"There's a place for us": Ethnically -relevant organizations as a resource for immigrants to manage collective identities
Item
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Title
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"There's a place for us": Ethnically -relevant organizations as a resource for immigrants to manage collective identities
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:e6def58c506d:10255
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identifier
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10285
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Creator
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Wiley, Shaun,
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Contributor
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Kay Deaux
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Date
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2009
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Social psychology | Personality psychology | Ethnic studies | certainty | collective action | Dominican | immigrants | intergroup attitudes | Mexican
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Abstract
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This dissertation shows how immigrants' responses to low group status and uncertainty influence their political incorporation. Drawing on social identity theory, I examined whether intra- and intergroup social creativity strategies, defined as indirect ways of bolstering collective identity in the face of devaluation (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), have inverse associations with collective action. Intragroup respect was expected to increase support for collective action by bolstering identification with ethnically-relevant organizations and perceptions of group efficacy. Favoring alternative dimensions of comparison was expected to decrease support for collective action by undermining organizational identification and suppressing perceptions of group efficacy. I also examined two ways immigrants maintain a sense of certainty (Hogg, 2007) in the new context: by emphasizing the familiar norms and values of ethnically-relevant organizations and affirming the status hierarchy in the new country by favoring higher-status outgroups. Which strategy they chose was expected to depend on perceptions of the intergroup context. Immigrants who endorsed meritocracy were hypothesized to identify more strongly with ethnically-relevant organizations, whereas immigrants who perceived low group status would favor higher-status outgroups.;Results from a survey of Dominican and Mexican immigrants recruited from ethnically-relevant organizations supported these predictions. Intragroup respect was associated with greater activist identification among people who thought their group had low status, which was positively associated with support for collective action, a relationship mediated by group efficacy. Favoring alternative comparison dimensions, in contrast, was negatively associated with activist identification for people who thought their group had low status and negatively tied to collective action support. This relationship was also mediated by group efficacy. Furthermore, meritocracy and group status moderated the relationships between intergroup certainty and organizational identification and outgroup attitudes, respectively. When immigrants endorsed meritocracy, a belief threatened by the U.S. status hierarchy, they turned to ethnically-relevant organizations to maintain a sense of certainty. Immigrants also established certainty by affirming the social hierarchy through favorable evaluations of higher-status outgroups such as Whites and, for some, African Americans. Results illustrate immigrants' active role in their political incorporation and give insight into how and why responses to devaluation and uncertainty advance or impede social change.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Psychology
