Tag: Caroline B. Brettell

SAPIENS: Why Aid Remains Out of Reach for Some Rohingya Refugees

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date May 18, 2018

Even with the right to health care secured, medical assistance is elusive for urban refugees in India.

The anthropology publication SAPIENS has published an article by SMU doctoral candidate Ashvina Patel.

SAPIENS is an editorially independent publication of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Inc., which is dedicated to popularizing anthropology to a broad audience.

The article, “Why Aid Remains Out of Reach for Some Rohingya Refugees,” published May 17, 2018.

The article resulted from Patel’s 11-month stay in New Delhi, India, in which she interviewed residents of three urban refugee settlements. The purpose was to understand how issues of geopolitics and domestic policy inform various types of human insecurity for refugees.

Patel is currently a visiting student fellow at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre, where she is developing further publications on Rohingya refugee displacement.

She is a doctoral candidate in SMU’s Department of Anthropology. Patel holds an M.A. degree in Cultural Anthropology from SMU and an M.A. in Religion from University of Hawaii, Manoa. As a doctoral student, her research focuses on issues of human insecurity among Rohingya refugees in the context of American resettlement as well as within New Delhi, India as urban refugees. Her research work focuses specifically on defining the subjective experience of human insecurity and how various forms of insecurity are informed by statelessness.

Patel is a student of SMU anthropology professor Caroline Brettell, an internationally recognized immigration expert and Ruth Collins Altshuler Professor and Director of the Interdisciplinary Institute. Brettell is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

A private operating foundation, Wenner-Gren is dedicated to the advancement of anthropology throughout the world. Located in New York City, it is one of the major funding sources for international anthropological research and is actively engaged with the anthropological community through its varied grant, fellowship, networking, conference and symposia programs.

It founded and continues to publish the international journal Current Anthropology, and disseminates the results of its symposia through open-access supplementary issues of this journal. The Foundation works to support all branches of anthropology and closely related disciplines concerned with human biological and cultural origins, development, and variation.

Read the full article.

EXCERPT:

From the field notes
of SMU PhD candidate Ashvina Patel
Ameena (a pseudonym) is a 25-year-old Rohingya refugee in New Delhi, India, who is seven months pregnant with twins. Her face is gaunt. Often there isn’t enough food at home for her family of five. Nestled among other shanty houses, her home is made of bamboo with scrap boards as paneling; a tattered piece of cloth serves as the front door. Recently, the monsoon rains caused her to slip and fall. Now one of the babies in her womb is not moving. She knows she needs to see a doctor, but she cannot afford one.

When Ameena fled acts of genocide perpetrated by her own government of Myanmar in 2012, she and her husband came to New Delhi. They both suffer from debilitating deformities due to polio, and they heard that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in New Delhi was helping Rohingya refugees. The UNHCR partners with the Indian government to provide free aid to help people obtain an education, a livelihood, and health care.

But as Ameena and others would learn, being offered access to aid isn’t always enough. Barriers to procuring those free resources often leave urban refugees to fend for themselves; many find they have to negotiate a system that inadvertently creates obstacles to reaching that aid.

Having spent 11 months with the Rohingya community in India from 2015 to 2017, I repeatedly saw how aid missed its intended target. As the UNHCR creates solutions to challenges that refugees face, these solutions can also serve as a catalyst for new obstacles or deepen already existing insecurities by creating additional barriers that are financial, linguistic, cultural, or exploitative. The UNHCR does a lot of good, but the organization could do a better job addressing challenges refugees face in accessing the services to which they are permitted.

Read the full article.

Tags Ashvina Patel, Caroline B. Brettell, Dedman College, SMU Department of Anthropology

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SMU Anthropologist Caroline Brettell Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date April 18, 2017

Brettell is one of 228 leaders in sciences, humanities and the arts in the class of 2017

Noted SMU anthropologist Caroline Brettell joins actress Carol Burnett, musician John Legend, playwright Lynn Nottage, immunologist James Allison and other renowned leaders in various fields as a newly elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The class of 2017 will be inducted at a ceremony on Saturday, Oct. 7 at the Academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Brettell joins 228 new fellows and foreign honorary members — representing the sciences, the humanities and the arts, business, public affairs and the nonprofit sector — as a member of one of the world’s most prestigious honorary societies.

“Caroline Brettell is an internationally recognized leader in the field of migration, and one of Dedman College’s most productive scholars,” said Thomas DiPiero, dean of SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences. “I couldn’t be happier to see her win this well-deserved accolade.”

“I am surprised and deeply honored to receive such a recognition,” said Brettell, Ruth Collins Altshuler Professor in the Department of Anthropology and director of the Interdisciplinary Institute in SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences. “It is overwhelming to be in the company of Winston Churchill, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jonas Salk and the ‘mother’ of my own discipline, Margaret Mead. And I am thrilled to have my favorite pianist, André Watts, as a member of my class. I am truly grateful to join such a distinguished and remarkable group of members, past and present.”

Brettell’s research centers on ethnicity, migration and the immigrant experience. Much of her work has focused on the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex as a new immigration gateway city, especially on how immigrants practice citizenship and civic engagement as they meld into existing economic, social and political structures. She has special expertise in cross-cultural perspectives on gender, the challenges specific to women immigrants, how the technology boom affects immigration, and how the U.S.-born children of immigrants construct their identities and a sense of belonging. An immigrant herself, Brettell was born in Canada and became a U.S. citizen in 1993.

