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

人们很自然地关心别人对他们的看法，不仅因为他们渴望社会交往，而且因为这种看法对获得资源和获得机会很重要。对于边缘化人群尤其如此，他们往往必须证明自己应该获得某些福利、服务或地位。本项目探讨了边缘化人群在极度脆弱的环境中利用的不同策略，以改善他们获得资源的机会。除了有助于培养研究生的经验、科学数据收集和分析方法外，该项目还将对那些寻求缓解社会经济转型和寻求庇护者和其他移民的公民参与的组织产生重大影响，有可能提高接待项目的有效性，并为特定人群提供量身定制的服务。本论文项目将研究参与同一组织接待计划的两组不同的寻求庇护者的迭代过程，通过在各种情况下展示自己既脆弱又有能力，来证明他们应该得到庇护。这两种人的策略不同吗？他们是倾向于发挥自己的优势，还是试图弥补自己的弱点？随着时间的推移，他们的策略是如何根据不同的经历和互动而改变和发展的？组织专业人员是否以不同的方式对待每个人群，根据每个寻求庇护者的背景提供具体的建议和指导？在当前庇护申请数量不断增加的背景下，伴随着社会经济挑战，该项目比较了来自不同原籍国的两种寻求庇护者的策略和经历：一种具有高度的文化相似性，包括语言流利性，但感知脆弱性较低；另一组文化相似度较低，但感知脆弱性较高。这种比较提供了一个机会来分析不同群体在追求共同目标时，宏观层面条件对微观层面自我呈现策略的不同影响。研究人员将利用多种民族志方法，包括参与性观察、探索性访谈和对寻求庇护者和组织工作人员的半结构化访谈。将对这些数据进行分析，以确定两组人的行为模式是否会随着时间的推移而发生差异，这些模式如何根据特定的经历而发展，以及寻求庇护者如何看待自己与另一组人的关系。该项目旨在为有关移民、人道主义和官僚主义的人类学知识做出贡献，同时也为战略自我表现提供更广泛的社会科学见解，特别是与隐性偏见有关的见解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.