The foreign-born population in the United States increased by 57% from 1990 to 2000 (U.S. Census, 2003). A substantial growth for minority and immigrant population groups is projected to continue over the next 20 years, and these newcomer students tend to have lower measures of achievement (National Center of Education Statistics, 2007). Most of the research available is for early grade students. A paucity of research exists for high school student newcomers. This study reviewed a single public high school as a case study in a Central Texas school district, focusing on newcomer immigrant students in Grades 9 and 10. This study adds to the understanding of educational needs for new immigrants, existing educational services for them, strategies in place to narrow the achievement gaps between immigrant and nonimmigrant students, and policies that should be developed or expanded in order to ameliorate their educational conditions. Research questions were (a) what are the achievement gaps between 9th-grade, newcomer immigrant students in Central Texas and their nonimmigrant peers; (b) what are the academic needs of 9th-grade, newcomer immigrant students in Central Texas; and (c) what strategies exist to narrow the achievement gaps between immigrant and nonimmigrant students? Evidence was found that indeed a subpopulation of immigrant teenagers arrives with significant gaps in schooling. This study revealed value in innovative, visual instructional techniques; encouraged development of interpersonal advocacy; and the most potent contribution, thoughtful and empathetic administration and teachers. Determining effective strategies, support systems, and appropriate school climate while finding other elements that work in other locations make for a successful school for newcomer immigrant students. / text

This project examines nativism as an important historical process in the development of American cultural identity, following an interdisciplinary approach that focuses on the emergence of anti-immigrant discourse on the Internet. My aim is to analyze how anti-immigrant groups, despite access to new technologies, continue to reify stereotypes and representations of Latin American immigrants within a longstanding tradition of nativism. In particular, I explore the impact of strategies employed on the websites of the anti-immigrant groups Border Guardians, Mothers against Illegal Aliens, American Border Patrol, Justice for Shawna Forde, Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, and Minuteman Project to circulate anti-immigrant rhetoric on the World Wide Web. Following the work of cultural scholars Jean Baudrillard and Michel Foucault, as well as new media scholars Andrew Shapiro, Manuel Castells, and Sherry Turkle among others, I argue that nativist groups utilize multiple hyperlinking techniques to "disintermediate" their rhetoric, resulting in a closed ideological environment I call a "hyperverse." The nativist hyperverse effectively isolates itself from competing perspectives on immigration that could challenge its discourse, largely by framing itself as what Castells refers to as a "counter power" movement against hegemonic forces. Furthermore, I build upon the work of Arjun Appadurai to position the hyperverse within a larger anti-immigrant "mediascape" that permeates established media, such as print and television, and which in turn inflects public and political discourse. I maintain that the processes that create the hyperverse also render it immune to rupture from competing perspectives circulating in new or traditional media. Nevertheless, I cite popular movements, as described by Sasha Costanza-Chock, formed through communications technologies that connect and mobilize youth in opposition to hegemonic anti-immigrant ideologies. I conclude by proposing that new media technologies be viewed not merely as a vehicle that automatically privileges truth, but as tools for creating narratives that must be regarded with a critical approach. I conclude with a call to twenty-first century educators to develop new pedagogical methods to teach students to seek and analyze sources of online texts in order to become empowered consumers and producers of information.

L'adaptation au système de santé du pays d'accueil constitue une dimension importante du processus d'intégration des immigrants. Or, comme l'indiquent quelques recherches effectuées au Québec, les immigrants récents tendent à sous-utiliser les services de santé (Battaglini et al., 2007; Fortin et Le Gall, 2007; Le Gall et Cassan, 2010), d'où la nécessité d'étudier les trajectoires de soins de différentes communautés culturelles. Notre recherche exploratoire vise à comprendre comment les immigrants russophones de première génération installés à Montréal apprennent à connaître les services de santé au Québec et comment ils les utilisent. Dans une perspective interprétative et à travers le prisme de la communication interculturelle, nous conceptualisons les systèmes de santé comme systèmes culturels (Gratton, 2009), et les trajectoires de soins des immigrants comme processus d'acculturation (Abou 1986, 1988; Kim, 1978, 2005 ; Schnapper, 1986). Dix entrevues de type récit (pour décrire les expériences d'utilisation de services de santé au Québec) ont été réalisées avec dix membres de la communauté russophone de Montréal, suivis d'entretiens semi-dirigés (pour approfondir les thèmes émergeant des récits). Une analyse du contenu des entrevues a été effectuée par la codification et la catégorisation. Les résultats d'analyse appuient l'hypothèse selon laquelle l'utilisation des services de santé au Québec est façonnée par les expériences vécues dans le pays d'origine (Battaglini et al., 2007), et indiquent que les immigrants adoptent une « sorte de métissage des façons de faire d'ici et de là-bas pour répondre à leurs besoins en matière de santé » (Sévigny et Tremblay, 1999). L'étude a aussi permis de constater l'utilisation simultanée des services de santé au Québec et dans le pays d'origine, et la perspective de retour au pays d'origine pour se faire soigner a été identifiée comme élément important dans le processus de prise de décision concernant l'utilisation des services de santé au Québec. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : acculturation, communication interculturelle, services de santé, communauté russophone, Montréal