She is the author or editor of nearly 20 books, most recently Gender and Migration (2016, Polity Press UK) and Identity and the Second Generation: How Children of Immigrants Find Their Space, co-edited with Faith G. Nibbs, Ph.D. ’11 (2016, Vanderbilt University Press). Her research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Wenner Gren Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation, among many others.

An SMU faculty member since 1988, Brettell has held the Dedman Family Distinguished Professorship and served as chair in the Department of Anthropology and as director of Women’s Studies in Dedman College. She served as president of the Faculty Senate and a member of the University’s Board of Trustees in 2001-02, and was dean ad interim of Dedman College from 2006-08. Brettell is a member of the American Anthropological Association, the American Ethnological Society, the Society for Applied Anthropology, the Society for the Anthropology of Europe, and the Society for Urban, National and Transnational Anthropology, among others. She is the fourth SMU faculty member elected to the Academy, joining David Meltzer, Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory in Dedman College (class of 2013); Scurlock University Professor of Human Values Charles Curran (class of 2010); and the late David Weber, formerly Robert and Nancy Dedman Chair in History in Dedman College, (class of 2007).

“It is an honor to welcome this new class of exceptional women and men as part of our distinguished membership,” said Don Randel, chair of the Academy’s Board of Directors. “Their talents and expertise will enrich the life of the Academy and strengthen our capacity to spread knowledge and understanding in service to the nation.”

“In a tradition reaching back to the earliest days of our nation, the honor of election to the American Academy is also a call to service,” said Academy President Jonathan F. Fanton. “Through our projects, publications, and events, the Academy provides members with opportunities to make common cause and produce the useful knowledge for which the Academy’s 1780 charter calls.”

Since its founding in 1780, the Academy has elected leading “thinkers and doers” from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the 20th. The current membership of about 4,900 fellows and 600 foreign honorary members includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners. The Academy’s work is advanced by these elected members, who are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs from around the world.

Members of the Academy’s 2017 class include winners of the Pulitzer Prize and the Wolf Prize; MacArthur Fellows; Fields Medalists; Presidential Medal of Freedom and National Medal of Arts recipients; and Academy Award, Grammy Award, Emmy Award, and Tony Award winners.

Tags Caroline B. Brettell, Dedman College, SMU Department of Anthropology

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Polity Immigration and Society Series: Gender and Migration

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 12, 2016

“Gender and Migration” is encyclopedic in nature and an essential resource for anyone interested in immigration, gender or both. — Nancy Foner, Hunter College

Gender roles, relations, and ideologies are major aspects of migration. In a timely book on the subject, SMU anthropologist Caroline B. Brettell argues that understanding gender relations is vital to a full and more nuanced explanation of both the causes and the consequences of migration, in the past and at present.

Gender and Migration (Polity, 2016) explores gendered labor markets, laws and policies, and the transnational model of migration. With that, Brettell tackles a variety of issues such as how gender shapes the roles that men and women play in the construction of immigrant family and community life, debates concerning transnational motherhood, and how gender structures the immigrant experience for men and women more broadly.

“I have been working on the intersections of gender and migration since graduate school days and beginning with my dissertation research on Portuguese migrant women in France,” Brettell said. “Turning the lens of gender on population mobility reveals dimensions that might not otherwise be visible.”

Brettell is Ruth Collins Altshuler Professor of Anthropology and director of the Interdisciplinary Institute at Southern Methodist University.

The book will appeal to students and scholars of immigration, race and ethnicity, and gender studies and offers a definitive guide to the key conceptual issues surrounding gender and migration.

Anthropologist Brettell is an internationally recognized immigration expert on how the technology boom affects immigration, trends of new immigration gateway cities such as Dallas, Atlanta and Minneapolis and the challenges of women immigrants. Her research focus includes anthropology of Europe; migration and ethnicity; folk religion; and cross-cultural perspectives on gender.

An immigrant herself, Brettell was born in Canada and became a U.S. citizen in 1993.

Tags Caroline B. Brettell, Dedman College, SMU Department of Anthropology

Culture, Society & Family Researcher news SMU In The News

Observatório da Emigração: Interview with SMU’s Caroline Brettell

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date February 11, 2013

Observatório da Emigração carried out an in-depth interview with SMU anthropologist Caroline Brettell about her research on Portuguese immigration.

Brettell is University Distinguished Professor and Ruth Collins Altshuler Professor, and Director of SMU’s Interdisciplinary Institute. The Observatório da Emigração was established in 2008, based on a protocol between the General Director of Consular and Portuguese Community Affairs, and various research entities in Lisbon. Its principal objectives are to produce and disseminate information on the development and characteristics of emigration and of Portuguese communities; and to contribute to public policy in this arena.

An internationally recognized immigration expert, Brettell’s research includes “Portugal’s First Post-Colonials: Citizenship, Identity, and the Repatriation of Goans,” published in 2009 in the scientific journal Portuguese Studies Review. In the article, Brettell drew on archival research and field interviews to explore debates about nation, citizenship and identity and their implications for the repatriation of Goan people to Portugal after 1961.

Brettell’s most recent book, “Civic Engagements: The Citizenship Practices of Indian & Vietnamese Immigrants” (Stanford University Press, 2012), which reported that immigrants in North Texas develop their American identity by participating in ethnic community activities, then branching out to broader civic and political life.

