Title: Immigrants' Cultural Identities as Sources of Civic Engagement
Abstract: Abstract Immigrant parents (first generation) and adolescents (second generation) from El Salvador and India (N = 80) took part in interviews on civic engagement. The immigrants were almost unanimous in regarding civic engagement as important. They also were engaged themselves, more so at the community than the political level. One third of immigrants were engaged in community activities that specifically had a cultural focus or occurred through cultural organizations, and the comparable number for political activities was 25%. Cultural motives (i.e., a cultural or immigrant sense of self) were twice as likely to be mentioned as sources of engagement rather than disengagement. Qualitative analyses of these cultural motives revealed seven engagement themes (e.g., cultural tradition of service) and three of disengagement (e.g., ethnic exclusion). I am profoundly grateful to the immigrant adolescents and parents who took time out of their busy lives to be part of this research. I also thank Renata Cerqueira, Michelle Diaz, Jeanne Felter, and Silvia Juarez for their research assistance, as well as Dean Hoge, Michael Foley, and James Youniss for encouragement of the project. Finally, I appreciate the support from The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE), The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Positive Psychology Pod Program, and The Research Council of Denmark. Notes 1The nature of the data was dyadic, consisting of adolescent–parent pairs. The present focus on behaviors and motives that specifically were cultural, however, entailed a reduction of the data set that rendered dyadic analyses impossible. Note: X 2 values are indicated for marital and occupation, and F values for education and income. ∗p < .05. ∗∗p < .001. ns = not significant. 2In accordance with grounded theory, "open coding" was followed by integration of categories (based on their properties and dimensions). This process is also referred to as the "constant comparative method" (Glaser & Strauss, Citation1967). Glaser and Strauss, the originators of grounded theory, parted company on whether various techniques are necessary or even desirable for an approach to be considered grounded theory, including the use of data collected at one point in time (Glaser, Citation1992; Strauss & Corbin, Citation1990). 3A further breakdown of the participants whose activities were cultural into age and/or cultural immigrant groups will not be provided, as the samples would be too small to be meaningful. Note: No participants held that it was not important for other people to be engaged at the community level, and hence no one provided reasons to explain this position. 4Here again a further breakdown of the participants into age and/or cultural immigrant groups would not be meaningful.
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-04-11
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 93
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot