The overarching objective of the thesis was to better understand how second generation (G2) East and Southeast Asian emerging adult immigrants make sense of their bicultural identity integration (BII), and in turn experience well-being. Moreover, a domain-specific approach was adopted with the premise that an individual could experience a great deal of well-being in one context (e.g., at home) while encountering significant difficulties in adjustment in another (e.g., in the public sphere). To achieve this, two studies were completed as part of the thesis. In the first study, we focused on family domain adjustment and well-being. In particular, we were interested how parental autonomy support (proxy for individualism) and family allocentrism (proxy for collectivism) were related to participants’ parent-child relationship satisfaction, parent-child relationship conflict, and family-domain subjective well-being. We were also interested in how BII may explain the above relationships through mediation pathways. In the second study, the focus shifted towards community-domain adjustment. Research questions were formulated around the relationships between cultural socialization (independent variable [IV] 1), experiences with microaggressions (IV 2), and sense of belonging to heritage cultural community (dependent variable [DV] 1) and mainstream Canadian community (DV 2). Again, BII was included in the model to determine its ability to explain the above pathways. The results from study 1 revealed that parental autonomy support was positively related to family domain-specific well-being for all participants. Family allocentrism was linked with parent-child relationship satisfaction, but only for participants who had moved away from parents. BII appeared to partially explain the relationship between family allocentrism and parent-child conflict. The results from study 2 revealed that co-ethnic peer cultural socialization towards East and Southeast Asian culture had a positive relationship with participants’ sense of belonging to their heritage community. Meanwhile, parental and Euro-Canadian peer cultural socialization towards Canadian culture had positive relationships with participants’ sense of belonging to the dominant Canadian community. Not surprisingly, microaggressions were negatively linked with participants’ sense of belonging to heritage and Canadian communities. The results from the mediation model again suggested that BII was able to partially explain the link between microaggressions and sense of belonging to heritage and dominant communities. Moreover, BII also appeared to be able to explain some of the relationships between cultural socialization and participants’ sense of belonging. Taken together, the findings from the two studies shed light on how BII may subtly influence well-being differently across the home and community spheres, reinforcing the need to look at BII from a situated approach. Implications for clinicians on how to best support G2 East and Southeast Asian emerging adult immigrants navigating their bicultural identity and experience well-being are discussed.

Guided by the framework of bicultural identity integration (BII), a conceptual model depicting the direct and indirect effects of BII, cognitive flexibility, affect regulation, and coping on psychological wellbeing indicators (i.e., life satisfaction, depression) of adult children of immigrants (ACI) in the U.S. was developed. It was hypothesized that greater BII would contribute to greater cognitive flexibility and affect regulation, which would be associated with more utilization of adaptive coping strategies and greater psychological wellbeing. A total of 240 young ACI from across the U.S. completed the online research questionnaire that measured all variables of interest. Results from structural equation modeling analyses showed adequate model fit with the data. Findings provided support to the indirect effects of BII factors on wellbeing through affect regulation, however, the indirect effect paths are more complicated than what were hypothesized originally. Specifically, higher levels of identity harmony and identity blendedness contributed to more difficulties in emotion regulation, and subsequently, poorer wellbeing. Additionally, both cultural identity harmony and identity blendedness contributed to greater levels of cultural and relational maintenance strategies (i.e., avoidance, forbearance) in the context of intergenerational conflict through affect regulation, but not through cognitive flexibility. Notably, the latent variable of cultural coping strategies retained in the final model was not correlated with wellbeing. Findings are discussed from the BII framework and the sociological context of ACI in the U.S. Limitations, future directions, and implications for counseling, diversity, and advocacy issues are outlined.

Att veta vem man är i en värld fylld av normer och regler kan vara en kamp för många. Vad identitet betyder beror på vem som tillfråggas vilket även skiner ljus på den komplexitet som existerar kring detta ämne. Denna undersökning utfördes i syftet att komma närmare upplevelsen av identitetsskapande hos unga svenskfödda individer med utländsk bakgrund. Åtta intervjuer genomfördes med unga individer mellan 20-24 år. En tematisk analys gav fyra teman som visade att upplevelsen av identitetsskapande hos unga svenskfödda individer med bikulturell identitet differentierar och att det finns både för- och nackdelar. I de svårigheter som representerades förekom även en positiv upplevelse av stolthet, och i de möjligheter som representerades förekom även en synlig kamp. Resultatet tydde på att bikulturella individer behöver känna sig accepterade och få synas som en individ utöver den bikulturella identiteten.