She and co-author Deborah Reed-Danahay found that American Indians and Vietnamese Americans in North Texas develop and embrace their American identity over time — without shedding their culture of origin, as some say they should.

The research found that, for these groups, becoming a U.S. citizen is distinctly different from becoming American.

Read the full interview.

EXCERPT:

Observatório da Emigração (OEm) – Maybe you could start by saying how the Portuguese emigration came into your life…

Caroline Brettell (CB) – There is absolutely no connection to my personal life. I remember that in 1976, at a Conference in Toronto – where there is a large Portuguese community -, people from the community came up to me afterwards and asked me “a senhora é portuguesa”? And I said “no, not at all”. And they replied, “but you understand us so well”…

OEm – So, you spoke Portuguese at that time?

CB – When I was an undergraduate at Yale University, I was majoring Latin-American studies and one requirement for the major was to learn both Spanish and Portuguese. In my senior year in College I took intensive Portuguese. Then when I was applying to graduate school in Anthropolog – the field I decided to pursue for my Ph.D. I noticed that the Brown University had a new Program in Urban Anthropology. My senior essay at Yale had been on rural-urban migration, the migration from the countryside to cities, in Latin America. So, I was really interested in Urban Anthropology. I applied to that Program and when I was admitted, I had the chance in the summer, before I started graduate school, to work on a big project they had on immigration in the Rhode-Island area, in the city of Providence in particular.

OEm – Where a lot of Portuguese people live?

CB – Absolutely! So, that summer, because I had just learned the language, I started working with some of the Portuguese immigrant populations in the Rhode-Island area. So, it was really through the language that I got in to studying Portuguese immigrants. Then, the following summer we had to do a summer field research project, and then write a publishable paper. And I discovered that Toronto had a big Portuguese immigrant community. I went off to the city of Toronto, and I actually lived in what is called the Kensington market area, which is a downtown outdoor market in an old neighborhood of immigration, and the most recent arrivals in that neighborhood were Portuguese, mostly families from the Azores. So, I lived in a house with two Azorean families; I had the room in the attic. I spent two months in that neighborhood and my first published paper, on “ethnic entrepreneurs” was based on that summer of research. In that house, one of the men had spent time in France, before he had come to Canada. I had a conversation with him about the migration of the Portuguese to France. I was looking around for a project for my Ph.D. dissertation in Anthropology. What intrigued me about the migration to France was that it was obviously much more possible for the Portuguese to move back and forth between Portugal and France. There wasn’t a big Atlantic Ocean in the middle. At that time, there was no concept of transnationalism. We didn’t have such easy ways for people to travel back and forth and to communicate as they are communicating right now. So, I thought that the ocean was a divider, separating people from their sending society; I was really interested in the possibility of more back and forth movement that the migration to France might represent.

OEm – When was that study?

CB – I was in Toronto in the summer of 1972.

OEm – Forty years ago…

CB – Oh my God! So, the other thing that happened to me was that I was a student of Louise Lamphere and she was one of the founders of the so-called Anthropology of Gender. It occurred to me that everybody thought that migration was characteristic of men and I thought “well, nobody has worked with women immigrants”. I developed a research proposal to study Portuguese immigrant women in France and started the research in the summer of 1974 with funding from the Social Science Research Council in the US as well as the equivalent in Canada. I arrived in France in July of 1974, where I met Colette Callier Boisvert, a French anthropologist who had worked in Portugal in the 1960s and I think also Maria Beatriz Rocha-Trindade, who had done a study of the Portuguese in France. The Revolution had happened in Portugal, but immigrants in France were not the broad subject of study that they are today.

Read the full interview.

Tags Caroline B. Brettell, Dedman College, SMU Department of Anthropology

Culture, Society & Family Researcher news SMU In The News

Careers360: Learning the origins and evolution of mankind

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 5, 2012

The India-based career planning site Careers360 interviewed SMU professor Caroline Brettell for an article about a professional career as an anthropologist.

An anthropologist, Brettell most recently reported that Indian and Vietnamese immigrants in North Texas develop their American identity by participating in ethnic community activities, then branching out to broader civic and political life.

She and co-author Deborah Reed-Danahay in their book, “Civic Engagements: The Citizenship Practices of Indian & Vietnamese Immigrants” (Stanford University Press, 2012) found that American Indians and Vietnamese Americans in North Texas develop and embrace their American identity over time — without shedding their culture of origin, as some say they should.

The research found that, for these groups, becoming a U.S. citizen is distinctly different from becoming American, say the immigration experts.

For new Vietnamese and Indian immigrants, whether naturalized citizens or not, American identity deepens as they participate in activities, festivals and banquets at their churches, schools, temples, business and civic associations, and their social and cultural organizations, say Brettell and Reed-Danahay.

From their research, Brettell and Reed-Danahay conclude that policymakers should be cautious with any attempts to integrate, assimilate or incorporate immigrants. They recommend against imposing top-down standards on how citizenship should be expressed — such as requiring full English proficiency or focusing exclusively on formal political participation.

Read the full article.
EXCERPT:

By Urmila Rao
Careers360
If you think dark-skinned people are dusky because they live near equatorial or hot tropical regions, reflect again. Tasmania, an island, 240 km south of Australia, far away from the equator, had natives with dark complexions. Prior to colonial invasion, they had inhabited the island for 10,000 years, but despite the gargantuan time period, their skin colors didn’t change.

