Does a Strong Bicultural Identity Matter for Emotional, Cognitive, and Behavioral Engagement?

In the course of their acculturation process, minority students need to negotiate the adaption to the host society’s culture and the maintenance of the culture of their country of origin. This identity construction is complex and may encompass contradicting and competing goals. The adjustment to school is seen as a relevant acculturation marker. An increasingly prominent multidimensional construct is students’ school engagement because it can provide an insight into the way students feel and interact with the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral domains of school. Successful adjustment to school culture, and acculturation in general, can be closely related to school engagement. There is yet no common knowledge about the role bicultural national and/or ethnic identity plays for the three dimensions of school engagement. The present study focusses on minority students in Germany who report a strong bicultural identity (in comparison with single stronger ethnic or national identities, as well as weaker bicultural identification) to explain students’ emotional, cognitive, and behavioral school engagement when controlling for gender, SES, and cultural capital. Data is derived from paper–pencil questionnaires administered in secondary schools in Germany. Regression analyses show that students with a stronger bicultural identity have a significantly higher emotional, cognitive, and behavioral school engagement than their peers with a weaker bicultural identity, when controlling for gender, SES, and cultural capital. The results hint at the relevance of fostering students’ ethnic, but also their national, cultural identity to support their school engagement. Implications for teacher education are discussed.

The influences of different types of social media activities on ethnic minorities’ acculturation

Adopting the activity-audience framework, this study examined how different social media activities among a group of ethnic minority students associated with acculturation. It took a Qual-Quant sequential design by interviewing 44 secondary school ethnic minority students in Hong Kong first to conceptualize the potential relationships and then surveying 565 students to test the conceptual model. It found that different social media activities associated differently with acculturation; in contrast to the weak association of communication with friends and schoolmate, consuming mainstream culture-related information and interacting with strangers from the mainstream culture were the important determinators of the students’ bicultural competence and bicultural identity. Cognitive appraisal positively mediated the contribution of information consumption, whereas communication with strangers was mediated positively by behavioral appraisal but negatively by affective appraisal. The findings advocate a differentiated approach toward utilizing the affordances of social media activities for acculturation.

Interpersonal conflict between employees and managers: The Chinese immigrants experiences of acculturation in New Zealand public sector workplaces

<p>With the increase in globalisation and migration, the future workplace will become more culturally diverse. Significant literature points out that culturally diverse workplaces can create organisational conflict because of the workers’ differences in cultural values, attitudes, and work styles. New Zealand, like other countries, has also faced the challenge of an increasingly diverse workforce. Although the associations between cultural diversity and conflict management styles in different countries have been widely discussed, the existing literature focuses more on comparison studies with participants who are from different countries. There is a lack of research investigating Chinese employees who live overseas and work in overseas organisations. Research on how young Chinese migrants cope with conflict in New Zealand organisations is scarce. The purpose of this study is to explore Chinese migrant employees’ preferences for styles of conflict management and the reasons they perceive these styles, as well as the influence of acculturation and ethnic identity orientation. The study argues that acculturation, the process of cultural change, is one of the factors that relates to the use and perceptions of different conflict management styles. This study explores how immigrants who have acculturated, learned and adopted their host society’s cultural characteristics, perceived and faced conflict issues in the workplace. More particularly, this study investigates how the role of ethnic identity influences different conflict management styles. A qualitative phenomenological method is employed in this study to obtain a deeper picture of conflict phenomena among Chinese migrant employees who have been through the process of acculturation. This method is useful for describing the lived experiences of conflict and acculturation. The data consisted of twenty one in-depth interviews with Chinese migrant employees from mainland China who work in twenty different New Zealand public sector organisations. The findings of this study reveal that due to their acculturation experiences, interviewees have developed an integrated bicultural identity that is rooted in good feelings about being New Zealanders, accompanied by a positive sense of Chinese ethnic identity. They view their own identity as a combination of both New Zealand and Chinese identities. Depending on the situation and the nature of their interpersonal relationships, interviewees can switch between these two identities without a problematic struggle. Based on the influence of this integrated bicultural identity, the study finds that young Chinese migrant employees prefer to use a combination of integrating and compromising conflict management styles. The tendency to use integrating conflict management is highly influenced by their adaptation to New Zealand cultural values and attitudes. Being New Zealanders gives these bicultural Chinese migrant employees confidence to confront and integrate conflict directly, and solve it in cooperative manner. The findings also show that Chinese beliefs and values continue to be maintained. The principles of Confucianism are deeply rooted and included showing mutual respect, avoiding embarrassment to other parties, controlling emotions or psychological impulses. Under the influence of being Chinese, young Chinese migrant employees incline towards compromising style depending on the circumstances. However, if integrating and compromising styles fail to resolve the conflict because the other party refuses harmony and escalates the conflict, young Chinese migrant employees would change their strategies by asking for third-party interventions and seeking for a sense of justice and fairness.</p>

