WEBVTT - What Is the Immigrant Paradox?

0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:04.320
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,

0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:10.560
<v Speaker 1>Hey brain Stuff Lauren vogle bam here. For over a century,

0:00:10.600 --> 0:00:13.760
<v Speaker 1>America has been described as a melting pot in which

0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:17.520
<v Speaker 1>immigrants from a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds slowly

0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:22.680
<v Speaker 1>similar together, melding into an all American stew But is

0:00:22.760 --> 0:00:25.520
<v Speaker 1>that really the way it works, or even how it

0:00:25.600 --> 0:00:29.560
<v Speaker 1>should work. Is total assimilation the only way to be

0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:33.919
<v Speaker 1>an American? And is it healthy for individuals to abandon

0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:37.120
<v Speaker 1>their cultural heritage in whole or in part in order

0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:40.760
<v Speaker 1>to adopt the customs of their new home. But we

0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:43.680
<v Speaker 1>spoke with says Schwartz, a professor of public health sciences

0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:46.760
<v Speaker 1>at the University of Miami, who believes that it's time

0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:51.280
<v Speaker 1>to shelve the melting pot metaphor a Schwartz studies ac culturation,

0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:54.040
<v Speaker 1>which is the process by which a person's cultural sense

0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:56.760
<v Speaker 1>of self changes, as when you moved to a new

0:00:56.800 --> 0:01:00.280
<v Speaker 1>country or are raised in an immigrant home, and the

0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:04.440
<v Speaker 1>effects of a culturation on physical and mental health. It

0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:08.080
<v Speaker 1>turns out that assimilation is only one type of acculturation,

0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:11.880
<v Speaker 1>and that fully assimilated Americans have some of the worst

0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:16.199
<v Speaker 1>health outcomes. Immigrant families are actually most likely to thrive

0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:18.840
<v Speaker 1>in America if they embrace aspects of both their native

0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:23.160
<v Speaker 1>culture and their adoptive land. Public health researchers like Schwartz

0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:27.880
<v Speaker 1>call it the immigrant paradox. He said, there's a whole

0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:31.319
<v Speaker 1>literature that suggests that foreign born Americans are doing better

0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:35.240
<v Speaker 1>than US born individuals on many different health indicators, heart health,

0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:39.640
<v Speaker 1>weight and obesity, diet, depression, anxiety, substance use, you name it.

0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:46.520
<v Speaker 1>So what are the alternatives to assimilation? And there's an

0:01:46.520 --> 0:01:49.560
<v Speaker 1>old joke that's well known in Europe. What do you

0:01:49.600 --> 0:01:52.640
<v Speaker 1>call a person who speaks two languages bilingual? What do

0:01:52.680 --> 0:01:55.440
<v Speaker 1>you call a person who only speaks one language American?

0:01:56.840 --> 0:01:59.960
<v Speaker 1>Schwartz said. In the United States, unlike a lot of

0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:03.200
<v Speaker 1>countries in the world, we actively discourage people from having

0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:07.440
<v Speaker 1>multiple cultural identities. We just want people to be American.

0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:11.520
<v Speaker 1>Even the fact that we equate a culturation and assimilation

0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:14.040
<v Speaker 1>says a lot about our culture and how we think

0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:17.959
<v Speaker 1>people should behave. However, it is important to note that

0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:21.880
<v Speaker 1>the culturation is a two way street. Discriminatory behavior based

0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:24.919
<v Speaker 1>on an immigrants race ethnicity by the receiving country can

0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:27.440
<v Speaker 1>make it much harder for immigrants to achieve healthy by

0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:32.760
<v Speaker 1>cultural integration. Traditionally, there's been an assumption that the ac

0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:36.280
<v Speaker 1>culturation process in the United States ran in a straight line.

0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:40.359
<v Speaker 1>At one end of the spectrum stood the recently arrived immigrant,

0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:44.040
<v Speaker 1>still carrying around the language, traditions, and customs of the

0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:48.400
<v Speaker 1>so called old country. But as the immigrant moved along

0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:52.840
<v Speaker 1>the line over time, they'd slowly discard their foreignness as

0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:58.800
<v Speaker 1>they gradually acquired language and customs of America. But starting

0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:02.160
<v Speaker 1>in the nineteen eighties, researchers began to question this straight

0:03:02.200 --> 0:03:06.320
<v Speaker 1>line assimilation assumption. Psychologist John Barry came up with a

0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:11.680
<v Speaker 1>pioneering model that showed four different responses or strategies, including assimilation,

0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:14.920
<v Speaker 1>that immigrants used to navigate life in their new home.

0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:19.560
<v Speaker 1>So first you've got assimilation, but that being that you're

0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:22.960
<v Speaker 1>willing to discard your culture of origin and fully identify

0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:27.360
<v Speaker 1>with the new culture. The sort of opposite is separation,

0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:30.720
<v Speaker 1>wherein you hold onto your original culture at all costs

0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:35.680
<v Speaker 1>and don't want to adopt the new culture. Then there's marginalization,

0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:38.840
<v Speaker 1>in which you don't identify with either your heritage culture

0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:43.200
<v Speaker 1>or the new one. It's a rare situation. And finally

0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:48.240
<v Speaker 1>there's integration, sometimes called biculturalism. You want to maintain a

0:03:48.280 --> 0:03:51.720
<v Speaker 1>strong connection with your heritage culture while interacting with and

0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:56.520
<v Speaker 1>acquiring traits from the new culture. According to Schwartz, there's

0:03:56.640 --> 0:04:00.200
<v Speaker 1>strong evidence that the assimilation strategy is bad for your health.