At one glance, all Chinese may appear similar to you, but the fact is, a Chinese of northern China is physically and genetically different from a southern Chinese. The former is taller, heavier with paler complexion and a pointed nose and share similarity to a Tibetan or a Nepalese, whereas Southern Chinese people look more like Vietnamese and Filipinos with their smaller and slanted eyes.

Interesting facts, aren’t they? Do biological variations of “others” baffle you? Evolution and variation of humans intrigue you as much as cultural changes stump you? If they do, then chuck your drab financial management course and head for an anthropology class. [ … ]

[ … ] So what is Anthropology?
Anthropology is science of man. Some institutions slot it under social sciences, some under science stream. According to Caroline B. Brettell, Professor, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, “It is a study of humans — both past and present.” The past is studied through anthropology sub-fields of archaeology and physical (or biological) anthropology. The present is studied through its socio-cultural branch.

Read the full article.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

Tags Caroline B. Brettell, Dedman College, SMU Department of Anthropology

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India Abroad: Civic incorporation of newcomers does not mean abandoning who you are

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 2, 2012

The New York-based newspaper India Abroad covered the research of SMU anthropologist Caroline Brettell in an interview with journalist Artthur J. Pais in the March 2 edition.

Brettell has reported that immigrants in North Texas develop their American identity by participating in ethnic community activities, then branching out to broader civic and political life.

The research found that, for these groups, becoming a U.S. citizen is distinctly different from becoming American, say the immigration experts.

Read the full article.

EXCERPT:

Arthur J. Pais
India Abroad
At the height of the 9/11 anti-Muslim violence and sentiments, a mosque serving mostly immigrants in the Dallas-Fort Worth area decided to reach out to the large community and opened a polling station on its premises on an election day.

This is one of the many stories you will hear from Professor Caroline B. Brettell whose book Civic Engagements: The Citizenship Practices of Indian and Vietnamese Immigrants (Stanford University Press) co-authored with Professor Deborah Reed Danahay, highlights the growth of community networking that started seriously in the 1990s in the Dallas-Arlington-Fort Worth area of Texas.

“A key contribution of our research is its emphasis on the fact that the civic incorporation of newcomers does not necessarily mean abandoning who you are,” Brettell, an anthropology professor at Southern methodist University in Dallas, says. “Immigrant communities have spaces and places that are already operating as viable arenas for expressing civic and political presence and for becoming American.”

Read the full article.

Tags Caroline B. Brettell, Dedman College, SMU Department of Anthropology

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Nebraska Mosaic: Nebraska — A Gateway For Immigrants

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date February 20, 2012

Journalist Haley Dover reported on a lecture about immigration delivered Feb. 16 by SMU anthropologist Caroline Brettell at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Jackie Gaughan Multicultural Center.

Nebraska Mosaic (nemosaic.org) is a project of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications. It’s staffed by a class of undergraduate and graduate students.

Brettell, a University Distinguished Professor, is an internationally recognized immigration expert. She recently reported the results of her latest research with co-author Deborah Reed-Danahay in their book, “Civic Engagements: The Citizenship Practices of Indian & Vietnamese Immigrants” (Stanford University Press, 2012).

They found through their research of American Indians and Vietnamese Americans in North Texas that immigrants from India and Vietnam develop and embrace their American identity over time — without shedding their culture of origin, as some say they should.

The research found that, for these groups, becoming a U.S. citizen is distinctly different from becoming American. For new Vietnamese and Indian immigrants, whether naturalized citizens or not, American identity deepens as they participate in activities, festivals and banquets at their churches, schools, temples, business and civic associations, and their social and cultural organizations, say Brettell and Reed-Danahay.

Read Mosaic’s coverage.

EXCERPT:

By Haley Dover
A reasonable cost of living and jobs in agriculture, manufacturing and meatpacking contribute to Nebraska becoming a gateway into America for the growing foreign-born population, an immigration expert said Thursday.

Caroline Brettell, an anthropology professor at Southern Methodist University who has studied global immigration patterns, said the growing foreign-born population in Nebraska is part of a national trend of immigrants seeking new destinations.

In a lecture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Jackie Gaughan Multicultural Center, Brettell noted that 44.4 percent of Nebraska’s foreign-born residents have moved to the state since 2000. In Lincoln alone, 7.4 percent of the population is foreign-born. Nationally 12 percent of the population is foreign born.

Cities like Boston, Atlanta and Phoenix increasingly have become popular destinations for immigrants, she said, but traditional gateways like New York City, Chicago and Miami remain popular, too.

“Continuous gateways have always attracted more than their fair share of immigrants,” Brettell said. “Immigrants are still going to those traditional cities.”

Read Mosaic’s coverage.

Tags Caroline B. Brettell, Dedman College, SMU Department of Anthropology

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KERA: Becoming a Citizen in North Texas

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date February 3, 2012

Krys Boyd, host and managing editor of KERA-FM’s flagship midday talk show “Think,” interviewed SMU anthropologist Caroline Brettell.

The topic was Brettell’s research that found immigrants in North Texas develop their American identity by participating in ethnic community activities, then branching out to broader civic and political life.

Listen to KERA’s podcast of the live broadcast show.

Brettell appeared on the show with Prasad Thotakura, an American Indian immigrant and president of the Teluga Association of North America.

