This Senior Seminar on Multicultural and Cross Cultural Assignment | Online Assignment

Senior Seminar Multicultural Issues in Psychology

Final Thesis Paper Outline

This Senior Seminar on Multicultural and Cross Cultural Psychology has focused on the immigrant experience of racial/ethnic groups in the US.  This paper is your final thesis paper, and should reflect the expertise that you have developed about the particular racial/ethinic group that you have chosen to study.

Here is the content of the expertise that I want you to demonstrate. Remember I am not specifying the order.  You can cover these issues in any order you want.  For example, you could talk about a very specific issue in the community that exists and is challenging right now, that could be traced to the origins of the immigration of that group (forced migration and isolation in reservations and the health disparities in Native American groups; slaves as property and its continuing effects in the marginalization of peoples of African descent;  brutal gangs in the native country that have managed to strangle many communities from that country today in the US etc.)

• Knowledge about the native country/community that this racial/ethnic group originally migrated from. (A lot of the section will come from the book that you read and the interview that you conducted)
  • What was the context of the original wave of migration from that country? What was the political/ economic/social situation in the home country at the time of the major immigration?
  • What is the approximate timeline for their migration? When did it start? How did it continue? Were there significant issues happening at the time in the US that facilitated or were barriers to immigration?
• What was the experience of the immigrants when they first arrived? (Again, here is where the book you read and the interviews have rich information if you choose to mine them)
  • What were dome of the challenges that they experienced? Why?
  • Are any of those factors/issues still operating? Have things changed? Why? And how?
  • How would tie the ‘culture’ of the immigrant group in question to some of the barriers or challenges that they were/are facing?
  • What are some of the cultural factors that contribute to the resilience of this immigrant group? In what ways are they common across all immigrant groups or are some specific things unique to this immigrant group?

• What is the footprint of this particular immigrant group in this country? (I have put up a lot of suggestions for sources; the Census Bureau has a lot of publications about specific groups; Pew Research Center is a good source as well)
  • Approximately how many members of that ethnic/racial group currently reside in the US?
  • Where are they mostly located?
  • Are they widely distributed across the country or do they still predominantly found in the areas where the first waves of immigration occurred?
  • What are some of the demographic characteristics?
    • Education, income
    • Life expectancy, chronic health conditions and disparities
    • Mental Health and disparities

• What are some of the specific issues facing this community/racial group today? (The more you use examples from the text and draw paralells to the community you are studying, the more structured this section will be. I am looking to see the ways you are applying the concepts and models that we have been studying)
  • Social, political, economic?
  • Pick ONE issue that is significant challenge for this group (institutionalized racism or discrimination, “being the member of a model minority”, educational disparities, incarceration rates, chronic disease burden etc.) and discuss it in detail. What are some of the causes for this particular issue in this particular community?
  • If you could go to Bill Gates and he was willing to listen to your proposal about how to solve this one specific issue, what would you say to him?
  • Remember, he is an enormously practical man, he is not an ideologue, so he is not going to listen to a rant, and neither will I. I am looking for you to be creative and think of an approach that is data-based and could work, if the right combination of people and resources could be brought to bear on it.

• Final Reflections piece: (this section is not graded so be honest, thoughtful, and constructive! This course really matters to me, and I fought to have it in our curriculum so I am always looking to make it better) (Here is where you should look back on the reflections that you wrote! You made some very thoughtful and perceptive observations through the chapters. Use them!!)
  • What are three (or four of the major take ways for YOU from this course?
  • What are some of the things that you learned about the development of your own identity as a function of thinking about the immigrant experience?
  • Has it changed your way of thinking about some things? If so what?
  • What did you learn that you were not really aware of before?
  • What did you NOT learn that you wished had been addressed? Or addressed more deeply?
  • What components of the course did you gain the most from?
  • If you were to teach this course yourself, how would you redesign it? What would you add? What would you take out or replace?
  • Complete this sentence and make it part of your final summative paragraph. “Moving forward, taking this course has made me ……….