abstract: A preliminary critical ethnographic study was conducted to garner Punjabi Sikh U.S. young adults’ understandings and experiences with their cultural, religious, gender, and sexual identity development. Nine participants from King County, Washington were interviewed and engaged in a weeklong self-reflective journal writing activity. This data was then analyzed alongside existing scholarship. This study indicates that participants experience challenges in navigating their bicultural identity, grappling with the historical and present trauma their communities endure. Additionally, to navigate such challenges, Punjabi Sikh U.S. young adults invoke various methods to negotiate their various cultures, identities, and desires, and remain resilient. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Justice Studies 2019

College students are at an increased risk for suicide. The federal government has gone to great lengths to try to implement suicide prevention programs, but few studies have been done to design, implement and assess the effectiveness of the programs. Latinas are at an especially high risk for suicide, and research suggests that interpersonal conflict is a potential risk factor for Latinas' suicidal behavior. Thwarted belongingness, as stated in Joiner’s Interpersonal Theory of Suicide, may be a possible explanation for the higher rates due to the importance placed on interpersonal relationships based on Latino cultural values. Bicultural identity has been linked to better psychological adjustment and possibly well-being, so it will be assessed as well. The proposed study will have Latina college students (N=783) participate in group sessions that allow for the processing of interpersonal problems and learning communication skills to resolve conflicts. They will be asked to fill out measures of belonging, bicultural identity and general well-being. Measures of general well-being will be used as a proxy for suicidal behavior. It is predicted that participant scores of belonging and their well-being will increase following participation. Scores of belonging and well-being are expected to have an inverse linear relationship. Participants’ scores of bicultural identity and belonging will be strong significant predictors of participants’ score of bicultural identity and belonging will predict increases in participants' well-being. Limitations and future research are also discussed.

While several studies examining African Americans' mental health rates appeared in the past, existing research does not describe internal and external factor influences on positive ethnic identity development and their mediating effects on mental health help-seeking attitudes for this population. This quantitative study used structural equation modeling to examine the relationships between 3 ecological levels (the individual level/level of bicultural identity, the family level/family ethnic socialization, and the social context level/self-concealment) and examine their collective influence on ethnic identity development and mental health help-seeking attitudes of African Americans. The choice of variables for this study was grounded in Stokols' social ecological theory, Lewin's theory of psychological fields, and Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems that outline human development. Results were measured by responses to surveys from 161 African American males and females residing within the Atlanta, Georgia area. The family and social level were more predictive of ethnic identity development and ethnic identity positively and negatively, respectively, related to bicultural self-efficacy. Having the ability to communicate in both mainstream and ethnic cultures was directly predictive of positive attitudes toward seeking professional help. The social change implications of this study included gaining insight into African Americans' difficulty with developing positive ethnic identity and mental health help-seeking, providing professional clinicians with a model of the process of ethnic identity and mental health help-seeking attitude development, and improved advancement in training and cultural-based interventions for clinicians specifically working with minority populations.

Traditional studies of ethnic relations focus on racialization between Whites and Blacks, or ethnic stratification between Whites and people of color. The increasingly integrated world has ensured continued movements of humans and goods and the inevitable contacts between people of different cultural background. This dissertation aims at broadening conventional studies of interethnic relations to examine racial attitudes among people who have internalized more than one culture -- i.e. the biculturals and multiculturals. Social psychological research suggests that bicultural individuals are capable of switching between two cultural meaning frames depending on contextual demands. Bicultural individuals vary in how well they integrate the two cultural identities internalized in them -- i.e., their bicultural identity integration levels (BII levels). Their BII levels lead to either culturally congruent or culturally incongruent behaviors among bicultural individuals. The underlying assumption of linguistic intergroup bias indicates that people tend to describe more abstractly observed positive ingroup behaviors and negative outgroup behaviors and describe more concretely observed negative ingroup behaviors and positive outgroup behaviors. In this study, bicultural Asian American participants are hypothesized to use language of either higher or lower abstraction to describe actions of positive and negative valence performed by either ethnic Asians or European Americans depending on the cultural priming they received and their BII levels. The study results point out the perceived ingroup/outgroup orientation of the bicultural participants towards their coethnics and people of the mainstream culture. Effects of the cultural priming and impact of BII levels are also discussed. / text

This application is for the U.S. Department of Education’s Education Innovation and Research Program to secure funding for a market analysis to gauge the interest of Portland, Oregon parents for opening a two-way immersion (TWI) Romanian-American bilingual public charter school. Initial conversations with members of the Romanian community in the Portland area indicate that such interest may exist. A formal survey of that community has not yet been conducted to firmly establish the potential market for such a school. Moreover, there is evidence to document that such an educational option could increase the academic achievement of English Language Learners from Underrepresented Languages (ELL-UL). Some English Language Learners (ELL) face great academic challenges in today’s public educational system which may be masked within the larger ELL population. First generation Romanian children, as ELL students, are represented across the Portland metropolitan area. Although their presence is pervasive, they constitute only a small proportion of all students (2.4 percent of all students in one district). Because of the low incidence of Romanian students, and the fact they are enrolled in schools across a broad geographical area, practical barriers prohibit their participation in bilingual education programs compared to students from well-represented cultures and languages (e.g., Spanish). This project will conduct a market analysis to gauge the Portland Romanian community’s interest in opening a bilingual two-way immersion (TWI) public charter school, embracing both the Romanian culture and language. By documenting this interest, a clear direction and structure for such a school will be established, which should foster the academic success for children of Romanian heritage.

