Browsing by Subject "Immigrant"

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
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    Breast Cancer Screening Behavior in Korean Immigrant Women in the United States
    (2017-06) Lee, Mi Hwa
    To address the problem of the underutilization of breast cancer screening in Korean immigrant women in the United States, this study investigates their screening behavior, with a particular emphasis on sociocultural aspects. Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in Korean immigrant women. A regular breast cancer screening is recommended for early detection and timely treatments for breast cancer (Elmore, Armstrong, Lehman, & Fletcher, 2005). Despite its effectiveness of screening, Korean immigrant women are reported to have lower breast cancer screening rates than any other racial/ethnic groups (Lee, Fogg, & Menon, 2008; Lee, Ju, Vang, & Lundquist, 2010). This implies that Korean immigrant women are at risk for being diagnosed with breast cancer at an advanced stage due to their low mammogram receipt resulting in increased mortality. This study uses a cross-sectional, mixed-method study design, in particular a sequential explanatory mixed methods design (Creswell, 2015) to understand breast cancer screening behavior in Korean immigrant women. The Andersen’s Behavioral Model of Health Services Use (Andersen, 1995) along with Health Belief Model (Rosenstock, 1974; Rosenstock et al., 1988) theoretically guided this study. Logistic regression was used to examine facilitators and barriers associated with breast cancer screening in the quantitative phase of the study. In the qualitative phase of the study, semi-structured individual interviews were conducted to explore sociocultural views on breast cancer and breast cancer screening from Korean immigrant women and to obtain further evidence supporting the results of quantitative study. Grounded theory methods (Charmaz, 2006) guided the data collection and analyzed the data results. A total of 240 Korean immigrant women ages between 40 and 79 years old from Los Angeles, California, completed questionnaires and 30 of these participants participated in individual interviews. Approximately 90.1% of study participants completed a mammogram at least once in their lifetime and 62.2% had a mammogram in the past two years. In the past two years, women between 60 - 69 years old had the highest mammogram rate (73.3%) while women between 40 - 49 years old had the lowest mammogram rate (26.3%). With regards to associated facilitators and barriers of screening uptake, the quantitative study identified three facilitators (fatalism, regular check-up and heard about mammogram experiences from family, friends, and neighbors) and a barrier (perceived barriers to screening). Study participants viewed breast cancer as a fearful subject. They reported having different levels and concerns about breast cancer (e.g., fear of getting breast cancer vs feeling safe from breast cancer). The majority of participants strongly believed that breast cancer could be preventable. Interestingly, they had different opinions on ways to prevent breast cancer. The qualitative phase of the study also found five motivations (fear of breast cancer, preventive orientation practice, health insurance, doctors’ recommendation, and family support) and various challenges (e.g., complicated and timing consuming procedure, and language) to breast cancer screening. Results showed that fears of breast cancer boosted Korean immigrant women to adopt preventive health practices while still holding fatalistic attitudes. Fatalistic attitudes are influenced by participants’ own observations of people’s death as a result of being diagnosed with cancer while still maintaining healthy lifestyles and regular check-ups. These observations reinforced fatalistic attitudes on health. Despite having this attitude, the participants wanted to maintain their screening because they believed finding cancer at an earlier stage would be better if it turns out they have cancer. They wanted to avoid having feelings of regret or guilt if they had cancer at advanced stages. Health insurance enabled them to initiate or maintain their regular check-ups, and their primary health care professionals played a role in encouraging them to have a screening. Some participants developed their own strategies (e.g., waiting for to get government funded health insurance and visiting Korea to receive medical examination) to deal with multiple barriers to breast cancer screening. The findings of this mixed methods study helps to obtain a more comprehensive view of Korean immigrant women’s screening behavior and to develop more culturally and individually tailored intervention strategies to promote screening uptake.
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    Community based youth programs utilizing a culturally relevant framework (Educacion) to implement impactful learning opportunities for immigrant Latino youth
    (2014-12) Landrieu, Maria Josefina
    A theoretical perspective of non-formal learning and social and cultural capital is proposed to provide a deeper and holistic understanding of the educational experiences of immigrant Latino youth participating in out-of-school time (OST) programs. An educaciόn lens informed by anthropological perspectives on education offers a promising view of how immigrant Latino youth and families have conceptualized notions of learning and education as part of larger global discourses of immigration, transnationalism, and citizenship education. This study aims to shed light on the reasons why Latino immigrant youth join well-structured OST programs and how they enact their agency and motivation to stay engaged and continue to participate in the program activities while reaping the benefits of the experience. Drawing on qualitative methods of participant observation, interviews and document review, this dual-site case study presents a framework for understanding the role of non-formal learning environments in the educational trajectories of Latino immigrant youth. The proposed framework identifies locally formulated notions of educaciόn and recognizes the need for non-formal learning environments, such as culturally based community youth programs, to act as a partner force in considering Latino families' responses to the education of their children. At a time in which Latino youth's educational needs are not sufficiently addressed by formal institutions, the role of these programs must be recognized as a potent and effective democratizing space that can redress educational inequities.
