Research Poster

2013

A lack of research exists examining Mexican American emerging adulthood experiences. This present study attempts to address the influences of acculturation and familism on emerging adulthood. Five hypotheses are presented comparing the Mexican American group and the non-Mexican American group across overall emerging adulthood experiences, cultural generation level and acculturation. Participants completed the Attitudinal Familism Scale for Latinos, Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans-II (ARSMA-II) and the Inventory of the Dimensions of Emerging Adulthood (IDEA). A series of t-tests, multiple regressions, and factor analysis were completed to examine the relationship and significance between the above variables. Results are indicated in the thesis.

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2010

Utilizing part of the survey data collected for a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded project from 29 public elementary schools in Phoenix, Arizona (N = 1,600), this study explored the underlying structure of Mexican-heritage youths' ethnic identity and cultural/linguistic orientation. Latent profile and transition analyses identified four distinct orientation profiles endorsed by the early adolescents and their developmental trends across four time points. Most Mexican and Mexican American adolescents endorsed bicultural profiles with developmental trends characterized by widespread stasis and transitions toward greater ethnic identity exploration. Multinominal logistic regression analyses revealed associations between profile endorsement and adolescents' gender, socioeconomic status, parents' birthplace, and visits outside the United States. These findings are discussed in regard to previous findings on acculturation and ethnic identity development. Individuals' adaptation to the immediate local environment is noted as a possible cause of prevalent biculturalism. Limitations and future directions for the research on ethnic identity development and acculturation are also discussed.

Social Science Research, 2011

This study applies advanced conceptualization and measurement to an analysis of acculturation among 1,632 Mexican-heritage preadolescents. We assessed whether -and how -multiple measures combine to form a latent acculturation construct that groups individuals into classes; and determine how many and what classes (or types) of acculturation are experienced by this sample of 5 th graders. Measures included attitudinal, behavioral, and linguistic acculturation, generation status, time in the U.S., ethnic identification, and contact with the culture of origin. The analysis identified five classes of acculturation, differing in size and characterized by specific measures of acculturation: less acculturated, moderately bicultural, strongly bicultural, highly acculturated, and marginalized. Although most youths fell into the first four classes, consonant with their exposure to American society, a small minority of youths fell into the last class. Despite substantial exposure to U.S. culture and recent exposure to Mexican culture, these youth showed little affinity for either culture.

2014

This paper addresses the effect of social identity among Mexican immigrant toward their slow assimilation in the United States. I argue that the social identity building among the immigrants, has influence the development of assimilation process in the society. Mexican different culture and language indeed become the other factor why their behavior is not easy to blend with natives America.

In 1992, boxes of questionnaires used in a mid-1960s household survey of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles and San Antonio were accidentally discovered by construction workers at UCLA. Those files would form the basis for a unique follow-up study, entailing a multiyear detective effort to locate and reinterview the original respondents who had been surveyed three decades before, and now also a sample of their grown children. The analyses follow an intergenerational longitudinal design: the original respondents were first, second, or third generation adults; their children were second, third, or fourth generations. The parents had gone to school between the 1930s and 1950s, the children between the 1950s and 1980s. The book poses a key question: are social (ethnic and racial) boundaries between Mexican Americans and other groups, especially dominant Anglos, enhanced or eroded over time and generation-since-immigration? Mexican immigrants see themselves as different: they speak Spanish, live in segregated barrios, have distinct political views. But for their descendants, what happens to those ethnic boundaries? Do they persist, blur, or disappear? In sharp contrast to assumptions of linear progress underlying conventional assimilation perspectives, the authors find that educational attainment peaks among second-generation children of immigrants, but declines for the third and fourth generations (the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of immigrants). Similarly, economic progress halts by the second generation — education was the only variable to consistently explain variation in the socioeconomic status of Mexican Americans. Poverty rates remained high for later generations. On the other hand, evidence of acculturation was strong on several indicators, above all language, with English spoken well by the second generation and Spanish becoming nearly extinct after the fourth. Despite the decline of Spanish, ethnic identification persists into the fourth generation, with the lion’s share of respondents preferring Mexican, Mexican American and Hispanic identity labels over American — an outcome that the authors attribute in part to “racialization experiences.” The authors identify institutional barriers as a major source of Mexican American disadvantage. Poorly funded school systems where Mexican American children are concentrated, punitive immigration policies coincident with reliance on cheap Mexican labor in key states, and persistent discrimination all combine to make integration problematic. In these respects, the Mexican American trajectory differs from that of European immigrants in previous generations.

