Synopses & Reviews
In this book, an international team of psychologists with interests in acculturation, identity, and development describe the experience and adaptation of immigrant youth, using data from over 7,000 immigrant youth from diverse cultural backgrounds living in 13 countries of settlement. Immigrant Youth in Cultural Transition explores the way in which immigrant adolescents carry out their lives at the intersection of two cultures (those of their heritage group and the national society), and how well these youth are adapting to their intercultural experience.
Four distinct patterns are followed by youth during their acculturation:
*an integration pattern, in which youth orient themselves to, and identify with both cultures;
*an ethnic pattern, in which youth are oriented mainly to their own group;
*a national pattern, in which youth look primarily to the national society; and
*a diffuse pattern, in which youth are uncertain and confused about how to live interculturally.
The study shows the variation in both the psychological adaptation and the sociocultural adaptation among youth, with most adapting well.
This book is useful for professionals, researchers, graduate students, and public policy makers who have an interest in psychology, anthropology, sociology, demography, education, and psychiatry. It is also a valuable resource for public, governmental, and university libraries.
About the Author
John W. Berry, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Queen's University, Canada. He obtained his B.A. at Sir George Williams University (Montreal), his Ph.D. at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland). He has received Honorary Doctorates from the University of Athens, and Universite de Geneve, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Academy for Intercultural Research. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association, and of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology. He has published over 30 books in the areas of cross-cultural, social, and cognitive psychology, including co-authoring the textbook,
Cross-Cultural Psychology: Research and Applications, [Cambridge University Press, 2002], and co-editing the three-volume
Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology [Allyn & Bacon, 1997]. His main research interests are in the areas of acculturation and intercultural relations, with an emphasis on applications to immigration, educational and health policy.
Jean Phinney is a Professor of Psychology at California State University, Los Angeles. She received her B.A. from Wellesley College and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. For the past twenty years she has been studying ethnic identity, acculturation, and psychological well-being among adolescents and emerging adults from diverse ethnic and immigrant backgrounds in southern California. She has been consistently supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health. She has published extensively on ethnic and cultural issues, and her measure of ethnic identity, the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure, is widely used in research. Current research interests include a longitudinal study of factors that predict positive academic outcomes of ethnic minority and immigrant first generation college students.
David L. Sam, Ph.D. is professor of cross-cultural psychology at the University of Bergen, Norway, where he divides this position between the Schools of Psychology and Medicine. He teaches courses in developmental psychology, cross-cultural psychology and medical anthropology. His research interests include psychology of acculturation, and the role of culture in health and human development. He has published extensively on young immigrants’ adaptation. He is a co-editor of the Cambridge Handbook of Acculturation Psychology (2006). Sam’s interest in acculturation comes from his background as a migrant from Ghana—first as a foreign student, and now as a settled immigrant.
Paul Vedder, Ph.D. is professor of Cultural Diversity and Learning in the Department of Education at Leiden University. He obtained his Ph.D. in social and behavioral sciences from Groningen University in the Netherlands in 1985. His research focuses on cooperative learning, social competence, multilingualism, and interethnic relationships. Recent publications include a study on student motivation and the quality of cooperative learning in an ethnically diverse school population (together with Hijzen and Boekaerts, 2006), articles on contextual influences on immigrant adolescents’ acculturation and adaptation, and on ethnocultural variation in the availability of social support in schools (with Boekaerts and Seegers, 2005).
Table of Contents
Contents: K. Phalet, Foreword. Preface.
J.W. Berry, J.S. Phinney, K. Kwak, D.L. Sam, Introduction: Goals and Research Framework for Studying Immigrant Youth.
J.W. Berry, C. Westin, E. Virta, P. Vedder, R. Rooney, D. Sang, Design of the Study: Selecting Societies of Settlement and Immigrant Groups.
P. Vedder, F.J.R. van de Vijver, Methodological Aspects: Studying Adolescents in 13 Countries.
J.S. Phinney, J.W. Berry, P. Vedder, K. Liebkind, The Acculturation Experience: Attitudes, Identities, and Behaviors of Immigrant Youth.
D.L. Sam, P. Vedder, C. Ward, G. Horenczyk, Psychological and Sociocultural Adaptation of Immigrant Youth.
P. Vedder, F.J.R. van de Vijver, K. Liebkind, Predicting Immigrant Youth's Adaptation Across Countries and Ethnocultural Groups.
J.S. Phinney, P. Vedder, Family Relationship Values of Adolescents and Parents: Intergenerational Discrepancies and Adaptation.
P. Vedder, D.L. Sam, F.J.R. van de Vijver, J.S. Phinney, Vietnamese and Turkish Immigrant Youth: Acculturation and Adaptation in Two Ethnocultural Groups.
J.S. Phinney, J.W. Berry, D.L. Sam, P. Vedder, Understanding Immigrant Youth: Conclusions and Implications. Appendices.