Le Québec possède une politique pluraliste en matière d'accueil et d'intégration des immigrants (MICC, 2012). En même temps, la persistance d'une dichotomisation « Nous-Eux », la pérennisation du sentiment de menace identitaire et la situation de l'intégration socioéconomique des immigrants viennent contredire le discours officiel du Québec. Mettre en lumière l'impact et les effets de cette contradiction sur la dynamique d'intégration des immigrants peut être l'occasion d'une prise de conscience et notamment un moyen de resserrer le tissu social et de favoriser le vivre ensemble. À caractère qualitatif, la présente recherche vise à décrire les contradictions perçues par les personnes immigrantes dans le discours de la société d'accueil par rapport à l'intégration et à mieux comprendre comment ces contradictions perçues inscrivent la relation immigrant/société-d'accueil dans un phénomène de double contrainte. La poursuite d'une meilleure compréhension de ces contradictions perçues nous conduira à une identification de certains de ses impacts majeurs quant à la construction identitaire immigrante, spécifiquement en ce qui a trait au sentiment d'appartenance et à la reconnaissance comme membre à part entière de la société. À cette fin, notre démarche de recherche marie des concepts et des méthodes d'analyse de différentes approches théoriques et méthodologiques. Nous mobilisons notamment les concepts de dynamique identitaire et de processus d'acculturation, de double contrainte ainsi que le concept et la méthode d'analyse des traces. Nous avons travaillé à partir de données collectées lors d'entretiens semi-structurés avec dix personnes immigrantes. Les thématiques explorées concernaient la perception de ces personnes au sujet de leur processus d'intégration et identitaires. L'analyse des thématiques abordées ainsi que les traces associées à la présence d'une double contrainte perçue par les personnes immigrantes quant à leur intégration et leur définition identitaire soutiennent l'hypothèse selon laquelle les personnes immigrantes au Québec sont placées dans une situation difficile assimilable à une double contrainte. Les injonctions contradictoires de cette double contrainte peuvent être libellées comme ceci : (1) « Intègre-toi » et (2) « Reste différent ». Dans cette situation, la personne immigrante ne peut pas répondre à l'une sans désobéir à l'autre dans la mesure même où la société d'accueil et les personnes immigrantes sont mutuellement engagées dans une relation de grande valeur, la double contrainte perçue place le récepteur dans une impasse identitaire. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : intégration, acculturation, double contrainte, immigrant, traces.

This thesis is an exploratory work into the migration and settlement experiences of highly skilled Turkish migrants who have settled in Canada. It is a qualitative study conducted with sixteen immigrant respondents living in Halifax and Toronto. The focus of this work is on the role of networks, specifically in shaping these migrants’ migration routes, developing belongings and reworking identities. While it is the feminist theory that informs this study, I use the intersectional theory as the theoretical framework. It has been found that the social class not only arose as a central factor that influenced these migrants’ experiences but it also affected the interplay between ethnicity and gender. The findings are analyzed with the help of current literature on globalization and international migration theories. The similarities and differences between the Halifax and Toronto respondents are also highlighted in order to inform provincial and national policies.

This research illuminates the gendered nature of immigration and business ownership in the Atlantic Canadian context. A feminist analysis of semi-structured interviews with 15 immigrant women entrepreneurs in Halifax, Nova Scotia, shows that immigrant women face many barriers to meaningful employment, but entrepreneurship in the food sector can facilitate substantive citizenship. The research explains why and how stores, restaurants, and farmers’ market stalls exist. The processes through which participants come to open their businesses and settle in Canada align with twentieth century anthropological understandings of rites of passage as developed by Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner. Liminality – a key element of every rite of passage – is found to be a time in which participants feel lost betweentheir old and new lives, so conclusions in this research advance policy and programming recommendations aimed at reducing the length of time immigrants’ feel like outsiders in Halifax and the business realm.

The health of children and immigrants has been paramount to the economics literature in recent years. A strong relationship between parents’ socioeconomic status and children’s health has been well established. The vast short- and long-term consequences of children’s health outcomes, like low birth weight, have been emphasized. Similarly, empirical studies have attributed considerable importance to immigrants’ health. The healthy immigrant effect (HIE), a phenomenon where immigrants are healthier upon arrival but their health diminishes through time, has been evidenced in Canada. However, the link between children’s health and the HIE has not been made. Using birth weight as a health measure, the intergenerational transmission of the HIE through social capital is examined. With the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth this study provides robust evidence of the perpetuation of the HIE. However, social capital does not appear to be a determinant of birth weight for immigrants’ children in Canada.

This study examined the academic achievement, academic self-concept, and academic motivation of 573 immigrant and non-immigrant adolescents in two public secondary schools in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Multivariate analyses revealed statistically significant differences between immigrant and non-immigrant adolescents with respect to their academic achievement, academic self-concept, and academic motivation. In addition, supplemental exploratory analyses indicated significant ethnic group differences in academic achievement, academic self-concept, and academic motivation. Surprisingly and importantly, analyses showed the absence of statistically significant gender differences among immigrant adolescents in terms of their academic achievement, academic self-concept, and academic motivation. Results from multiple linear regression analyses provided support for the Self-Description Questionnaire II as a measurement to be used with both immigrant and non-immigrant adolescents. In contrast, support for the Academic Motivation Scale, which is based on the Self-Determination Theory, was not adequately substantiated in the current research for either immigrants or non-immigrants. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2007-11-20 10:34:07.043

No description available.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal