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Immigrants' Continuing Bonds with their Native Culture: Assimilation Analysis of Three Interviews

American University in Cairo, Egypt, hhenry{at}aucegypt.edu

William B. Stiles

Miami University

Mia W. Biran

Miami University

James K. Mosher

Miami University

Meredith Glick Brinegar

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Prashant Banerjee

Miami University

Three case studies of immigrants to the US from China, Iraq, and Mexico were used to build a theory of acculturation in immigrants by integrating the continuing bonds model, which describes mourning in bereavement with the assimilation model, which describes psychological change in psychotherapy. Participants were interviewed about the loss of their native culture and their life in the US. One participant had not fully assimilated the loss of her native culture, but used her continuing bonds with her culture as a source of solace. Another participant used his continuing bonds with his culture as a source of solace, but these bonds had become a source of conflict with the host culture. The third participant had largely assimilated the loss of his native culture such that the voices of this culture were linked via meaning bridges with the voices of the host culture, and the continuing bonds were resources that helped him in his land of immigration.

Key Words: acculturation • assimilation model • continuing bonds • immigration • loss • mourning

Transcultural Psychiatry, Vol. 46, No. 2, 257-284 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1363461509105816


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