This practice led research explores the possibility of cultural dislocation intrinsic to my glass art practice. The research on cultural dislocation is explored through both my practice and viewers’ interaction with the major works created during the investigation. The development of Korean glass art in the late 1980s provides an important example of the influence of a universalised culture in the course of adopting, adapting, and assimilating it, and why the artistic medium of glass is still perceived as ‘foreign’ by some artists and viewers in Korea. The artistic aim in creating a vase form, by combining porcelain and glass, is deeply inspired by the history of the materials in Western and Eastern cultures, including the history of European (or Western) imperialism and the influence of the colonial legacy on the development of glass art in Korea. By creating a formal visual vocabulary that informs the possibility of expressing the cultural ambiguity of the material, the resulting artworks were made to deliberately not fit into either Korean or British visual culture. Instead the works were created to fit into a pseudo Korean-British or British-Korean image intended to challenge the individual’s projected expectation of another culture (derived from cultural stereotypes). This research addresses the possibility of highlighting the individual’s cultural stereotypes, cultural relocation and bicultural identity in art. Applying the results related to these findings to the ‘aesthetics of the cultural uncanny’ present in my creative practice, the research was directed by the following research aims: - To extend the discourse about the uncanny to my artistic approaches by identifying what the exotic implies for individuals, both in Britain and Korea. - To develop the use of the experience of the uncanny as an expressive tool within my own creative practice through the medium of glass introducing an unexpected juxtaposition by combining English manufactured porcelain elements. - To develop an artistic language with respect to cultural stereotypes within contemporary glass art by analysing individuals’ engagement with my artwork.

Many cross-cultural advertising studies in the last decade focus on matching the advertising messages to consumers’ self-concepts. Despite the cultural differences in self-concept, research on self-concept still has some limitations given the lack understanding of the dialectical thinking style. Dialectical thinking represents one’s perception of conflicted information. To develop the understanding of dialectical thinking in predicting the persuasiveness of advertising messages, this research uses arguments proposed in the literature and validates the importance of dialectical thinking in predicting advertising appeals’ persuasiveness for East Asian bicultural consumers. In addition to dialectical thinking, Benet-Martinez et al. (2002) proposed the concept of Bicultural Identity Integration (BII) to group biculturals into high Bicultural Identity Integration individuals and low Bicultural Identity Integration individuals. Lau-Gesk (2003)’s work claimed that Chinese Americans who perceive Chinese and American cultures are compatible (high Bicultural Identity Integration) tend to favour ads appeals that emphasizing on both cultural values. Whereas, those individuals who perceive the two cultures are contradicted and compartmentalised tend to favour ads appeals that emphasizing on only one cultural value. This research aims to examine the role of product type in moderating the relationship between Bicultural Identity Integration and the persuasiveness of dual-focused advertising appeals. Building upon marketing and psychology literature, the aim of this research is to extend our understanding of impacts of dialectical thinking and Bicultural Identity Integration (BII) on the persuasiveness of dual-focused advertising appeals. This research adopts both qualitative and quantitative techniques to examine the research questions. Firstly, 10 in-depth interviews with Chinese participants from The University of Manchester were conducted to understand the predictors of dialectical thinking. To examine the impacts of dialectical thinking and Bicultural Identity Integration on the persuasiveness of dual-focused advertising appeals, 161 participants were recruited in Experiment 1 and 164 participants were recruited in Experiment 2. The findings suggest that individuals’ perspective-taking and flexibility and openness capabilities tend to predict one’s degree of dialecticism. In Experiment 1, the results showed that dialectical thinking only explains the attitudinal differences among the immigration-based Chinese bicultural group when shared products were promoted. The differences in attitudes among high and low dialectical globalisation-based Chinese biculturals were not significant when either shared or personal products were promoted. Bicultural Identity Integration explains the attitudinal differences within both immigration-based and globalisation-based bicultural groups when shared products were promoted. Experiment 2 results suggested that language cues tend to have a priming effect on immigration-based Chinese biculturals’ degrees of dialecticism. They have shown higher degree of dialecticism when advertising appeals were written in Chinese and are less likely to favour dual-focused advertising appeals; participants also reported lower degree of dialecticism when advertising appeals were written in English and favour dual-focused advertising appeals. However, such priming effects were not significant within the globalisation-based Chinese bicultural group.