Brettell reported the results of her research with co-author Deborah Reed-Danahay in their book, “Civic Engagements: The Citizenship Practices of Indian & Vietnamese Immigrants” (Stanford University Press, 2012).

The research found that, for these groups, becoming a U.S. citizen is distinctly different from becoming American, say the immigration experts.

The authors cite as an example Andy Nguyen, now a Texan, who fled Vietnam and arrived in the United States as a teenager. As a young man he was commissioned an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, went on to become a successful North Texas businessman and served primarily as an ethnic community leader. Later Nguyen ran as a Republican and won election to county government.

Tags Caroline B. Brettell, Dedman College, SMU Department of Anthropology

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Anthropologyworks: SMU’s James Kennell among Top 40 cultural anthropology dissertations

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date January 26, 2012

The blog Anthropologyworks has cited the research of SMU medical anthropologist James Kennell as one of the best 40 North American dissertations in cultural anthropology during 2011. Kennell’s “The Senses and Suffering: Medical Knowledge, Spirit Possession, and Vaccination Programs in Aja,” was written in fulfillment of his doctoral degree.

The blog is a project of the Culture in Global Affairs (CIGA) research and policy program of the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. CIGA’s mission is to promote awareness of the relevance of anthropological knowledge to contemporary issues and to enhance discussion and debate within and beyond anthropology about contemporary issues.

Kennell teaches “Health as a Human Right” and “Peoples of Africa” in the SMU Department of Anthropology.

Read about the Top 40.

EXCERPT:

Anthroworks presents its favorite 2011 North American dissertations in cultural anthropology. In compiling this list, I searched the “Dissertations International” electronic database that is available through my university library. The database includes mainly U.S. dissertations with a light sprinkling from Canada. I used the same search terms as I did in previous years.

True confession: these are my picks, and they reflect my preferences for topics — health, inequality, migration, gender, and human rights. Somebody else’s picks would look quite different. But this is the anthroworks list!

The 40 dissertations are arranged in alphabetical order according to the last name of the dissertation author. Apologies to the authors for my reduction of their published abstracts to a maximum of nine lines.

I would like to convey my congratulations to all 2011 anthropology Ph.D. recipients. I hope they go on to a successful career in — or related to — anthropology.

The Senses and Suffering: Medical Knowledge, Spirit Possession, and Vaccination Programs in Aja, by James Kennell. Southern Methodist University. Advisors: Caroline Brettell, Carolyn Sargent, Carolyn Smith-Morris, Paul Stoller.

In an Aja community of southwest Benin, multiple domains of medical knowledge and practice compete for control of illness meaning and sensory experience. Global health initiatives (vaccination and education programs), national health care structures, and Aja medico-religious practice each incorporate and manipulate the knowledge and practice of the other in order to create legitimacy and shape therapeutic trajectories. Biomedical nosology and disease prevention efforts conflict with local understandings of individual and community health concerning diseases that affect the skin. Efforts at the “sensibilisation” of the community regarding vaccinations and other global health initiatives is met with local medico-religious knowledge emphasizing a sensual experience of illness and healing for the individual and the community.

Read about the Top 40.

Tags Caroline B. Brettell, Carolyn Smith-Morris, Dedman College, James Kennell, SMU Department of Anthropology

Culture, Society & Family Researcher news SMU In The News

The Economic Times: Indian, Vietnamese immigrants ‘Americanised’ but don’t lose own identity

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date December 7, 2011

The ANSI news service has reported on the immigration research of SMU anthropology professor Caroline B. Brettell. The Dec. 7 news service article: “Indian, Vietnamese immigrants ‘Americanised’ but don’t lose own identity” has been picked up by newspapers throughout Asia, including The India Times.

Brettell is a cultural anthropologist and University Distinguished Professor in the SMU Department of Anthropology. She is an internationally recognized immigration expert, including trends of new immigration gateway cities such as Dallas, Atlanta and Minneapolis and the challenges of women immigrants. An immigrant herself, Brettell was born in Canada and became a U.S. citizen in 1993.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

Indian and Vietnamese immigrants become “Americanised” over time through social activities, but still retain their identities, say researchers after studying the two communities in Texas.

Typically, Indian immigrants came voluntarily, seeking education, jobs and economic opportunity, although some came to join family members, said Caroline B. Brettell, an anthropology professor at Dallas’ Southern Methodist University, who conducted the research on the Indians.

Generally they have high levels of education and income, and typically already speak English, she added.

Vietnamese came as refugees, primarily to escape communism and in search of freedom and democracy. More recently they’ve also come to join family members, said Deborah Reed-Danahay, Brettel’s colleague, who conducted the Vietnamese research.

The researchers say that there are a great many surface differences between these two populations, but the research revealed significant similarities in the way immigrants from both India and Vietnam engage in civic and political activities, according to a university statement.

For new Vietnamese and Indian immigrants, whether naturalized citizens or not, American identity deepens as they participate in activities, festivals and banquets at their churches, schools, temples, business and civic associations, say Brettell and Reed-Danahay.

The study results were reported in their book: “Civic Engagements: The Citizenship Practices of Indian & Vietnamese Immigrants” (Stanford University Press, 2012).

Read the full story.

Tags Caroline B. Brettell, Dedman College, SMU Department of Anthropology

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Anthropology study finds that immigrants from India and Vietnam become American over time

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date December 6, 2011

Immigrants in North Texas develop American identity by participating in ethnic community activities, then branching out to broader civic and political life

Whether contributing money to Boy Scouts, donating a statue of Gandhi for a Dallas city plaza, or successfully lobbying against flying Vietnam’s communist flag in a citywide international celebration, a new study shows that immigrants in Texas are involved in their communities.