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    Creating a Blueprint for a Welcoming Minnesota: An Analysis of Four Immigrant Integration Initiatives
    (Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, 2013-05-31) DeFreitas, Alejandra; Han, Jun-Sup; Molloy, Connor; Saint Juste, Frantzie; Samuel, Marvin
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    Everyday landscapes of immgrant integration in post-socialist Berlin: integration projects, othering and meanings of work.
    (2011-02) Matejskova, Tatiana
    This research examined everyday landscapes of belonging and responses of local population to recent immigrants in one of the new urban areas of immigrant settlement in Germany, namely neighborhoods of eastern Berlin, Marzahn. Once the largest socialist-era housing estate in the former East Germany, now severely socio-economically marginalized, central and northern Marzahn has over the past 15 years become home of the largest concentration of post-Soviet immigrants of German ancestry (so-called Aussiedler) in the former East Germany, the second largest migrant group by now in Germany. The project focused first, on what I call integration practices, that is practices through which local integration projects and policies seek to enable greater social inclusion of recent immigrants as well as acceptance of immigrants by the local society. And second, I sought to understand how such projects as well as immigrants and local residents themselves understand what "integration" - a vague but increasingly ubiquitous and contested term - entails and how they construct belonging in everyday urban contexts. The study is more broadly situated within the context of Germany's new regime of immigrant integration, which promotes neoliberalized, work-based understanding of belonging. These research questions were approached through a mixed-method qualitative case study, which entailed ethnographic work focused on northern and central Marzahn, including volunteering in two integration projects, focus groups conducted with local residents and Aussiedler immigrants, semi-structured expert interviews with local integration practitioners and experts, as well as document analysis. Findings point out in the first place to the myth of an integrated national society that immigrants encounter and in which they strive for belonging. Namely, I show that local practices through which Marzahner Other Aussiedler immigrants in everyday spaces as Russians hailing from backwards East and thus non-belonging in Marzahn and in Germany, are strongly entangled with and embedded in the national landscape of citizenship, in which Marzahn and Marzahner themselves occupy a very precarious position. Second, this project finds that while local integration projects in Marzahn play an important role in supporting immigrants' process of settlement through creating linguistically and socially familiar social spaces, crucial for regaining social confidence in a new environment, they often fail in achieving their goal of providing spaces of increased contact between immigrants and local residents. Rather, such sustained encounters are enabled within the spaces of larger community centers housing integration projects, mostly because they employ often significant numbers of otherwise unemployed residents through workfare programs. While such engagements do tend to increase empathy and more positive attitudes of local residents towards individual Aussiedler, I have cautioned against overoptimistic expectations for increased contact to also bring about reduced stereotyping and prejudice against the Aussiedler as a whole group and category. And finally, this dissertation shows that, quite in line with Germany's neoliberalized norms of belonging as based on employment and work contributions, especially middle-aged and older Aussiedler perceive their long-term exclusion from labor market as an obstacle to their feeling integrated in Germany. As I show, their insistence on the centrality of work for their feelings of belonging in a society is less a result of an influence of local integration practitioners or community leaders - for whom the importance of work for Aussiedler integration is instrumental rather than ideological - or from Marzahn's residents, many of whom do not see steady employment as a precondition for immigrant integration, in part also because of their own strong experiences with long-term unemployment. Rather, as I argue, this centrality of work draws primarily on the persistence of dividual conceptions of personhood and self as deeply socially embedded and emerging through a practice and experience of work, that these subjects internalized during their Soviet-era socialization.
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    The intercultural competence of immigrant entrepreneurs in the Twin Cities
    (2014-07) Cleberg, Alexander
    Seeking a more nuanced conceptualization of intercultural competence, this thesis examines the narratives of immigrant entrepreneurs engaged in a culturally diverse business environment. Based on in-depth ethnographic interviews supplemented by a quantitative instrument, the thesis uncovers unique examples of how intercultural competencies are expressed while drawing on the research expressing a need to re-conceptualize intercultural competence from a non-western perspective.