Michigan Journal of Counseling: Research, Theory, and Practice, 2002

The extent to which acculturation and generational status affect the ethnocultural and psychosocial adaptation of Mexican-American adolescents was investigated. Participants were classified into acculturation and generational status levels from scores on the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican-Americans-Revised (ARSMA-II) and the dependent variable was measured using the Psychosocial Adaptation for Cultural and Contextual Correspondence-Research Version (PACCC-RV). Mexican-American adolescents with lower acculturation levels and more recent residence in the United States perceived they were ethnoculturally different from others in their environment especially in regards to communication difficulties. Similar to previous studies, acculturation and generational status appear to be measuring similar dimensions.

1971

2013

In 1997, when we first met while independently conducting field work in Whitfield County, Georgia, and its county seat, Dalton, we heard from local principals and teachers that Latino students sometimes "disappeared" from the schools. Most of these who disappeared were immigrant students from Mexico and other Central American countries, students who had arrived suddenly in local schools while accompanying their parents who found jobs in the carpet and poultry mills of the area (Hamann, 2003; Hernández-León & Zúñiga, 2000; Zúñiga & Hernández-León, 2009). The "disappearances" led one of us (Hamann, 2001) to develop a concept-the sojourner student-and draw from it various pedagogical/political conclusions. Using a few empirical facts-like the reported "disappearances" and survey results showing that about a quarter of Mexican newcomer parents were not confident that they would still be living in northwestern Georgia 3 years hence-but mainly conjecturing from a range of literature on transnational migration, Hamann hypothesized that, akin to the presence of students in the United States with prior Mexican school experience, there might be students in Mexican schools with prior U.S. school

2011

Studies of Mexican American integration have come to a methodological and theoretical impasse. Conventional investigations have provided limited insight as they are outsider-based perspectives examining native-born minorities within the context of the immigrant experience and race-cycle paradigms. Grounded in cultural ideologies and nationalist narratives, dominant descriptions of minorities have created a conceptual strait that circumscribes the discourse of assimilationists" models of integration. Moreover, studies of marginal groups produce negative consequences by highlighting cultural differences that tautologically reinforce the grounds for exclusion. Little grounded work has been conducted specifically looking at racialized native-born minorities and the dynamics of their generational process of integration. Through embedded ethnography and participant narratives, this research provides direct insight into processes of contemporary integration and the social structural accommodation of native-born Mexican Americans. As a means of sidestepping conceptual barriers, this iv discussion theoretically frames the integration of Mexican American professionals within the context of modernity and liberal human development. By responding to the above critiques, this paper presents an alternative approach to the analysis and explanation of the roots of race-cycle paradigms in the first section. The second section establishes the context for the research and explains the basis for the dissertation"s structure and conceptual arguments. As a means of moving the discourse away from established models, the third section provides a critical overview of the classical and contemporary literature on minority integration through a process of textual deconstruction. In addition, the third section also constructs a theoretical dynamic between structural determinations and individual adaptations to modernity that promotes integration. The fourth section describes the non-traditional method of data collection that provides direct insight into the processes of native-born minority cultural and structural incorporation. Through participant voices, the fifth section describes how individual interactions and institutional forces are shaping the social place that Mexican American professionals have created on the borderlands of American culture and society. What the interpretive findings suggest in the last section is that Mexican American professionals are constructing and redefining their own social and cultural place out of the elements that modern society provides and not as the race-cycle theory predicts. v

L'Europa tra Keynes e von Hayek L'avventura europea inizia con la firma del Trattato istitutivo della Comunità economica europea (Cee), con il quale venne creato un mercato comune, fondato cioè sulla libera circolazione delle merci, dei servizi, delle persone e dei capitali (1957). Questo ha