• Title/Summary/Keyword: immigrant churches

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The Role of Immigrant Churches in the Ethnic Socialization of Korean American Youths

  • Kang, Hyeyoung
    • Child Studies in Asia-Pacific Contexts
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    • v.7 no.1
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    • pp.39-55
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    • 2017
  • This study explored the role of Korean immigrant churches as a social context for Korean American youths, with a specific focus on its role in ethnic socialization. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 23 Korean American young adults. The results show that such churches serve as a salient social context for Korean American youths in which day-to-day lives are deeply integrated. Specifically, they serve as a salient context for coethnic peer relationships and family interactions. Moreover, Korean immigrant churches play a salient role as an agent of enculturation for Korean American youths by engaging them in cultural socialization, constructing and transmitting immigrant discourse, and providing a coethnic community. Taken as whole, findings suggest a distinct and salient role of immigrant churches in the lives of Korean American youths and highlight the importance of studying the social context specific to the children of immigrants.

Understanding a Unique Aspect of Intergenerational Conflict among Korean American Adolescents

  • Lee Jee-Sook
    • International Journal of Human Ecology
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    • v.6 no.1
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    • pp.75-86
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    • 2005
  • This study examines unique manifestations of intergenerational conflict related to the acculturation process of immigrant families. No scale that measured the acculturation aspect of intergenerational conflict exsited. Thus, a new scale was developed to investigate this unique aspect among Korean American adolescents. The study design was cross-sectional, and employed a convenience sampling method. The participants were Korean American adolescents of junior and senior high school age, 14 to18 years old. The study was conducted at eleven Korean churches and one hakwon (private out-of-school studies .institute) in Fairfax County, Virginia. Korean American adolescents expressed that the issues related to education, such as academic pressures and high expectations, caused intergenerational conflict most frequently. Unlike findings from previous studies, the participants indicated that language differences between parents and children rarely caused intergenerational conflict. Contrary to previous findings, none of the characteristics variables, such as age, gender, length of residency and language preference, were significantly correlated with this unique conflict. This study provides a rare opportunity to enhance our understanding on how Korean American adolescents interact with their immigrant parents.

A New Challenge to Korean American Religious Identity: Cultural Crisis in Korean American Christianity

  • Ro, Young-Chan
    • Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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    • v.18
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    • pp.53-79
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    • 2004
  • This paper explores the relationship between Korean immigrants to the United States and their religious identity from the cultural point of view. Most scholarly studies on Korean immigrants in the United States have been dominated by sociological approach and ethnic studies in examining the social dimension of the Korean immigrant communities while neglecting issues concerning their religious identity and cultural heritage. Most Korean immigrants to America attend Korean churches regardless their religious affiliation before they came to America. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is the fact that Korean church has provided a necessary social service for the newly arrived immigrants. Korean churches have been able to play a key role in the life of Korean immigrants. Korean immigrants, however, have shown a unique aspect regarding their religious identity compared to other immigrants communities in the United States. America is a nation of immigrants, coming from different parts of the world. Each immigrant community has brought their unique cultural heritage and religious persuasion. Asian immigrants, for example, brought their own traditional religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism. People from the Middle Eastern countries brought Islamic faith while European Jews brought the Jewish tradition. In these immigrant communities, religious identity and cultural heritage were homo genously harmonized. Jewish people built synagogue and taught Hebrew, Jewish history, culture, and faith. In this case, synagogue was not only the house of worship for Jews but also the center for learning Jewish history, culture, faith, and language. In short, Jewish cultural history was intimately related to Jewish religious history; for Jewish immigrants, learning their social and political history was indeed identical with leaning of their religious history. The same can be said about the relationship between Indian community and Hinduism. Hindu temples serve as the center of Indian immigrantsin providing the social, cultural, and spiritual functions. Buddhist temples, for that matter, serve the same function to the people from the Asian countries. Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Tibetans, and Thais have brought their respective Buddhist traditions to America and practice and maintain both their religious faith and cultural heritage. Middle Eastern people, for example, have brought Islamic faith to the United States, and Mosques have become the center for learning their language, practicing their faith, and maintaining their cultural heritage. Korean immigrants, unlike any other immigrant group, have brought Christianity, which is not a Korean traditional religion but a Western religion they received in 18th and 19th centuries from the West and America, back to the United States, and church has become the center of their lives in America. In this context, Koreans and Korean-Americans have a unique situation in which they practice Christianity as their religion but try to maintain their non-Christian cultural heritage. For the Korean immigrants, their religious identity and cultural identity are not the same. Although Korean church so far has provides the social and religious functions to fill the need of Korean immigrants, but it may not be able to become the most effective institution to provide and maintain Korean cultural heritage. In this respect, Korean churches must be able to open to traditional Korean religions or the religions of Korean origin to cultivate and nurture Korean cultural heritage.

