Locations of Remorse and Homelands of Resilience: Notes on Grief and Sense of Loss of Place of Latino and Irish-American Caregivers of Demented Elders

In this essay, based on qualitative research with Latino and Irish-American caregivers of demented elders, we argue that spatially and culturally constituted definitions of personhood, the moral life, and justice shape perceptions of normative aging, the agency of the demented persons and their place in the community, the appropriate care of the aged and demented, as well as partially determine the concrete resources which will be available to elders and their families. We review how ties to homelands and neighborhood institutions act as mediators and shapers of anticipatory grief, caregiver burdens, and caregiver resources, serving as a buffer against exhaustion and despair for some families (primarily the Irish-American sample), and as an additional site of loss or stress for others (primarily the Latino sample).     

Children's labour in ethnic family businesses: The case of Chinese take‐away businesses in Britain

Reliance upon unpaid and committed family labour is said to make many ethnic businesses competitive. However, most analysts' references to this labour have not taken into account the nature of family members' and, in particular, children's work roles or the ways in which their labour is elicited and maintained. Here, the nature of children's labour participation in ethnic businesses is investigated in the case of families running Chinese take‐away businesses in Britain. This article focuses on how children in these families understand their often double‐edged experiences of ‘helping out’, as part of a ‘family work contract’, and on the ways in which families negotiate children's labour over time. Given these families' experiences of migration and ethnic minority status, I argue that Chinese children's work in take‐away businesses must be examined in relation to the intersections of family obligations and relationships, livelihood strategies and pressures, and issues of cultural identity.     

Collaboration between Sami and non-Sami formal and family caregivers in rural municipalities

The aim of this study was to explore how caregivers experience collaboration in rural municipalities in northern Norway. We conducted fieldwork with a dementia team in addition to seventeen qualitative in-depth interviews with formal and family caregivers. The caregivers had ethnic Sami and ethnic Norwegian affiliation. The theme ‘negotiating ethnic and ethno-political positions’ was identified through thematic analysis and developed using positioning theory. Ethnicity involves dynamic and situated personal affiliations, and participants negotiate each other's ethnic positions in practice. Negotiations of ethnic positions hamper collaboration between formal and family caregivers, and ethno-political positions reinforce stereotyped ethnic positions. This study contributes to the understanding of and the debate over positions on ethno-cultural collaboration in health care. In practice, participants negotiate the health policy concept of ‘cultural facilitation’, which must be broadened to ensure equal healthcare services.     

Extraordinary Care for Extraordinary Conditions: Constructing Parental Care for Serious Mental Illness in Japan

This article presents an account of how Japanese parents in a family support group for mental illness constructed understandings of care for adult children with serious mental illness, primarily schizophrenia. I build from Janis H. Jenkins’s research on the “extraordinary condition” of schizophrenia to discuss “extraordinary care,” which parents practiced as a way to refute cultural and clinical beliefs about pathogenic families and degenerative diseases. Parents’ accounts of extraordinary care revealed a reliance on biomedical knowledge to treat the symptoms of mental illness coupled with an ongoing determination to improve children’s lives beyond what psychiatry could offer. Extraordinary care thus points to the therapeutic limits of biomedical psychiatry while also reinforcing the significance of social relations as families work toward recovery.     

Recreated practices by Mapuche women that strengthen place identity in new urban spaces of residence in Santiago,Chile

The phenomenon of migration to cities by indigenous Mapuche people of Chile is associated with various consequences, such as the loss of ethnic identity and cultural practices. This study aims to describe how ethnic identity is maintained through the recreation of ancestral cultural practices that Mapuche women promote in their families, generating identification to new spaces of residence. This qualitative research draws on analyses of forty-eight interviews conducted with twelve families from four neighbourhoods in Santiago. The study reveals ways in which key traditional Mapuche practices are translated and recreated through the processes of place-referent continuity and place-congruent continuity in new urban areas of residence which in turn express variant forms of ethnic identity and everyday politics of care that extend beyond folkloric notions of rural indigeneity and more static political ideologies of ethno-national autonomy.     

