Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Thai Migrant Women and Relative Success of Integration in Iceland

移民融入东道国社会是一个受到广泛关注的问题。 这个项目是由研究生Johanna Yngvason在E. Paul Durrenberger将通过评估婚姻在人口流动中的作用，开辟国际移民的一个相对未被探索的方面，为包括美国在内的任何女性劳动力移民和新娘涌入的国家提供见解。 该项目将使用人种学领域的方法来研究泰国妇女到冰岛的婚姻和劳动力迁移，并将评估这些渠道如何不同地影响融入冰岛社区。 Yngvason根据她2005年8月的初步实地调查估计，至少有一半的泰国移民妇女是专门为嫁给冰岛人而来的，而其余的妇女是为劳动机会而来的，是婚姻移民的亲属。 Yngvason将在冰岛的泰国移民（约800人）中进行为期12个月的民族志工作，通过对260人的随机抽样进行参与观察和调查，收集进一步的数据;然后她将比较两个群体融入冰岛社会的程度。 这项调查将补充与人口的日常互动，以衡量冰岛的语言技能和使用情况、网络的类型和密度、休闲活动和美食的选择、宗教机构的参与以及与泰国人的活动，这项研究将通过对婚姻和经济作为妇女移徙预测因素的人种学理解，加强人类学对移徙研究的贡献。 这项研究还将有助于了解人们如何协商文化差异，以及在什么情况下他们尝试或不尝试这样做。 冰岛没有共同边界，这为记录和观察移民及其融入东道国社会的程度创造了最佳条件。 研究结果对制定国家移民政策具有影响。该项目还将大大有助于培养一名女社会科学家。

The integration of immigrants into a host society is a problem of widespread concern. This project, by graduate student Johanna Yngvason under the direction of Dr. E. Paul Durrenberger, will open up a relatively unexplored aspect of international migration by assessing the role of marriage in population flows, offering insight to any country with an influx of female labor migrants and brides from abroad, including the United States. This project will use ethnographic field methods to examine marriage and labor migration of Thai women to Iceland and will assess how these channels differentially affect integration into the Icelandic community. Yngvason estimates from her preliminary fieldwork in August 2005 that at least half of the Thai migrant women came specifically to marry Icelanders, while the rest of the women came for labor opportunities and are kin of the marriage migrants. Yngvason will collect further data during 12 months of ethnographic work among Thai migrants in Iceland (approximately 800 individuals) using participant-observation and surveys among a random sample of 260 individuals; she will then compare outcomes between the two groups in terms of the degree of their integration into Icelandic society. The survey will complement daily interaction with the population to measure Icelandic language skills and usage, type and density of networks, choices of leisure activities and cuisine, religious institutional involvement, and activities with people in Thailand.This study will enhance anthropology's contribution to migration studies through the ethnographic understanding of marriage and the economy as predictors of women's migration. The study will also contribute to an understanding of how people negotiate cultural differences and under what circumstances they try or do not try to do so. Iceland has no shared borders, creating an optimal situation for the documentation and observation of immigrants and their level of integration in their host society. The results of the study have implications for the formation of national policies on immigration. The project will also contribute significantly to the education of a female social scientist.