Immigrant small business (ISB) in Sweden has brought much attention to some researchers in the past decade. However, most of ISB researchers in Sweden are dealing with immigrants as a whole group rather than study them separately by regions or countries. It is hard to know the specific characteristics of ISB with different ethnic background. In this paper, I study one ethnic group, Chinese immigrant’s, small business by case study approach, to answer the research questions: reasons of self-employment, factors of influencing start-ups and business growth. According to empirical findings, prosperity achieving, career changing, and migration are the three main reasons of self-employment; network and local language skill are the two key factors influencing Chinese ISB start-ups; good market opportunities, higher industry rivalry, shortage of successor, and lack of development ambition are the four factors influencing business growth. With the empirical findings, I examine the previous influential ISB theories, which include minorities theory, ethnic enclave economy, and mixed embeddedness. I find ethnic enclave and mixed embeddedness theories can explain some of empirical findings, but not all of them, which means Chinese ISB in Sweden has specific characteristics which need further investigation.

Few studies have quantified the effects on academic performance; none has investigated, as this study does, the effects of immigration, home language, and school mobility on academic development over time. What makes this study unique is its melding of sociological and psychometric perspectives – an approach that is still quite new. Logistic regression was used to analyze data from Ontario’s 2007-2008 Junior (Grade 6) Assessment of Reading, Writing and Mathematics, with linked assessment results from three years earlier, to investigate students’ academic achievement. The focus of this study is on whether the students maintained proficiency between Grades 3 and 6 or achieved proficiency in Grade 6 if they were not proficient in Grade 3. The results indicate that Grade 3 proficiency is the strongest predictor of Grade 6 proficiency and that home language or interactions with home language are also significant in most cases. In addition, students who speak a language other than or in addition to English at home are, in general, a little more likely to be proficient at Grade 6. Most students who were born outside of Canada were significantly more likely than students born in Canada to stay or become proficient in Reading, Writing, and Mathematics by Grade 6. These results highlight the importance of considering the enormous heterogeneity of immigrants’ experiences when studying the effects of immigration on academic performance.

This thesis explores the notion of identity dilemma and its visualisation in the context of New Zealand Chinese immigration. It focuses on interpreting and visualising New Zealand Chinese immigrants’ thoughts and feelings and their struggle to adapt to the environment as well as their ambivalent negotiation to balance their in-between identity of being a New Zealander (Westerner) and Chinese. It is a practice-based project and is presented by means of photography, with illustration as the supporting medium. The predicament of identity is explored through interviewing members of the New Zealand Chinese community. A semi-constructed interview is designed and introduced to canvass 20 Chinese participants’ opinions of their cultural beliefs and sense of belonging in a Western society. The data is collected and analysed to investigate the informants’ thoughts and feelings in their daily routine in a multicultural community. I, as an art and design practitioner, visually interpret and transcend my opinion of identity dilemma of Chinese immigrants into my practical works. The participants’ thoughts and feelings are transferred into my artwork through creating patterns of visual elements. Employing a heuristic visual research method, my explorative work attempts to transfer social research findings of the idea of identity dilemma into my artwork for initiating contemporary visual discourse.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-99). Also available in print.

Globalization has affected nearly all aspects of life as people gain mobility to cross national borders and live in different countries. Along with the other developed countries, Sweden has become a popular destination for immigration contributing to the phenomenon of immigrant entrepreneurship. Naturally, these type of entrepreneurs are exceedingly susceptible to various factors that impact business development. This thesis will investigate the obstacles that immigrant entrepreneurs face in the pursuit to establish and operate a successful business. Additionally, an examination into the incentivising schemes that are available to benefit and encourage immigrants to implement entrepreneurial activity. Besides, the thesis aims to identify how the business supporting organizations may facilitate illumination of the most significant constraints for implementation of entrepreneurial activity among immigrants. The research is conducted by using qualitative method based on four cases and unstructured interviews of representatives of business organizations. The results were analysed by comparing the cases between each other and extrapolation with the theoretical framework. The outcome of this thesis suggest that the primary driving forces for immigrant entrepreneurship in Sweden referred to discovery and exploration of business opportunity as well as to the factors that necessitate the immigrants to establish a new business venture. However, it is suggested that the necessity alone cannot be the decisive factor if the prospective entrepreneur fails to explore business opportunity. The primary constraints for immigrant entrepreneurship involve the internal and external barriers that may refer to the social and human capital as well as the access to the resources necessary for the implementation of entrepreneurial activity. Finally, it has been found that the entrepreneur supporting organization can significantly facilitate the entrepreneurship among immigrants through granting an excess to unique information, advice and support of the foreign-born entrepreneurs that may partially illuminate the most crucial barriers.