Family solidarity and informal care: the case of care for people with dementia

According to Bayertz the core meaning of solidarity is the perception of mutual obligations between the members of a community. This definition leaves open the various ways solidarity is perceived by individuals in different communities and how it manifests itself in a particular community. This paper explores solidarity as manifested in the context of families in respect of caregiving for a family member who has become dependent because of disease or illness. Though family caregiving is based on the same perception of mutual obligation as the solidarity that supports welfare arrangements in society, the manifestation of solidarity in families is different. Solidarity that underpins welfare arrangements is based on a perception of mutual obligation towards an anonymous dependent other and is enforced by the government. Solidarity in families is directed towards a concrete other and is based on free choice, albeit often accompanied by a strong sense of personal duty. In this paper we try to distinguish between solidarity as a sociological concept and as a moral concept. An important moral element of solidarity, as expressed in families, is the need for recognition of family caregivers, not only of their concrete practical efforts, but also of their own identity as caregivers and as individuals. We illustrate this argument by referring to examples in the Nuffield Council on Bioethics report Dementia: ethical issues, about the experiences of family caregivers in dementia care and the importance for them of recognition of their role.     

Immigrant transit camps ‐ The formation of dependent relations in Israeli society

In this article three approaches to define and explain negative ethnic attitudes are discussed: the anthropology of cultural misunderstanding, the sociology of how differences in group positions are justified ideologically, and the social psychology of maintaining self‐esteem through intergroup differentiation. The‐ aim is to integrate these approaches into an interdisciplinary model. Social identity theory is used as a frame for this integration. The argument developed is that ingroup values are used for intergroup differentiation and evaluation. This leads to the development of stereotypes. Stereotypes reflect misunderstanding, but also anchor social representations of a hierarchy of group positions (ethnic hierarchy). Depending on the ethnic composition of the larger society, majority and minority groups will differ in their ethnic hierarchies. Discrepancies between ethnic hierarchies will lead to ethnic tension. From the perspective developed, a number of hypotheses is derived about how changes in the socio‐economic position of minority groups will affect intergroup evaluations. Hypotheses based on the category differentiation model and the social identity model are specified with respect to the expected changes in stereotypes and intergroup discrimination of the ethnic majority and minority groups.     

Silences and Serenades: The Journeys of Three Ethnic Minority Women School Leaders

This article articulates the need to explore the knowledge and practice of ethnic minority women school leaders, to encourage dialogue, and to ask, "What is it about these women's lives that reveals ontological and political discourses and practices that disrupt the rhythm of the mainstream?" The stories affirm each woman's explicit struggle against "overt and passive racism" and objectifying marginalization. Additionally, each story reveals a unique "self-text," which is a composite of history, family, profession, and cultural memories. Each woman, in the way she expresses this "self," is an advocate for respect and equity.     

Cultural Identity Among Afghan and Iraqi Traumatized Refugees: Towards a Conceptual Framework for Mental Health Care Professionals

Cultural identity in relation with mental health is of growing interest in the field of transcultural psychiatry. However, there is a need to clarify the concept of cultural identity in order to make it useful in clinical practice. The purpose of this study is to unravel the complexity and many layers of cultural identity, and to assess how stress and acculturation relate to (changes in) cultural identity. As part of a larger study about cultural identity, trauma, and mental health, 85 patients from Afghanistan and Iraq in treatment for trauma-related disorders were interviewed with a Brief Cultural Interview. The interviews were analysed through qualitative data analysis using the procedures of grounded theory. The analysis resulted in three domains of cultural identity: personal identity, ethnic identity and social identity. Within each domain relationships with stress and acculturation were identified. The results offer insight into the intensity of changes in cultural identity, caused by pre-and post-migration stressors and the process of acculturation. Based on the research findings recommendations are formulated to enhance the cultural competency of mental health workers.     

