The role of psychologists in international migration research: Complementing other expertise and an interdisciplinary way forward

Abstract

This research note addresses the current and potential future role of psychologists in the study of international migration. We review ways in which psychologists have contributed to the study of migration, as well as ways in which psychological scholarship could be integrated with work from other social science fields. Broadly, we discuss four major contributions that psychology brings to the study of international migration—studying migrants’ internal psychological experiences, incorporating a developmental perspective, conducting experimental studies, and integrating across levels of analysis. Given the position of psychology as a ‘hub science’ connecting more traditional social sciences with health and medical sciences, we argue for a more prominent role for psychologists within the study of international migration. Such a role is intended to complement the roles of other social scientists and to create a more interdisciplinary way forward for the field of migration studies. The research note concludes with an agenda for further scholarship on migration.

A validation of the Perceived Negative Context of Reception Scale with recently-arrived Venezuelan immigrants in Colombia and the United States.

“…Sociologists (e.g., Portes & Rumbaut, 2014; Stepick et al, 2011) have adopted the implicit assumption that a given country or region is characterized by a specific context of reception. In contrast, because psychologists study people’s subjective perceptions and views as well as contextual conditions (see Schwartz et al, in press, for a review), our work has focused on perceived context of reception—that is, how individual immigrants perceive the extent of welcome versus rejection they experience in their new homelands. In this way, context of reception can be studied as an individual-difference construct and can predict immigrants’ adaptation and behavioral outcomes.…”

Technical Brokering of Immigrant Adolescents in Switzerland: A Developmental-Acculturative Perspective

“…Among immigrants from the former Soviet Union, for example, the developmental aspects explained more variance in reported victimization than acculturative variables (Jugert & Titzmann, 2017). Hence, the claimed urgent need to combine acculturative and developmental aspects (Juang & Syed, 2019;Schwartz et al, 2020) remains a growing task for scholars in this field.…”

“…In sum, technical brokering in immigrant families can be viewed from a developmental (intrafamilial adolescent responsibility) perspective or from an acculturation-related (immigrant adolescents' support of family adaptation) perspective. The combination of both these perspectives has been mentioned as urgent need in recent acculturation research (Juang & Syed, 2019;Schwartz et al, 2020). For explaining interindividual differences in technical brokering in immigrant families this means that predictors pertaining to family dynamics have to be combined with predictors pertaining to acculturation (Fawcett, 2018;Guan, 2017).…”

“Maybe One Day I Will also be Almito”: Ethiopian Israelis, Naming, and the Politics of Immigrant Identity

“…Studies to date have focused on the individual, psychological aspects of naming and name changing following immigration (Sue and Telles 2007;Tummala-Narra 2016) or on the ways that (re-)naming reflects social and political processes (Bodenhorn and Vom Bruck 2006;Girma 2020) but less on the interplay between these levels. In this article, we have suggested that understanding how personal (psychological) and social-political processes intertwine can give richness and depth to immigration research (see also Schwartz et al 2020). Flyvbjerg (2006, in an examination of misunderstandings around case studies, focuses on the "critical case," which can advance theoretical understandings due to its unique position.…”