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    The lived-experiences of Latino meatpacking workers in a small midwest town: an existential and emotional conflict of migration
    (2014-07) Alvarez de Davila, Silvia
    This phenomenological study adds understanding of the experiences of Latino workers in the meat-processing industry in rural Midwest as thousands of people, and a large number of Latino immigrants work in the meat and poultry plants in rural Midwest. Data was collected through in-depth, open-ended interviews. The purpose of the interviews was to gather data from the participants' perspective about their experiences and the meaning they made of these experiences while working in the meat plant and living in a small Midwest town. The stories of 10 Latino meat packing workers constituted the text to examine the phenomenon as a single case, to relate it to its universal qualities, and then come back to its particularities to understand the meaning of the experience. Seven major themes were found core to the phenomenon of being a Latino worker in the meat packing industry in rural Midwest: feeling forced to make the decision, willing to make it "no matter what", reaching the American dream: a job at the plant, living like a machine, becoming the "desired unwanted", life in two places, and the "payoff" . Participants of this study represented immigrants who came from high-poverty communities in Mexico and Central America with limited social and economic resources. This study supported theories of economics of migration labor force segmentation, and social capital; as well as foundations of meaning of work. Participants in this study face a difficult, painful, dangerous life, less enjoyable than they hoped, but profitable enough to become economic providers here and now. At their new community they live, deal with sociological struggles derived from their lack of information and skills to look for better opportunities, and their needs to fulfill commitments and loyalties. They feel discriminated and isolated while raising families and children and facing the existential and emotional conflict of migration.
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    Tale of two teachers: Chinese immigrant teachers’ professional identity in US foreign language classrooms.
    (2010-06) Gao, Yunli
    This study looks at Chinese immigrant teachers' identity through the theoretical framework of the figured worlds, aiming to explore how the Chinese immigrant teachers navigate the cultural and educational practices and negotiate their professional identities in the figured world of foreign language classes in the US public schools, and how the two competing storylines of "Chinese" and "American" teacher interplay in the teachers' identity. Two Chinese immigrant teachers were interviewed and observed in their classrooms over a period of four months. The findings revealed the uncertainty and figuring involved in the inscribed acts and meaning regarding the "American" and "Chinese" pedagogical storylines of teaching, and the situated processes of the figuring, positioning, and choices made by the immigrant teachers. The teachers' professional identities are complex and highly contextualized, reflecting positioning in multiple memberships and orchestration of various discourses in the "space of authoring" in the cultural worlds of the schools. The study contributed to immigrant teacher research at the age of global migration.
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    Use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in racial, ethnic and immigrant (REI) populations: assessing the influence of cultural heritage and access to medical care.
    (2011-03) Zhang, Lixin
    Background --- Though substantial and growing use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in the general population has been documented in recent years, little is known about CAM utilization patterns among racial, ethnic and immigrant (REI) populations groups. Objectives --- To examine variation in the use of CAM among REI populations, and assess the influence of cultural heritage and access to medical care on CAM use Conceptual Model --- Adapted Behavioral Model of Vulnerable Population with added REI domains. Method --- Data are from Survey of Health of Adults, the Population and the Environment (SHAPE) collected in Hennepin County, Minnesota in 2002. The final sample consists of 9,959 respondents with 2,794 from racial and ethnic minorities and 1,007 interviews were completed in languages other than English. The outcome measures were the use of five CAM therapies in the previous 12 months. Results --- Overall, 42% of the adults in the total population used at least one of the five CAM therapies in the past 12 month. CAM use is prevalent among REI populations, particularly among American Indians, Asians and Whites. The use of individual CAM varies across racial and ethnic populations and the pattern of use conforms to the racial and ethnic origins of the modalities. Cultural heritage influences CAM use and the level of influence is stronger for culturally-relevant CAM. Lack of insurance coverage, delayed medical care and not having a physician’s clinic as regular source of care are associated with a higher likelihood of CAM use. Lack of access to conventional health care has a stronger influence on CAM use in some racial and ethnic groups. Lack of insurance coverage and barriers to needed medical care play a larger role in the use of CAM among immigrants. Conclusion --- CAM has an important role in promoting culturally competent care particularly in REI populations. CAM may serve as an alternative option for those lacking adequate access to medical care, particularly among immigrants and people of racial and ethnic populations.