In North Texas, immigrants from India and Vietnam develop and embrace their American identity over time — without shedding their culture of origin, as some say they should, according to a new anthropological study.

The research found that, for these groups, becoming a U.S. citizen is distinctly different from becoming American, say immigration experts Caroline B. Brettell and Deborah Reed-Danahay, the study’s authors.

Caution: Don’t impose formal standards to force integration of immigrants
From their research, Brettell and Reed-Danahay conclude that policymakers should be cautious with any attempts to integrate, assimilate or incorporate immigrants. They recommend against imposing top-down standards on how citizenship should be expressed — such as requiring full English proficiency or focusing exclusively on formal political participation.

“A key contribution of our research is its emphasis on the fact that the civic incorporation of newcomers does not necessarily mean abandoning who you are,” says Brettell, an anthropology professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

“Immigrant communities have spaces and places that are already operating as viable arenas for expressing civic and political presence and for becoming American,” she says.

Participants in the three-year study were Indian and Vietnamese immigrants in the twin North Texas cities of Dallas and Fort Worth and surrounding suburbs. The region, known as DFW, is the largest metropolitan area in Texas.

Brettell and Reed-Danahay uncovered how North Texas Vietnamese and Indian immigrants develop their identity as Americans by engaging first within their own communities, where they practice and develop citizenship skills, which they then use in a broader American context.

“We view citizenship as the ways in which immigrants participate in the civic and political life of America,” Brettell says, “so they move over time from the periphery to the core of American civic and political life.”

Authors carried out three years of oral interviews and direct observation
Brettell and Reed-Danahay report the study results in their book, “Civic Engagements: The Citizenship Practices of Indian & Vietnamese Immigrants” (Stanford University Press, 2012).

The authors interviewed 67 first-generation Indian and Vietnamese parents, many but not all of whom are naturalized U.S. citizens. They also interviewed college students in their early to mid-20s whose parents were immigrants from either India or Vietnam and who either were born in the United States or arrived as young children.

The anthropologists asked participants what it means to them to be American, Indian, Vietnamese and Asian. They also asked about citizenship and participation in political, religious and civic activities.

The authors also conducted participant observation at a variety of community events, including voluntary association meetings, fundraising and other banquets, ethnic festivals, religious ceremonies, youth group meetings and political protests.

Dallas-Fort Worth region and Texas are a unique immigrant gateway
The number of foreign-born individuals has dramatically increased in Texas during the past 40 years as the state’s economy has boomed and diversified beyond oil. Both Texas and DFW attract highly skilled and well-educated immigrants to the telecommunications, health, education, transportation and financial industries.

After Mexicans and Salvadorans, Indians and Vietnamese are the largest groups of immigrants in DFW. The 2000 Census counted 47,090 foreign-born Vietnamese and 49,669 foreign-born Indians in DFW.

Brettell and Reed-Danahay found that for the most part both Indian and Vietnamese immigrants to the region first arrived elsewhere in the United States, then moved to DFW, often settling in suburbs.

Typically, Indian immigrants came voluntarily, seeking education, jobs and economic opportunity, although some came to join family members. Generally they have high levels of education and income, and typically already speak English, says Brettell, who conducted the Indian research.

Vietnamese came as refugees, primarily to escape communism and in search of freedom and democracy. More recently they’ve also come to join family members, says Reed-Danahay, who conducted the Vietnamese research.

On the surface there are a great many differences between these two Asian immigrant populations, say the authors. But the anthropological research revealed significant similarities in the way immigrants from both India and Vietnam engage in civic and political activities.

The researchers also found that homeland politics drives Vietnamese political activities among the first generation much more than it does those of Indians. Immigrants from India attempt to downplay the regional and religious diversity that is often divisive in their homeland.

“It was very moving to get to know Vietnamese who were former refugees who had suffered so much during and after the war,” says Reed-Danahay. “And yet it was a significant finding of this study that despite the hardships of their experiences, the first generation and subsequent generations are participating in American institutions and taking leadership roles in the same ways as are Indians who arrived primarily as economic migrants.”

Immigrants report their American identity shifts, depending on context
Despite a desire to belong and overcome feelings of otherness, Indian and Vietnamese immigrants reported that fellow Americans sometimes exclude them on the basis of their accent, their skin color and their ethnic characteristics. Many Vietnamese reported prejudice in the United States against Asians.

While there hasn’t been any sweeping anti-immigrant legislation in Texas such as in California, there have been a number of bills proposed at the state level aimed at illegal immigration, as well as some ordinances at the local level.

“The discourse is so dominated by the issue of illegality that we overlook what a range of immigrants are doing and how they are contributing and becoming Americans, including the increasing importance of Asians in the political process,” Brettell says.

