Generational Juggling Acts in Midlife Families: Gendered and Ethnocultural Intersections

This study draws upon a sociocultural stress and coping perspective to examine generational demands in midlife families. It examines both the predictors and family-related circumstances that contribute to perceptions of greater demand, with a focus on gendered and ethnocultural dimensions. Using mixed-methods, data are based on a sample of 236 parents collected in 2006/2007 from four cultural groups: British-, Chinese-, Southern European-, and South Asian Canadian. Key findings reveal that caregiving experiences remain highly gendered and are mediated by ethnocultural background and other work/family contextual characteristics. Recommendations for those who work directly with culturally diverse “sandwiched” generation families are highlighted.     

Mixed-Status Families and Immigration Interior Enforcement Policies: Effects on Clinical Practice and the Intraethnic Therapeutic Dyad

ABSTRACT

This article explores the sociopolitical and intersubjective enactments that unfolded when working with a mixed-status immigrant family facing parental deportation. Through the integration of a sociopolitical and intersubjective conceptualization, dynamics pertaining to inclusion, exclusion, domination, and subjugation are examined. The psychological exploration of the clinical treatment is guided by Altman’s (2010 Altman, N. (2010). The analyst in the inner city: Race, class and culture through a psychoanalytic lens (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. [Google Scholar]) three-person psychology and Stolorow’s (1991 Stolorow, R. D. (1991). The intersubjective context of intrapsychic experience: A decade of psychoanalytic inquiry. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 11, 171–184. doi:10.1080/07351699109533850[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 1993 Stolorow, R. D. (1993). Chapter 3 thoughts on the nature and therapeutic action of psychoanalytic interpretation. Progress in Self-Psychology, 9, 31–43. [Google Scholar]) theory of intersubjectivity. The analysis also incorporates dynamics pertaining to the ethnocultural transference and countertranference (Comas-Díaz & Jacobsen, 1991 Comas-Díaz, L., & Jacobsen, F. M. (1991). Ethnocultural transference and countertransference in the therapeutic dyad. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 61(3), 392–402. doi:10.1037/h0079267[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 1995 Comas-Díaz, L., & Jacobsen, F. M. (1995). The therapist of color and the white patient dyad: Contradictions and recognitions. Cultural Diversity and Mental Health, 1(2), 93–106. doi:10.1037/1099-9809.1.2.93[Crossref], [PubMed] , [Google Scholar]) and to associative identification processes (Shonfeld-Ringer, 2000 Shonfeld-Ringer, S. (2000). Close encounters: Exclusion and marginalization as an intersubjective experience. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 71(1), 51–59.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The case illustrates how dynamics of racialization, embedded within an increasingly White Nativist, ideological deportation immigration context, infiltrated the intraethnic, therapeutic relational encounter. The therapist took part in an intragroup, racialized reenactment that could have led to the therapist becoming part of the oppressive structure, but the therapist avoided doing so, explaining her internal process for rectifying the situation.     

Intergroup contact and prejudice in Moroccan and Spanish users of Spanish public libraries: mediating variables and directionality of the process / Contacto intergrupal y prejuicio en usuarios marroquíes y españoles de bibliotecas públicas españolas: variables mediadoras y direccionalidad del proceso

This study tests two serial models of intergroup contact in intergroup relations between users of Spanish public libraries and the directionality of the contact-prejudice relationship. Participants were selected in libraries that meet IFLA Guidelines in Barcelona (N_Spaniards = 138 and N_Moroccans = 89) and libraries that do not meet these guidelines in Almería (N_Spaniards = 116 and N_Moroccans = 100). They responded to a survey about the quantity of intergroup contact, anxiety, ethnocultural empathy, outgroup knowledge and prejudice. Several serial mediation analyses reveal a model where the indirect effect of quantity of contact in the library on prejudice was mediated by intergroup anxiety and ethnocultural empathy in Moroccans in Almería and Spaniards and Moroccans in Barcelona, and it found that the direction of this relationship is from contact to attitudes, but not attitudes to contact. These results show that the mediating power of affective variables is stronger than that of cognitive variables. Explanations about the absence of significant results in Spaniards in the Almería group are provided.     

Negotiating national (non)belongings: Vietnamese Australians in ethno/multicultural Australia

Many immigrant-receiving countries are characterised by increasing multigenerational ethnocultural diversity, with associated policies and discourses of inclusion. Yet they often simultaneously resist relinquishing narratives and practices grounded in idealised notions of ethnocultural homogeneity. This results in the circulation of multiple, often competing, ideas of the nation, with significant implications for national (non)belonging among migrants and their descendants. Based on interviews with members of seven Vietnamese Australian families, this article explores their discursive navigation of two competing ideas of Australia: as ethnocultural and multicultural. Applying a conceptual framework of belonging that attends to the relation between the personal and the political, this article demonstrates that, for migrants and their descendants, national (non)belonging is a dynamic and dialogic process of negotiating multiple national spheres, each governed by different politics and offering different possibilities for belonging. The multigenerational interview cohort additionally provides insights into the role of migration generation in mediating this process.