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The culture in which people work and dwell is instrumental in shaping their sense of self. The decision to migrate from the country of one's heritage culture may result in the modification of self-identity in order to accommodate new experiences within the host culture. For working professionals, such modifications may be manifested in a number of different domains, including attitudes, behaviors, values, and sense of culture. When considering America's diverse workforce and the pressures placed upon people to be competitive, educated, and reasonably assimilated, the process of acculturation must also be addressed. This process is best understood when heritage and mainstream cultures are viewed independently. Formally educated foreign-born African women were the focus of this research. The purpose was to increase understanding of the employment status of African women with respect to identity style and acculturation strategies. Two hundred thirty-eight (238) women in the Metropolitan Washington D.C. Area were surveyed with respect to acculturation, identity style and employment status. The Vancouver Index of Acculturation was used to measure the heritage and mainstream dimensions of acculturation. The Identity Style Inventory was used to measure aspects of individual identity. Differences were found for the acculturation dimension of mainstream acculturation, which was observed to be higher for employed subjects for three of the four analyses used for employment status. No statistically significant differences were found for any of the identity style measures due to employment status, with one exception. The underemployed group of women may have been characterized by an identity orientation based on family and friends. If these women appear to experience problems associated with acculturation and identity, they may require more time to learn about the U.S. culture. These women represent a heterogeneous group with an amazing diversity in terms of language, culture, religion, and national backgrounds. This research suggests that their goal of securing or maintaining a professional career in the United States while residing in a major metropolitan area does not require assimilating into the U.S. culture at the expense of their own culture. Although, given that the majority of these women plan to remain in the United States as permanent residents, learning as much as possible about their host culture could perhaps benefit them with respect to employment. / Ph. D.

As the demographics of faculty in American higher are fast changing and more foreign-born faculty entering the system, more information about this new group of entrants needs to be scrutinized. This research is aiming to answer some issues related the foreign-born professors overlooked by the mainstream studies about faculty in American postsecondary education. In the first half of this dissertation, related issues such as highly skilled immigrants and their importance to the economy, national strategy and smart power have been discussed. In the second half of this paper, some empirical research and statistical results revealed significant differences between the foreign-born and native-born faculty in terms of salary, working hours, time allocations and variances of above factors in different fields. This research suggested that foreign-born faculty is treated fairly in American academia and they enjoyed neither salary advantage nor disadvantage in comparison to their native counterparts. However, this author found empirical evidence that foreign-born did emphasize more on research by allocating more share of their work time on research and publications. This study shed some light on the researches about faculty salary, time allocation and some other aspects of employment for the foreign-born faculty. The author hopes to raise the academic interests of this topic and would like to see more detailed studies and researches in this direction.

The purpose of the study is to analyze what characterizes the interaction between preschool teachers and parents born abroad, furthermore what promotes and impedes the intercommunication between them. There is a lack of studies about the parental involvement in preschools whilst numerous studies can be found concerning the parental involvement within educational establishment subsequent to preschools. The completed study is qualitative, and based on interviews with five teachers in three different Reggio Emilia inspired preschools. The results of this study show that preschool teachers often face various challenges in their daily work. These challenges often originate in different pre- understandings about the societal norms, values and behavioral rules. The results also show that conflicts may arise between preschool teachers and the foreign-born parents because of distinct sentiments regarding previously mentioned values. Subsequently this causes the preschool teachers to obtain the role of the educator in relation to the parents. This positioning may complicate parental collaboration because it often contributes to an unequal power relationship being created. What promotes the cooperation with parents is to increase the visibility and awareness of societal structures, in order to attempt to change the communication and interaction patterns that are generally accepted in preschools and used extensively in this context.

This paper studies data from a 25-year period in the history of Sweden and the US, ranging from 1993 to 2017. The aim of the thesis was to investigate the impact of immigration on the income inequality of the respective countries while also considering the impact of other specific variables. In order to estimate the impact of the variables, both static and dynamic models were used, with the Gini coefficient being the dependent variable. With the ordinary least square giving short-run estimates and the error correction model providing short- and long- run estimates simultaneously, the main variable for immigration, being the foreign-born population, showed a strong positive relationship with income inequality. For the estimation, the immigration variable was also split into high- and low-skilled immigrants as well as different age groups. In conclusion, we find that immigration in Sweden and the US has high levels of influence on the income inequality for both countries.

Background: The number of Foreign Born (FB) individuals in the United States (US) is growing and their health behaviors and beliefs are important to know. In the US, cancer is the second leading cause of death, and there is need to explore factors that are associated with the use of cancer prevention strategies among FB individuals. Objective: The study aimed to compare cancer screening rates, assess factors associated with use of cancer screening tests across FB and Non-Foreign Born (NFB) individuals and association between length of stay and use of selected cancer screening tests among FB people. Methodology: Using the 2012 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) 4, cycle 2 data, which comprised of 3,630 participants of which 513 were FB, logistic regression analyses were conducted to identify predictors of selected cancer screening tests. Independent variables included demographic and selected healthcare, beliefs, and information seeking factors. Results: There were no significant differences in screening rates for cervical, breast, and colon cancers among the FB and NFB individuals. For breast cancer screening, having had a routine checkup in the last year was found to be associated with increased likelihood of having a mammography exam. For cervical cancer screening, none of the selected healthcare, beliefs and information seeking factors was found to be significant among the FB individuals. For colon cancer screening, only the information seeking factor “it took a lot of effort to get cancer information” was found to be significant among FB individuals. Length of stay in the US for FB individuals was found be associated with increased likelihood of colon cancer test only. Conclusion: Inventive and ethnically appropriate strategies are essential to increase awareness for cancer prevention strategies. Well-designed information strategies that take into account the diversity of the US population can lead to benefits such as increased cancer screening.

Using data on 9th grade students in Sweden for the time period of 2015-2019, this paper estimates a fixed effects model to find out whether the share migrant students has any impact on the grade of foreign-born and native Swedish students. We find that increasing the share of migrant students by one percentage point has a small negative effect on foreign-born students, but find no conclusive evidence from the same effect on Swedish students. Furthermore, we find the effect to be the largest when the share of migrants in a municipality is high, suggesting that redistribution of migrants across municipalities would decrease the negative effect of an increase in migrant students.

Promoting physical activity in older adults is an important part of healthy aging. With an increasing older foreign-born population in the United States, there is limited information on physical activity participation in this group and even less for those experiencing difficulties in physical functioning and chronic illnesses. The primary objective of the study was to determine how physical factors, psychological issues, chronic illnesses, pain symptoms, perceived health status, and number of years living in the U.S. influence physical activity participation in older foreign-born respondents. The secondary objective was to identify the difference of predictors of physical activity participation between older foreign-born and older native-born respondents. The study is based on data collected from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) conducted from 2002 to 2009 for adults aged 50 or older. Ordinal logistic regression analysis was used to predict and explain the physical activity participation in older foreign-born respondents. Factors associated with more physical activity participation included a higher level of education, more time living in the U.S., more positively perceived health status, and having at least one chronic illnesses, or pain symptoms. Having more difficulties in physical functioning caused older foreign-born respondents to participate less in physical activity. This study provides the most recent evidence to health-care professionals to develop and implement policies and strategies to facilitate physical activity programs that will be beneficial to elderly immigrants living in the U.S.

Foreign-born students complete college at a lower rate when compared to native-born students. It is essential to examine both the known and latent barriers that prevent foreign-born students from successfully completing the first four years of college. The purpose of this study is to assess the applicability of Bourdieuian notions of capital in explaining the discrepancy in educational attainment between foreign-born and native born students. The data is from the 1999 National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen (n=3176), a survey designed to test various theoretical explanations for minority underachievement in higher education. Stepwise regressions were used to determine the individual impact of nativity, race, cultural capital, and economic capital to graduating within four years. In the unadjusted model, nativity was moderately associated with four-year graduation (β=0.760; p=0.053). However in the fully adjusted model, I found that race was more important than nativity status when predicting the odds of graduating, with African American students having a significantly lower odds of graduating in four years (β=0.576; p=0.000), than white students. Gender and economic capital were also significantly associated with 4-year graduation rates, with men less likely to graduate than women (β=0.733; p=0.000). And individuals in the highest income category (over $75,000/year) were more likely to graduate in four years than those in the making less than 19,999 per year (β=1.645; p=0.028). Parental disciplinary style was also a significant (p=0.000) correlate with four year graduation rates. Future studies should repeat these inquiries in a dataset that includes less selective institutions.

Thesis advisor: Thanh V. Tran / Diabetes management is a major part of treatment but many ethnic/racial minorities with type 2 diabetes do not make the needed adjustment. A key component of healthcare access is health acculturation, defined as a level of success in navigating the mainstream healthcare system. The overall goal of this study is to develop a measure of health acculturation and examine its relationship with diabetes management across several ethnic minority groups in the US. The first purpose is to investigate the relationship between health acculturation and type 2 diabetes management behaviors in a sample of foreign-born Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean and Latino adults. The second purpose is to assess ethnic differences by testing the interaction between health acculturation and ethnicity on diabetes management behaviors. Merged dataset from CHIS 2009 and 2011-2 were used for analysis. Multiple and logistic regression analysis revealed that those with high health acculturation skills performed more diabetes management than their counterparts. Latinos performed better than all Asian subgroups on most diabetes management behaviors regardless of the level of health acculturation. The study has implications for social workers and healthcare providers working with ethnic and minority populations. The results suggest that the health acculturation measure would be a good screening tool to identify immigrant populations who will most benefit from health intervention within the culture of western medicine. In addition, the results help to identify specific skills and tools needed by social workers and healthcare providers to better serve these populations. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Social Work. / Discipline: Social Work.