Sociopolitical Control for Immigrants: The Role of Receiving Local Contexts

Abstract

This study examines the individual and contextual factors associated with sociopolitical control expressed by immigrants in southern Spain. We used hierarchical linear modeling to evaluate the relations between individual (community participation, social connectedness, and perceived cultural competence of receiving community services) and municipality characteristics (city community participation, city social connectedness, and city community services' cultural competence) and immigrants' feelings of sociopolitical control. Data were analyzed using a two-level model based on 707 Moroccan immigrants in 25 municipalities. After adjusting for gender, educational level, and psychosocial confounding factors, we observed a positive association between social connectedness and sociopolitical control at the individual level. At the contextual level, we observed a positive association between (a) city community participation, (b) city social connectedness, and (c) city community services' cultural competence, and sociopolitical control. Indeed, living in a municipality where there are community services with high levels of cultural competence and where, on average, many people participate in organizations and neighbors are connected, was associated with higher levels of perceived control in the sociopolitical domain for immigrants. We also discuss implications for community-based research and practice.

The brief sense of community scale: Testing dimensionality and measurement invariance by gender among Hispanic/Latinx youth

“…Previous studies have alluded that stronger sense of community belongingness has not only been connected with ethnic group identity and connection, but perceived ability to be a leader in the sociopolitical context (Christens et al, 2013; Lardier et al, 2020; Terry et al, 2019). Further, there is also an ancillary implication as experiences related to community belongingness, ethnic identity, and empowerment tend to also be related to reductions in alienation and minority stress experiences (Christens et al, 2011; Hughey et al, 2008; Lardier et al, 2019; Paloma et al, 2018).…”

A Community-Based Participatory Action Research for Roma Health Justice in a Deprived District in Spain

“…As external experts, we acted as catalysts that instigated the process of shaping new relationships and redefining old relationships by organizing workshops between multiple stakeholders. Intersubjective dialogue and bidirectional learning processes between researchers, providers, neighbors, and other stakeholders can improve problem framing for influential policy changes [52]. However, this requires research and community partners to build relationships with different stakeholders of the community, which entails a large investment in time.…”

“…Roma CBOs assume responsibility of addressing Roma-needs but lack in dismantling dominant and antigypsyist narratives within prestigious organizational structures. The literature strongly proves that culturally sensitive providers can contribute to individual and community socio-political control to explicitly address discrimination [52,53]. Developing Roma sensitivity among non-Roma providers is required to deconstruct their unfair and oppressive narratives.…”

Resilience and empowerment in immigrant experiences: A look through the transconceptual model of empowerment and resilience.

“…Lack of empowering actions may be explained by the fact that almost none of the factors that are considered to promote immigrant empowerment (i.e., community engagement, extended social support, and community cultural sensitivity [Paloma et al, 2018]) were present in participants’ descriptions. Interestingly, however, the risk factors that might inspire actions for immigrants and that, simultaneously, can prevent empowered actions because they create too strong a context of threat (Moradi & Risco, 2006; Whitely & Kite, 2006) and restrictive immigration policies (Paloma et al, 2014) were mentioned in largely muted ways.…”