This study observed, surveyed, and analyzed ten students enrolled in a bachelors or graduate program in the United States who were immigrates or first generation Americans. The study, was conducted in 2018 by Shabnam Brady, who is in the Psychology Department at Tennessee State University, and Michelle Stevens, who is in Educational Leadership Department at Middle Tennessee State University. After surveys and focus group meetings with the ten individuals, “two themes emerged as the findings. . . (a) immigrant culture and (b) collectivist culture” (Brady 2018). The immigrant culture implies that immigrants from different countries experienced similar experiences going through their own journey of immigration.
This brings up an interesting point, which I have not considered. To better understand immigrant’s experiences and how we can best serve them, whether have just come overseas or are completing their masters here in the United States, we must consider immigrates as experiencing the immigrate culture. For me, I’ve always considered that every immigrant has a different culture they are coming from, which is very true. But I have never thought to try and understand immigrates as a collectivist group. This makes sense because every immigrant must go through same immigration process with the United States. They share commonalities where they all face assimilation to our culture. This most certainly does not take away from their cultural identity from whatever country they came from. They are still Nigerian, Liberian, Chinese, etc. But for us as an American culture, I think this way of thinking can allow us to better accept immigrates and help us to understand, where we don’t seem to be doing that very well.
Brady, Shabnam Etemadi, and Michelle C. Stevens. “Is Immigration a Culture? A Qualitative Approach to Exploring Immigrant Student Experiences within the United States.” Translational Issues in Psychological Science, vol. 5, no. 1, Mar. 2019, pp. 17–28. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1037/tps0000187.