Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social Capacities and Personal Vulnerabilities in Encountering Implicit Bias

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People are naturally concerned with how they are perceived by others not only because they desire social contact but also because such perceptions are important for gaining resources and access to opportunities. This is especially true for marginalized populations, which often must demonstrate that they are deserving of certain benefits, services, or statuses. This project explores the different strategies that marginalized populations leverage in contexts where they are acutely vulnerable, to improve their access to resources. In addition to contributing to the training of a graduate student in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, this project will have significant implications for organizations that seek to ease the socioeconomic transition and civic participation of asylum seekers and other migrants, potentially improving the effectiveness of reception programs and facilitating tailoring of services for particular populations. This dissertation project will examine the iterative processes by which two different groups of asylum seekers participating in a reception program at the same organization demonstrate that they are deserving of asylum by presenting themselves as both vulnerable and capable in various situations. Do the two populations strategize differently, and do they tend to play to their perceived strengths or attempt to compensate for their perceived weaknesses? How do their strategies change and develop over time in response to various experiences and interactions? Do organizational professionals work with each population differently, providing specific advice and guidance depending on each asylum seeker’s background? Situated in a context that is currently experiencing increasing numbers of asylum applications, alongside socioeconomic challenges, this project compares the strategies and experiences of two asylum seeker populations from different countries of origin: one, with a high level of cultural similarity, including language fluency, but low perceived vulnerability; the other, with a low level of cultural similarity but high perceived vulnerability. This comparison offers the opportunity to parse through the differential effects of macro-level conditions on micro-level self-presentation strategies of different groups of people as they pursue common goals. The researcher will utilize multiple ethnographic methods, including participant observation, exploratory interviews, and semi-structured interviews with asylum seekers and organizational workers. These data will be analyzed to determine whether or not the two groups’ patterns of behavior diverge over time, how these patterns develop in response to particular experiences, and how asylum seekers perceive themselves in relation to the other group. This project is poised to contribute to anthropological knowledge concerning migration, humanitarianism, and bureaucracy, while also producing broader social scientific insights about strategic self-presentation, especially as related to implicit bias.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.