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Abstract The difference in educators’ and immigrant parents’ definition of parent involvement has led to the view that immigrant parents are less involved in their children’s education than native parents from the middle class (Crozier & Davies, 2005). The purpose of this study was to understand the experience of three immigrant parents born in Africa and the Caribbean with parent involvement in their children’s education at the elementary level. This phenomenological study utilized semi-structured interviews to gain a better understanding of the various ways in which immigrant parents are involved in their children’s education, and the factors that influenced how they became involved. The findings revealed that the essence of the parents’ experience of involvement in their children’s education was maintaining nurturing relationships. Participants guided their children into a relationship with God, they cultivated a loving relationship with their children, and had a cooperative relationship with their children’s school. The parents’ experience is explored using the themes spiritual leadership, creating and nurturing relationships, and anticipatory socialization. The description of the parents’ experiences provides some insight into how immigrant parents view and enact their role in their children’s education. The study also highlights how different cultural beliefs influence the ways in which parents contributed to their children’s development. The parents were already making contributions in a variety of ways to their children’s education. However, for the most part their activities were home-based and geared towards only their own children. There were opportunities for the parent to become more involved in ways that would extend to other members of the school community. The implications of this study for practice are that educators should give an orientation to parents new to Canada about strategies they can use to incorporate school based involvement activities into their busy schedules. This will suggest ideas that parents may not have considered and could be effective in increasing their involvement on the school compound. Implications for future research include the need to investigate how culture delimits the ways in which parents become involved. There is also a need to explore what factors would motivate immigrant parents to become more involved in their children’s education on the school site.

Le nombre d'élèves immigrants dans les écoles secondaires au Québec est croissant. L'école joue un rôle important dans l'acclimatation de ces jeunes, car elle représente le lieu où ils seront le plus exposés au contact avec la société d'accueil. La présente recherche de maîtrise avait pour but de dégager les postures du gouvernement québécois et du milieu universitaire concernant l'acculturation des immigrants fréquentant les écoles secondaires, au niveau de la province de Québec et, plus spécifiquement, de la ville de Sherbrooke. Les résultats indiquent une orientation d'intégration du côté gouvernemental, même si quelques traits assimilationnistes sont visibles. Les documents scientifiques communiquent une orientation d'individualisme. Les deux types de document [i.e. documents] considèrent que la socialisation est le rôle principal de l'école auprès de l'élève immigrant, ce qui les conduirait vers une intégration réussie. Toutefois, les définitions de ce que sont la socialisation et l'intégration pour l'ensemble du corpus restent absentes ou contradictoires.

The family reunification provision in U.S. immigration laws allows foreign-born children of immigrants to enter the U.S. and attend American schools. The total number of school years completed by immigrant children, however, is affected by their age at arrival. Age at arrival also affects the percentage of schooling that is attained in the U.S. This implies that immigrants with more U.S. schooling will earn more than other immigrants, holding total education constant, as long as the returns to U.S. schooling are greater than the returns to foreign schooling. Using data from the 1980 and 1990 Census, I find a negative relationship between age at arrival and education for Mexican, European and Pacific Islander and other immigrants that arrive shortly after the start of the first grade. Mexican immigrants as a whole, however, lose tile greatest amount of education from delayed entry. Estimates of the returns to American schooling indicate that those with at least a high school diploma benefit from additional years in U.S. schools. However, the added tax revenue from the increased earnings is not always greater than the cost of additional years of American schooling. Only for Mexican immigrants is it the case that the tax revenues outweigh the fiscal costs of more American education.

Bakgrund: Varje år flyr ett stort antal människor i världen från sina hemländer. Flyktingströmmen påverkar sjuksköterskan då de ställs inför många utmaningar där kommunikation kan bli ett problem. Immigranter, som innefattar asylsökande och papperslösa,  har inte samma rättigheter inom vården som landets övriga invånare. Det leder till svåra ställningstagande för sjuksköterskan i arbetet.   Syfte:  Syftet med studien är att belysa sjuksköterskans upplevelse i möte med immigranter i vården.                                                                                Resultat: Många sjuksköterskor känner sig osäkra i mötet med immigranter i vården. Språkproblematik, främmande kulturer och normer samt okunskap bidrar till osäkerheten. Kunskap gällande vilka rättigheter som finns för immigranter har visat sig vara otillräcklig hos många sjuksköterskor.                                 Slutsats: Kunskap om immigrantens rättigheter, kulturella skillnader och olika normer behöver spridas. Sjuksköterskor kommer möta patienter från andra kulturer och för att uppnå en god och jämlik vård behöver sjuksköterskan känna sig i trygg i mötet.