Other findings of the study:

First-generation immigrants viewed becoming a U.S. citizen distinct from becoming American.
Situation or context can determine identity, immigrants report. They feel American when they are at work, eating out at McDonald’s, celebrating Thanksgiving, engaged in American sports or politics, traveling with their U.S. passport, and back in their homeland, where they realize they are now different from people in their home country.
27 percent of Vietnamese fathers and 36 percent of Vietnamese mothers reported they rarely felt or identified as American, even though 76 percent of Vietnamese parents interviewed had become U.S. citizens. Some expressed that because they don’t look white, they’ll never be considered truly American. Some of the fathers had been soldiers and prisoners of war in their homeland, fleeing because of the Vietnam War.
More Vietnamese women than Indian women identify as American. Vietnamese women tend to work outside the home, while Indian women often stay at home, charged with sustaining the native culture.
Among first-generation Indian immigrants, 81 percent of fathers said they at least somewhat commonly identify themselves as American, compared to only 44 percent of mothers.
First-generation Indians and Vietnamese share ambivalence to the labels Asian and Asian American, citing vast differences between Asian countries, such as those created by historic animosities based on political repression. Their children, however, don’t reject those labels.
The children of immigrants are beginning to participate more directly in the American political process.
In DFW there are no clearly defined Vietnamese ethnic settlement enclaves, such as Little Saigon in Orange County, California. There are, however, spaces where immigrants interact, such as strip malls. Print and online ethnic newspapers are also important, particularly for Vietnamese immigrants, while radio media are important to the Indian community.
While some Americans want immigrants to speak English, the anthropologists found Vietnamese Americans who were sad their children weren’t fluent in Vietnamese.

“Both Indian and Vietnamese immigrants have learned to ‘talk the talk’ of civic engagement,” Brettell says, “as they refer to their ‘teamwork,’ ‘good neighborship,’ ‘giving back’ and ‘entering the mainstream’ — but they shape these to their own actions.” — Margaret Allen

Tags Caroline B. Brettell, Dedman College, SMU Department of Anthropology

Culture, Society & Family Economics & Statistics Researcher news SMU In The News

Dallas Morning News: Texas interstates driving economy, growth

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 22, 2011

SMU cultural anthropologist Caroline B. Brettell is quoted in the March 6, 2011 issue of the Dallas Morning News in the section “From the Front Page,” an in-depth look at the news.

The article by reporters Michael E. Young and Ryan McNeill, “Texas interstates driving economy, growth” discusses a geographic analysis of the state’s population by the Dallas Morning News and how the major interstates are driving change and urbanization.

Brettell, a professor in the SMU Department of Anthropology, comments on the new model of urbanism with multiple centers.

Full story available to DMN subscribers.

EXCERPT:

By Michael E. Young and Ryan McNeill
Dallas Morning News

… Caroline Brettell, a professor of anthropology at Southern Methodist University, said the cities came first, but the interstates helped them to grow.

Now it’s all about the nodes at the ends of those highways,” she said. “That’s where the jobs are.”

Looking across the Dallas area, she pointed out places like State Highway 114 in Irving, the corporate offices edging the Dallas North Tollway in Collin County, and the growth in upscale suburbs like Southlake.

“We’re seeing these polycentric metropolitan areas now — the new model of urbanism with multiple centers,” Brettell said. “So cities look very different. For Dallas, this is something that has happened over the last 30 years. And it’s a problem for urban cores, because the dynamism has moved out and around the city center.”

It’s the highways, she said, that link everything together.

Full story available to DMN subscribers.

Tags Caroline B. Brettell, Dedman College, SMU Department of Anthropology

Culture, Society & Family Researcher news SMU In The News

New York Times: Who Gets To Be An American?

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date September 23, 2010

EFE: “La inmigracion es una amenaza para los ciudadanos de Farmers Branch”

SMU cultural anthropologist Caroline B. Brettell is quoted in the Sept. 20, 2010 issue of “Upfront,” the news magazine for teens published jointly by The New York Times and Scholastic.

In the article “Who Gets To Be An American?” journalist Patricia Smith explores the 14th Amendment, which makes everyone born in the United States a citizen, but which is now under attack in the controversy over immigration.

Brettell, a professor in the SMU Department of Anthropology, comments on birthright citizenship in the article.

EXCERPT:

The 14th Amendment makes everyone born in the U.S. a citizen — including the children of illegal immigrants. But now, birthright citizenship is under attack.

By Patricia Smith
Ever since the 14th Amendment was passed in the aftermath of the Civil War, it’s been largely unquestioned that everyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen.
But, as the national debate over illegal immigration intensifies in an election year, birthright citizenship is being seriously questioned for the first time in almost 150 years.

“This surfaces every once in a while as part of a bigger debate — it’s usually more of a fringe discussion,” says Audrey Singer of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “What’s different this time is that people in Congress are talking about it.”

The Amendment was adopted in 1868 to ensure the citizenship of American-born former slaves and their children.

Opponents of birthright citizenship say it encourages continued illegal immigration. They contend that illegal immigrants are not under U.S. jurisdiction, as the Amendment specifies, and therefore their American-born children should not automatically be citizens.

“If you are an illegal immigrant, we clearly have not given you permission to reside here,” says Rosemary Jenks of NumbersUSA, a group that favors decreased immigration. “You are still subject to the jurisdiction of your own country.” …

… Some Republicans worry that the issue could backfire in the long term. “This type of position may help you win a few elections,” says Alfonso Aguilar of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, a group that tries to draw Hispanics to the Republican Party. “But you are damaging relations with the Latino community.”

The U.S. isn’t alone in offering birthright citizenship; Canada and most Latin American countries, including Brazil and Mexico, do so. But it’s much less common in Europe and Asia, where citizenship more frequently depends on whether a parent is a citizen.