Interpersonal conflict between employees and managers: The Chinese immigrants experiences of acculturation in New Zealand public sector workplaces

<p>With the increase in globalisation and migration, the future workplace will become more culturally diverse. Significant literature points out that culturally diverse workplaces can create organisational conflict because of the workers’ differences in cultural values, attitudes, and work styles. New Zealand, like other countries, has also faced the challenge of an increasingly diverse workforce. Although the associations between cultural diversity and conflict management styles in different countries have been widely discussed, the existing literature focuses more on comparison studies with participants who are from different countries. There is a lack of research investigating Chinese employees who live overseas and work in overseas organisations. Research on how young Chinese migrants cope with conflict in New Zealand organisations is scarce. The purpose of this study is to explore Chinese migrant employees’ preferences for styles of conflict management and the reasons they perceive these styles, as well as the influence of acculturation and ethnic identity orientation. The study argues that acculturation, the process of cultural change, is one of the factors that relates to the use and perceptions of different conflict management styles. This study explores how immigrants who have acculturated, learned and adopted their host society’s cultural characteristics, perceived and faced conflict issues in the workplace. More particularly, this study investigates how the role of ethnic identity influences different conflict management styles. A qualitative phenomenological method is employed in this study to obtain a deeper picture of conflict phenomena among Chinese migrant employees who have been through the process of acculturation. This method is useful for describing the lived experiences of conflict and acculturation. The data consisted of twenty one in-depth interviews with Chinese migrant employees from mainland China who work in twenty different New Zealand public sector organisations. The findings of this study reveal that due to their acculturation experiences, interviewees have developed an integrated bicultural identity that is rooted in good feelings about being New Zealanders, accompanied by a positive sense of Chinese ethnic identity. They view their own identity as a combination of both New Zealand and Chinese identities. Depending on the situation and the nature of their interpersonal relationships, interviewees can switch between these two identities without a problematic struggle. Based on the influence of this integrated bicultural identity, the study finds that young Chinese migrant employees prefer to use a combination of integrating and compromising conflict management styles. The tendency to use integrating conflict management is highly influenced by their adaptation to New Zealand cultural values and attitudes. Being New Zealanders gives these bicultural Chinese migrant employees confidence to confront and integrate conflict directly, and solve it in cooperative manner. The findings also show that Chinese beliefs and values continue to be maintained. The principles of Confucianism are deeply rooted and included showing mutual respect, avoiding embarrassment to other parties, controlling emotions or psychological impulses. Under the influence of being Chinese, young Chinese migrant employees incline towards compromising style depending on the circumstances. However, if integrating and compromising styles fail to resolve the conflict because the other party refuses harmony and escalates the conflict, young Chinese migrant employees would change their strategies by asking for third-party interventions and seeking for a sense of justice and fairness.</p>

The Effect of Gender on the Bilingual and Bicultural Identity of the Iraqi EFL Learners' Recognition and Production of Request

This study examines the effect of gender on students' bilingual and bicultural identity in their recognition and production of request is studied. This means that it investigates to what extent the learners’ mother tongue and culture influence their recognition and production of request in the EFL and the effect of gender on such an identity. The study aims at exploring and identifying the linguistic patterns of request in English used by Iraqi EFL learners, those patterns of request transferred from Iraqi EFL learners’ mother tongue, and the Iraqi EFL learners’ cultural patterns and cultural realization of request transferred from Arabic culture into the EFL. Some hypotheses of the study state that there is a bilingual and cultural identity in using request by Iraqi EFL learners, females are better than males in request perception and production and they are worse in Arabic monolingualism and monoculturalism, students are better in English monolingualism and monoculturalism than in the other request features, students’ English monolingual and monocultural identity is more apparent in request perception than in production. To validate or refute its hypotheses, a test comprising recognition and production has been constructed and applied to fifty Iraqi EFL learners at fourth year, Department of English, College of Education for Humanities, University of Thi-Qar at the academic year (2020-2021). After data analysis, some conclusions are arrived at. The study concludes that Iraqi EFL learners are pragmatically incompetent and they have a bilingual and bicultural identity because of their mother tongue and culture interference.