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Public Health Center Service Experiences and Needs among Immigrant Women in South Korea

  • Chae, Duckhee;Kim, Hyunlye;Seo, Minjeong;Asami, Keiko;Doorenbos, Ardith
    • Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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    • v.33 no.4
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    • pp.385-395
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    • 2022
  • Purpose: To support implementation of comprehensive, person-centered healthcare, this study aimed to explore immigrant women's public health center (PHC) service experiences and needs while considering Photovoice's feasibility for this purpose. Methods: This qualitative study included 15 marriage-based immigrant women. Participants were recruited from churches and multicultural family support centers using purposive and snowball sampling. Data were collected through four focus group interviews and were subjected to inductive content analysis. Results: Five categories of experiences were identified: language barriers, hectic environment, affordable and practical primary healthcare, feeling ignored and discriminated against, and feeling frustrated. In addition, five categories of needs were identified: language assistance services, ease of access, healthcare across the lifespan, expansion of affordable healthcare, and being accepted as they are. This study provides preliminary evidence that the Photovoice approach can facilitate the interview process in a qualitative inquiry involving participants with limited ability to express their perspectives in the researchers' language. Conclusion: Study findings highlight the need to implement institutional policy and procedural changes within PHCs and to provide culturally competent, personcentered care for South Korea's marriage-based immigrant women and other ethnic minority populations. The findings also provide evidence-based direction for PHC service planning.

Church Activities and Identity Problems of the 2nd-Generation Korean Immigrants in Atlanta, GA (재미한인2세들의 교회 활동과 정체성 문제 - 미국 조지아 주 애틀랜타의 한인2세를 중심으로 -)

  • Lee, Jeon
    • Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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    • v.14 no.5
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    • pp.573-586
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    • 2008
  • Many studies of Korean immigrants in America reveal that about 70% of them attend a Korean church. Within Korean immigrant churches members exchange information and advice while they maintain their cultural traditions and ethnic norms. Recently some 2nd-generation Koreans have gradually started their own Korean congregations, known as English ministries(EMs) while some of them leave their Korean Christian churches. The future of Korean ethnic society in America depends much on the extent of 2nd-generation Koreans' retention of their ethnic culture.

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Social Support and Acculturative Stress in Migrant Workers (외국인 노동자의 사회적 지지와 문화적응 스트레스)

  • Lee, Soon-Hee;Lee, Young-Joo;Kim, Sook-Young;Kim, Shin-Jeong
    • Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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    • v.39 no.6
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    • pp.899-910
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    • 2009
  • Purpose: The purpose of this study was to collect basic data on social support and acculturative stress in migrant workers. Methods: Between August, 2007 and January, 2008 171 immigrant workers completed data collection using a questionnaire. Workers were recruited from 2 churches, one in Seoul and the other in Gyeonggi Province. Mean and standard deviation, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficients and Stepwise multiple regression were used to analyze the data. Results: The average score for social support was 3.73 (${\pm}0.65$) and for acculturative stress, 2.52 (${\pm}0.65$). There were significant differences acculturative stress according to gender (t=2.152, p=.033), kind of job (t=2.597, p=.040), and have community or not (t=2.899, p=.005). There was a significant negative correlation between social support and acculturative stress (r=-.270, p=.001). Factors influencing acculturative stress were existence of participants having a community of people from their home country or not ($R^2=.151$, p=.002). Conclusion: More studies are needed to identify the variables that influence acculturative stress in immigrant workers.