Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social Support and Stress Among Religious Migrants

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Migration is a stressful process, with unique stressors emerging before, during, and after migration. For religious migrants, people in their congregations are important sources of support. However, providing the support necessary to cope with the stressors of migration may be complicated if what constitutes support differs between the giver and the receiver. The purpose of this dissertation research is to compare religious migrant and non-migrant understandings of social support and whether their adherence to local expectations of social support is associated with stress (perceived stress as well as hormonal measures). By approaching migration from both a biological and a cultural perspective, this project provides clarity with respect to the impact of chronic stressors among migrants. It also broadens the participation of women in STEM, as it provides training for a woman graduate student in lab and field work. The findings of this research will be disseminated broadly to participant communities and academic and non-academic audiences.The researcher applies a biocultural approach to understandings of migrant religion and post-national theory to answer the questions: 1. Do migrants and non-migrants of the same religion understand social support the same way? 2. In what ways are migrant understandings of social support similar to or different from those currently described in scientific scholarship? 3. How does secular and non-secular education influence how migrants and non-migrants understand social support? 4. Is the degree to which a migrant or non-migrant gives and receives culturally appropriate social support associated with stress (perceived stress as well as hormonal measures of stress)? To answer these questions, the researcher employs methods that measure the presence of shared cultural norms (cultural consensus) as well as individual adherence to these norms (cultural consonance). Cortisol, a hormone associated with stress and accessible in hair, is used to measure biological stress. The combination of these theoretical approaches and methods provides a novel approach to understanding the migrant experience.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.