“Birthright citizenship is particularly characteristic of countries in the ‘New World’ — settler societies that wanted people to come,” notes Caroline Brettell, an anthropologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

The 14th Amendment has played a critical role in the country’s history, says historian Gary Gerstle of Vanderbilt University.

Read the full story.

Tags Caroline B. Brettell, Dedman College, Faith G. Nibbs, SMU Department of Anthropology

Culture, Society & Family

Farmers Branch, Tx.: Case study shows immigrants seen as threat to white, middle-class “American” identity

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 6, 2010

Who belongs in America?

Immigration has sparked a raging national debate about that question — including in the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch, Texas, the first U.S. city to adopt an ordinance requiring renters to prove they are legal residents.

Contrary to what many believe, however, race isn’t the only driving reason that some white, middle-class people feel threatened by immigrants, according to a new analysis by anthropologists at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Some white, middle-class people also perceive immigrants who are settling in their suburban communities as a threat to their class status and to their very identity as Americans, say anthropologists Caroline B. Brettell and Faith G. Nibbs.

Immigrants — with cultures and traditions different from white suburbanites — are viewed by some as an assault on long-standing symbols of American nationality, the researchers say. Those symbols include middle-class values and tastes, and the perception that Americans are patriotic and law-abiding, say the researchers, both in the SMU Department of Anthropology.

“For many whites, American identity is wrapped up with being suburban and middle class, and when they see immigrants changing their communities and potentially threatening their class status, they react with anti-immigrant legislation,” says Brettell.

Class and culture
It’s true that for some whites, immigrants can represent competition for economic security and scarce resources, say Brettell and Nibbs — but in the suburbs they are also seen as a threat to the white, middle-class concept of “social position.”

Because of that, Brettell and Nibbs argue for greater attention to class and culture in the study of contemporary immigration into the United States.

The anthropologists base their conclusion on a close analysis of Farmers Branch, a suburb of almost 28,000 people. Farmers Branch made news in 2006 as the first U.S. city to adopt an ordinance requiring that apartment managers document tenants as legal residents.

For their analysis, the researchers looked at newspaper articles and blogs, conducted a lengthy interview with a key City Council member, carried out background historical research and analyzed U.S. Census data.

The research has been accepted for publication in the journal International Migration in an article titled “Immigrant Suburban Settlement and the ‘Threat’ to Middle Class Status and Identity: The Case of Farmers Branch, Texas.”

Flooding into suburbia
New immigrants to the United States are settling in major gateway cities like Dallas and making their homes directly in middle-class suburbs, say Brettell and Nibbs.

These suburbs — once called the “bourgeois utopia” where middle-class values triumph — are populated by white people who decades before fled the central cities to escape poor housing, deteriorating schools, and racial and ethnic diversity, the researchers say.

But when immigrants and white suburbs mix, the result can be explosive — as in the case of Farmers Branch. Whites view their hometown changing. And the changes feel very foreign to them — new religious institutions, ethnic strip-shopping malls, signs in languages other than English, and bilingual programs for education, health care and law-enforcement programs.

“Free and white”
The historic roots of Farmers Branch lie in a land grant designed to draw “free and white” inhabitants to the area in the 1850s, say the researchers.

Farmers Branch grew to 17,500 by 1970, and at that time there were 320 Hispanic surnames in the city. By 2000, however, the Hispanic population had grown to more than one-third of the total. By 2008, Hispanics were the largest demographic group, with 46.7 percent of the population.

Today, like many such cities, Farmers Branch sees its minority, elderly and low-income population growing faster than the national average, say Brettell and Nibbs.

The number of owner-occupied homes in Farmers Branch has fallen dramatically, from 87 percent in 1960 to 66 percent in 2000. Raw median income in 2000 was below what it was in 1970 dollars, adjusted against 2008 dollars, say the researchers.

“If you are a family with options, would you move into this neighborhood if presented with these figures?” asks Mayor Tim O’Hare in the journal article. O’Hare led the fight for the renter’s ordinance.

“Rule of Law”
Brettell and Nibbs say that white suburbanites have also invoked the “Rule of Law” in Farmers Branch and elsewhere.

“As the formulation of laws and their enforcement are disproportionately unavailable to ethnic minorities, and completely inaccessible to undocumented immigrants, the principle of Rule of Law has become a convenient weapon for the Farmers Branch middle class in their fight for status and the status quo,” say Brettell and Nibbs in the article. “Add to this a bit of the legacy of Texas frontier mentality and patriotism and you have a line drawn in the sand by those who stand for the Rule of Law as something absolutely fundamental to American identity and hence perceive illegal immigrants as a threat to that identity.”

In that way, the “Rule of Law” is a tool to exclude unauthorized immigrants and attempt to legislate a certain quality of life, such as English-only communication, as well as proof of citizenship to rent a dwelling, apply for food stamps or get school financial aid, say the researchers.

“Everyone is looking at race but not at class in the study of immigrants, and particularly in anti-immigrant backlash,” Brettell says. “We add to this literature the analysis of ‘Rule of Law’ as a newly rhetorical device that excludes illegal immigrants. Our article offers a new way of looking at this issue.”

Caroline B. Brettell is University Distinguished Professor in the SMU Department of Anthropology and Faith G. Nibbs is a doctoral candidate at SMU. — Margaret Allen

Tags Caroline B. Brettell, Dedman College, Faith G. Nibbs, SMU Department of Anthropology

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