refugee populations are or are not incorporated into the host societies to which they migrate. She will pursue this question through a comparative case study of two Hmong refugee populations, of similar backgrounds and from a single rural site in Southeast Asia, who have settled in two different nation states, the United States and Germany. At each research site, the researcher will interview a sample of Hmong and examine Hmong interactions with American and German citizens, with the different state policies embodied in officials, and with their diasporic network resources and human connections. These micro-level data will be contextualized with relevant aggregate statistics and archival data. Diasporic networks will be investigated and analyzed through the use of social network analytical methods. To examine the social processes important in the affirmation of extra-local Hmong culture, the researcher also will conduct participant observation at two major Hmong events, one in Europe and one in the United States.The researcher poses the hypothesis that over time, even among a second generation of refugees in the host country, the diasporic networks (international connections to Hmong elsewhere) will continue to be important and generate identifications that resist local incorporation. If found to be true, the research would challenge the more usual argument that schooling and socialization in the host culture significantly affect the identities of young first-generation and especially second-generation members of diasporic populations. Thus this research will contribute to the development of dynamic and multi-level theoretical models of immigrant incorporation. The research also will help develop more appropriate social policy for immigrant populations, and will contribute to the education of a social scientist.