Emotions of Immigrant Minorities: Evidence on the Role of Language and Cross-Cultural Interactions in the Emotional Experiences of Immigrant Minorities
Chairs: Batja Mesquita, Alba Jasini & Graziela N. M. Dekeyser (KULeuven) This symposium showcases empirical evidence from four different studies highlighting the role of language and cross-cultural interactions in the everyday emotional experiences of immigrants and immigrant-origin minorities. The studies use diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives to understand the phenomena of emotional competence (i.e., the extent to which immigrant minorities can distinguish between their different emotions) and emotional fit (i.e., the extent to which immigrant minorities attune their emotions to their socio-cultural context).
The first talk examines whether multilingual immigrant minority children differ from the monolingual majority culture children in their emotional competence, and whether these differences can be explained by minorities’ language proficiency and exposure to the majority culture. This study made use of survey data from more than 900 primary school children of minority and majority background in Flanders. The findings show that fluent multilingual minority children are better in differentiating between emotions compared to monolingual and less fluent multilingual peers (i.e., showed higher emotional competence) independent of their exposure to majority society.
The second talk zooms in the cross-cultural relationships to elucidate the processes through which immigrant minorities’ emotions come to fit the majority culture emotion norm, and the consequence such fit may have for immigrant minorities’ inclusion. The authors examine longitudinal associations between the cultural fit of emotions and friendships with majority in a representative sample of immigrant minority youth in Flanders. The findings demonstrate that the emotions of immigrant minority youth increasingly fit the majority culture emotion norms when they have majority friends; and that their emotional fit predicts their majority friendships over time.
The third talk focuses on immigrant minority youths’ emotional fit with both the majority and minority cultures and sheds light on whether the immigrant minority youth actively switch between the normative emotional patterns of these two cultures depending on the cultural context of their social interactions. In addition, it also examines whether such emotional frame-switching affect their wellbeing within the specific contexts. The findings draw from data collected in a daily diary study with 193 immigrant minority students in three secondary schools in Flanders. The findings show that immigrant minority youth have higher emotional fit with the majority cultural norm in majority-dominated contexts, such as school (vs. home context) and during interactions with majority peers (vs. immigrant minority peers). Moreover, their emotional fit with the majority culture in positive interactions is positively related to their wellbeing at school. The fourth talk sheds light on the different aspects of emotional descriptions that recent immigrants report when they recall interactions with majority others vs. immigrant minority others. This study makes use of language analyses (e.g., open- and closed-vocabulary approaches) to examine emotional narratives of everyday interactions collected in a study with 100 Turkish immigrants in Belgium. The study goes beyond the emotion ratings heavily used in emotion research by providing valuable insight into the most prevalent themes in immigrants’ emotional narratives, such as the types of situations they most often report and the aspects of the emotional experiences they most often focus on (i.e., the social relationships, the bodily experiences, etc.).
How do I feel? Multilingualism and emotional competence among early adolescent children Graziela N. M. Dekeyser1, Jean-Marc Dewaele2, Jozefien De Leersnyder3 1Education & Society, KU Leuven, Belgium; 2Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication, University of Londen, UK; 3Center for Social and Cultural Psychology, KU Leuven, Belgium
Do minorities’ friendships with majority and their emotional fit with majority culture influence each other over time? Alba Jasini1&2, Jozefien De Leersnyder1, Eva Ceulemans1, Matteo Gagliolo2, Batja Mesquita1 1University of Leuven 2Université Libre de Bruxelles
Emotional frame-switching of immigrant-origin minority adolescents and its implications for well-being Yeasle Lee1, Alba Jasini1&2, Katie Hoemann1, Batja Mesquita1, 1University of Leuven 2Université Libre de Bruxelles
Deconstructing emotional narratives of Turkish migrants in interactions with Belgian majority culture members: A mixed-method study Rüya Su Şencan, Katie Hoemann & Batja Mesquita University of Leuven
