Browsing by Author "Chen, Juan"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    A cultural approach to understanding and working with Chinese migrants in New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Clinical Psychology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2010) Chen, Juan
    When people migrate to a new country, they experience changes in many areas of life. Migrants are faced with the challenges of making sense of as well as dealing with these changes in life. This research is interested in understanding the experiences of Chinese migrants in New Zealand as well as exploring how to conduct 'psychological intervention‘ work with recent Chinese migrants to deal with the challenges associated with migration. This research consists of two parts. The first part is concerned with developing a better understanding of the way Chinese migrants make sense of their experiences after migrating to New Zealand. In this part, focus groups were held and a discursive approach was used to analyze participants' accounts. Findings from this part show that negotiating meanings for "migration" and "fitting in" is the central process for Chinese migrants to make sense of their migratory experiences in New Zealand. In this meaning-making process, Chinese cultural meanings provide useful discursive resources for Chinese migrants to draw upon to better understand their experiences of migrating from China to New Zealand. Chinese sayings, such as "fish or bear‘s paw", "loss are accompanied by gain", "life is about negotiating loss and gain", are used by Chinese migrants in ways that allow them more flexibility in constructing their experiences in New Zealand. More importantly, adopting a dialectical sense-making embedded in traditional Chinese cultural knowledge is helpful for participants to transfer their discursive constructions from negative to positive aspects of their migration experiences. The second part of this research involves exploration and application of a culturally appropriate 'psychological intervention‘ with recent Chinese migrants in transition from living in China to living in New Zealand. This part draws upon the findings from the first part of the research. In the second part, two groups of participants were invited to attend a three-session group intervention. Useful discursive constructions around flexible meanings of "migration" and "fitting in" found in the first part of the research were introduced to participants. A discursive analytical approach was used to observe how participants take up these introduced meanings and to examine the discursive changes throughout the three group sessions. The second part of the research illustrates that participants took up the introduced meanings of "migration" and "fitting in" as a flexible process, and use these to further co-construct helpful meanings to negotiate their 'problematic‘ experiences. In all, this research articulates the importance of cultural meanings and cultural ways of making sense of migratory experiences by Chinese migrants. It also shows the importance of building a shared experience, making use of Chinese cultural meanings, and taking a social constructionist approach in psychological intervention work with Chinese migrants. The implications of this research are discussed in terms of further research on migrants' experiences and how to conduct 'psychological interventions' with Chinese migrants.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Understandings of food and healing systems among Chinese migrants in New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Psychology at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2006) Chen, Juan
    Health and illness are a major concern of peoples' lives in the contemporary western world. The understandings and practices of health and illness vary across cultures and societies. Food and healing systems, among the most important characteristics of culture, are closely related to health and illness. People seek various ways to deal with food and healing to maintain health and treat illness. In modern western cultures, western scientific knowledge dominates peoples' understanding of health and illness, and also their health-related practices. Migrants to western societies from non-western cultures bring with them their traditional understandings and ways of dealing with food and healing systems that may differ from the prevailing knowledge of health and illness in western culture. Living in a new culture and society, migrants are faced with the challenges of making sense of the multiple meanings of health and illness available, and making sense of the ways that they practice health and illness in a different social context. The current study provided an analysis of how Chinese migrants discursively constructed their understandings of dietary practices and healing systems use in New Zealand. Semi-structured interviews were used to produce accounts for analysis. Foucauldian discourse analysis was adopted to examine the relationships between discourse and practice, and between discourse and subjectivity. The analysis shows that Chinese migrants draw upon both traditional Chinese knowledge and western scientific knowledge in complex ways to make sense of their mixed practices of traditional Chinese diet and western diet, and also their mixed use of traditional Chinese medicine and western medicine in New Zealand. The notion of balance in traditional Chinese knowledge is key to their understandings and practices of health and illness. "Balance" is used not only to retain their traditional ways of dealing with food and healing, but also to resist the dominant status of western scientific knowledge in understanding health and illness in western culture. Meanwhile, Chinese participants position themselves as being able to hold a balance between different cultures, suggesting that they practice a traditional Chinese way of being – living a harmonious and balanced life with their social and natural environments within a new social context. Further, as an ethnic minority group, Chinese migrants draw upon the dominant discourse regarding race relations in New Zealand to understand themselves (Chinese people) as inferior to others (white European people) as a social group. However, traditional Chinese understandings offer them possibilities to resist being positioned as inferior through exercising power discursively. The findings from this research raise questions about how health promotion programs in western countries should address migrants coming from non-western cultures. The implications of the research are also discussed in terms of how discourse health research with ethnic minority migrants should be conducted in western countries.