Restructuring Illness Meaning Through the Clinical Encounter: A Process of Disruption and Coherence

This study explores restructuring of illness meaning among ten Turkish-born women, assessed as somatizing, encountering caregivers imposing a psychological language for understanding distress. Participants were referred from local health care services in Western Stockholm, Sweden. Data were collected between 1997 and 2001 from 37 interviews with ten women. Data were analyzed using a qualitative method with a grounded theory approach to construct an understanding of meaning making from an emic perspective. Participants' restructuring included loss of earlier meanings given to illness, shifts in expressions and healing strategies, and a push toward giving illness and suffering a psychological or psychiatric meaning. Restructuring had in many ways been a disruptive and complicated experience. In their everyday context participants were engaged in bridging gaps between different perspectives of looking upon their illness. They had poor support from their social context in creating coherence between frames of meaning. On the basis of the results the author suggests that Antonovsky's concept of sense of coherence (SOC) may have relevance to the process of restructuring illness meaning, and that constructing coherence between experience, expression, past, and new meanings given to illness may be significant for patients' recovery. For clinical care, results indicate that restructuring should be done so as not to impose too alien a reordering of the disruptive experiences of illness. With regard to further research, results indicate the importance of gaining insight into how individuals and social and cultural groups make sense of their interaction with caregivers and local health care services.     

Intersectionality and mediated cultural production in a globalized post-colonial world

Abstract

This paper aims to demonstrate how intersectionality provides an important conceptual tool to analyse practices of cultural production in ethnic minority media. In the context of the digital age, media are increasingly central as systems of representation of identity, culture and community. However, research examining how ethnic minority media become engaged in struggles of power is rare. Few works have paid attention to the ways in which race and gender operate in tandem to produce and maintain the unequal distribution of power in the mediascape of countries of post-colonial immigration. This paper juxtaposes gender studies and ethnic studies in order to analyse the representation of gender in ethnic media, with a particular focus on journalistic practices.     

African-American culture and AIDS prevention. From barrier to ally.

African Americans make up an increasing proportion of persons with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). I identify and describe cultural elements such as oral traditions, multiple naming, a collective identity, extended families, and sexuality influenced by myth and exaggeration that condition African Americans'' reactions to AIDS prevention. I also offer suggestions on how these cultural elements can be used for effective AIDS prevention efforts in African-American communities.     

Si Dios Quiere: Hispanic families' experiences of caring for a seriously mentally ill family member

Among Hispanics, the family is viewed as the primary care giver for seriously mentally ill family members. This paper reports on a study of minority families' conceptions of serious mental illness, of their interaction with mental health resources, and on the burdens experienced by families in caring for a seriously mentally ill family member. The focus of this paper is on Hispanic families in New Jersey, with some comparative data from other ethnic group families. Families' conceptions of serious mental illness are explored and analyzed to demonstrate the importance of concepts of nervios and fallo mental in shaping families' responses to their ill family member. Social support systems for families are also explored with particular attention to the role of religious institutions and religious healing as a major source of solace.     

Sudden infant death syndrome: links with infant care practices.

OBJECTIVES--To investigate infant care practices in a small ethnic minority population within Britain that might suggest possible factors contributing to the low incidence of the sudden infant death syndrome in Asian populations. DESIGN--Ethnographic interviewing, a qualitative comparative method drawn from social anthropology. SETTING--Central Cardiff. SUBJECTS--Non-random sample of 60 mothers of Bangladeshi or Welsh ethnic origin and working or middle class occupational status, who had infants under one year old. None of the families interviewed had experienced a sudden infant death. RESULTS--Broad cultural contrasts emerged as a series of themes from the interview data: living patterns, family networks, sleeping patterns, and concepts of time and dependence. CONCLUSION--Bangladeshi infants were cared for in a consistently rich sensory environment; Welsh infants, in contrast, were more likely to experience alternating periods of high and low sensory input. Long periods of lone quiet sleep may be one factor that contributes to a higher rate of sudden deaths in white than in Asian infants.     

Belonging to the nation: generational change,identity and the Chinese diaspora

This study reviews developments in the ethnic and national identity of the descendants of migrants, taking ethnic Chinese as a case study. Our core question is why, in spite of debates worldwide about identity, exclusion and rights, do minority communities continue to suffer discrimination and attacks? This question is asked in view of the growing incidence in recent years of ‘racial’ conflicts between majority and minority communities and among minorities, in both developed and developing countries. The study examines national identity from the perspective of migrants' descendants, whose national identity may be more rooted than is often thought. Concepts such as ‘new ethnicities’, ‘cultural fluidity’, and ‘new’ and ‘multiple’ identities feature in this examination. These concepts highlight identity changes across generations and the need to challenge and reinterpret the meaning of ‘nation’ and to review problems with policy initiatives designed to promote nation-building in multi-ethnic societies.