0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:04.280
<v Speaker 1>The worst psychological effects of assimilation are felt by second

0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:07.760
<v Speaker 1>generation Americans, children of immigrants who were either born in

0:04:07.800 --> 0:04:11.360
<v Speaker 1>America or raised here from a young age. Second generation

0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:14.320
<v Speaker 1>kids are sometimes so eager to fit in that they

0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:17.200
<v Speaker 1>turn their backs on their parents customs and traditions entirely.

0:04:18.080 --> 0:04:22.040
<v Speaker 1>The Shwarts explained, they basically reject their family's culture, and

0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:25.200
<v Speaker 1>that tends to produce pretty negative results, higher rates of

0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:30.560
<v Speaker 1>anxiety and depression, substance abuse, and worse family relationships. The

0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:33.640
<v Speaker 1>best psychological and health outcomes, on the other hand, are

0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:38.120
<v Speaker 1>achieved by individuals who embrace by culturalism, a balanced integration

0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:42.559
<v Speaker 1>of their heritage and received cultures. Schwartz says that people

0:04:42.600 --> 0:04:45.599
<v Speaker 1>who are able to comfortably blend their native and acquired

0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:49.400
<v Speaker 1>cultures have quote much better outcomes in terms of higher

0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:53.880
<v Speaker 1>self esteem, lower depression, lower anxiety, and better family relationships.

0:04:54.880 --> 0:04:58.640
<v Speaker 1>Immigrants who learned to successfully inhabit two cultural worlds are

0:04:58.680 --> 0:05:02.000
<v Speaker 1>the same people who draw of the immigrant paradox, in

0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:06.159
<v Speaker 1>which Americans born outside the US achieve significantly better physical

0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:09.080
<v Speaker 1>and mental health upcomes compared to their native born or

0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:15.440
<v Speaker 1>assimilated neighbors. But why is this? Diet is one simple explanation,

0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:19.000
<v Speaker 1>says Schwartz, because immigrant families are more likely to prepare

0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:22.039
<v Speaker 1>home cooked meals than the typical American family, which tends

0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:24.800
<v Speaker 1>to eat out a lot and consume more processed foods.

0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:29.159
<v Speaker 1>But there are also significant psychological factors at play. The

0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:31.440
<v Speaker 1>most important has to do with the values of American

0:05:31.480 --> 0:05:36.000
<v Speaker 1>culture versus just about everybody else. A short said, the

0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:40.479
<v Speaker 1>US consistently ranks as the most individualistic country in the world.

0:05:40.920 --> 0:05:43.880
<v Speaker 1>We're more self reliant and less reliant on other people

0:05:44.040 --> 0:05:47.320
<v Speaker 1>than basically any other country on the planet. So most

0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:50.280
<v Speaker 1>people who come here from other places are more collectivist

0:05:50.360 --> 0:05:54.960
<v Speaker 1>than we are. Let's break that down. What does collectivism

0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:58.719
<v Speaker 1>look like as a cultural value. It stresses the importance

0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:01.760
<v Speaker 1>of family above all else. It places an emphasis on

0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:04.320
<v Speaker 1>the greater good and doing what's best for the community,

0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:07.719
<v Speaker 1>not just yourself, and it's a less competitive way to

0:06:07.760 --> 0:06:11.120
<v Speaker 1>look at the world. Schwartz says that cultural values that

0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:14.760
<v Speaker 1>promote close knit families and selfless service can protect against

0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:17.520
<v Speaker 1>a lot of the mental health issues that plague many Americans.

0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:21.080
<v Speaker 1>He said, there's a reason why we have so much

0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:25.680
<v Speaker 1>anxiety because we're so highly individualistic and competitive. We have

0:06:25.760 --> 0:06:29.000
<v Speaker 1>to compete against other people for everything, and if you

0:06:29.080 --> 0:06:31.640
<v Speaker 1>can't keep up, there's less of a support system ready

0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:34.320
<v Speaker 1>and waiting to help you. In this country. When we

0:06:34.360 --> 0:06:38.240
<v Speaker 1>talk about helping other people, some people want to shout socialism.

0:06:38.279 --> 0:06:40.440
<v Speaker 1>I think that's one of the issues that we have.

0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:48.280
<v Speaker 1>Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by

0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:50.440
<v Speaker 1>Tyler Kleine. For more on this and lots of other

0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:53.800
<v Speaker 1>curious topics, visit house toffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is

0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:56.400
<v Speaker 1>production of I Heart Radio or more podcasts My heart

0:06:56.440 --> 0:06:59.240
<v Speaker 1>Radio visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:11.840
<v Speaker 1>wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M