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·尼布斯将对难民人口如何融入或不融入他们移民的东道国社会进行研究。她将通过对两个苗族难民的比较案例研究来探讨这个问题，这两个苗族难民有着相似的背景，来自东南亚的一个农村地区，他们定居在两个不同的民族国家，美国和德国。在每个研究地点，研究人员将采访一个苗族样本，并检查苗族与美国和德国公民的互动，不同的国家政策体现在官员身上，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。散居网络将通过使用社会网络分析方法进行调查和分析。为了研究在外来苗族文化的肯定中重要的社会过程，研究者也将在两个主要的苗族活动中进行参与观察，一个在欧洲，一个在美国。研究人员提出假设，随着时间的推移，甚至在东道国的第二代难民中，流散网络（与其他地方的苗族人的国际联系）将继续发挥重要作用，并产生抵制当地融合的身份认同。如果发现是正确的，该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显著影响散居人口中年轻的第一代，特别是第二代成员的身份。因此，本研究将有助于建立动态的、多层次的移民融合理论模型。这项研究还将有助于为移民人口制定更适当的社会政策，并将有助于培养社会科学家。

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.