Hispanos en el mundo

Emociones y desplazamientos históricos, viajes y migraciones

Danae Gallo González, Mirjam Leuzinger, Verena Dolle, Danae Gallo González, Mirjam Leuzinger, Verena Dolle

• Editorial: De Gruyter
• Año: 2021
• ISBN del libro electrónico: 9783110727784
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Literatura
• Categoría: Crítica literaria europea

Este volumen examina la hasta hoy poco tratada imbricación entre la emoción y el desplazamiento de los hispanos por el mundo en función de los contextos socio-políticos y los momentos vitales de los concernidos. Reúne aportaciones en español y en inglés de un variado espectro de disciplinas –desde los estudios literarios, culturales y de género, hasta la antropología y la sociología– que analizan esta imbricación, sus funciones y modalidades en base a un entendimiento amplio del concepto de emotive de William Reddy. Así, este libro recoge una gran gama de medios –como la literatura, el cine, las páginas web, los vlogs y las entrevistas– en los que los hispanos expresan sus emociones respecto a sus viajes o experiencias migratorias, pero también a los efectos a largo plazo de desplazamientos históricos en sujetos que se sienten desplazados o fuera de lugar en el presente. De este modo, Hispanos en el mundo aborda un tema de gran actualidad y relevancia y, además, cubre un vacío investigativo, no solo en los estudios de la migración –con la excepción de algunos trabajos que suelen centrarse en el ámbito de lo familiar y de los cuidados–, sino también en el hispanismo, donde se erige como estudio pionero.

Parte III: Migrar: las emociones en diferentes medios contemporáneos

The Basic Emotions of Disadvantaged Immigrant Subjects: A Case Study

Ana S.Q. Liberato

University of Kentucky

Abstract

This sociological study analyzes the emotions of Dominican immigrants in Switzerland when they interact with the majority group. Respondents emphasized feeling disrespected, mistreated, minimized, ignored, unwelcomed, rejected, and misrepresented. They talked about pain, indignation, feeling like an outsider and a lot of pressure to conform to Swiss culture. They also underlined resiliency, courage, national pride, confidence and power over the assumed currency of their physical and sexual appeal. The study shows that power-status inequalities and racist structures produce negative emotions, but some immigrants can manage them through alternative appraisals and redirecting blame. National identity, cultural aspects, transnational knowledge, gender and sexual meanings matter in their appraisals. There is an emotional advantage for those who feel more culturally integrated. More research is needed to shed light on the emotionally of majority-minority interactions, particularly the strategies adopted by disadvantaged immigrants in managing intense emotions within specific life realms.

Key words: emotions, immigration, power-status theory, Dominican immigrants, Switzerland,

The sociological approach to human emotions highlights the relationship between emotions and social dynamics and outcomes. This approach establishes that social conditions generate distinct categories of emotions with specific meanings (cf. Thamm 2006). This chapter adopts the sociological approach to investigate the immigration-emotions link. It carries out this investigation, adopting the scholarly accepted insight that social conditions impact people’s emotional lives (cf. Thamm 2006) and that “status hierarchies […] are fraught with feelings” (Ridgeway 2006: 347). Particularly, based on Kemper’s social structural perspective (2006, 1991, 1984, henceforth power and status theory), this article identifies and analyzes the emotions associated with the everyday life experiences of disadvantaged immigrant subjects. The focus is on the emotional lives of immigrants in connection to one specific social sphere: the emotionality of interactions with the majority group.

The power and status perspective postulates that configurations of power and status produce different categories of emotions. This means that emotions are power and/or status related and that an individual can have power and status privilege or disadvantage in any given social interaction. These insights are the basis for the study question: which emotions are most salient in interactions involving disadvantaged immigrant subjects and members of the majority group, which is answered from the perspective of respondents’ narratives. A key argument guiding this research is that the emotional lives of immigrants are better understood when studied within specific life realms and when understood as repertories, as emotional configurations. The grounding of emotions within the dynamics of social inequalities is also important. The social inequalities lens provides the most robust angle from which to investigate the dynamics of emotions among disadvantaged subjects, directing us to look into the emotional arousals linked to institutional and everyday racism and host society characteristics (e.g. host society’s immigration and naturalization laws and systems, conditions of integration, etc.). The chapter engages some of these issues, drawing from the experiences of first-generation Dominican immigrants in Switzerland as a case study.

1 Emotions and Power and Status Theory

The power and status theory predicts that different types of emotions will emerge under different “social structural conditions or power / status and appraisal” (Turner / Stets 2006: 36). It portends that having or losing power and expecting or not expecting to gain power are linked to emotional arousals. In a similar manner, the theory points to how status expectations (or lack thereof) alongside losing, giving, or negating status to others also trigger emotional responses. Thus, issues of authority and legitimacy are embedded in the definition. In doing so, it explains how the social actor’s considerations about who to blame for the loss, gain, or negation of status inform the kind of arousal that’s triggered (cf. Turner / Stets 2006: 35). Therefore, how Dominican immigrants make sense of their interactions with the Swiss majority provides information of their appraisals, as well as the status expectations and emotional responses that are more prevalent among them. This study will provide insight into the status expectations and emotional responses that are more predominant among study participants.

On the one hand, our definition of power within power and status theory reflects the “distributive approach” rooted in Weber’s views, which stresses the extent to which one individual or group can impose their will on the other in the context of a social relation (Weber in: Heiskala 2001: 243). Power is a zero-sum transaction within this definition (cf. Heiskala 2001). The distributive approach helps highlight situations in which Dominican immigrants may experience negative emotions as they interact within hierarchical social relations and encounter varying situations of disadvantage, be it in the form of threats to their physical integrity, dismissal, insults, denial of rights, direct/ indirect, objective or symbolic forms of deprivation. Having less power within such situations means being less capable of resisting, opposing, asserting themselves, and maintaining power within those hierarchical interactions (cf. Kemper 1991: 332–333).

On the other hand, our definition of status stresses the notion of status-accord or a form of relationship in which one actor complies willingly with the prestige and honor-bound wishes, desires, interests, and needs of another. This points to the ways in which status is accorded voluntarily within specific normative contexts; marked by acceptance, respect, congeniality, friendship, sociability, helpfulness, and inclusion. Like power, status has a structural component in that it is the context that dictate the type of benefit that an actor must accord to another. The context also informs the diverse ways in which one actor can of her own free will gratify, benefit, and reward another (cf. Kemper 1991: 332–333). It is our contention that negative emotions often arise for Dominican immigrants since they are more likely to experience denial of gratification and benefit in everyday interactions while having to accord status to more privileged social actors in everyday life.

The chapter operates under two common assumptions within power-status theory. One common assumption is that power and status are fundamental dimensions of social relations within any given interaction. A second common assumption is that positive emotions correlate with having and gaining power and status while negative emotions tend to go hand in hand with not having or losing power and status (cf. Kemper 2006: 87–113; Turner / Stets 2006: 38). The result is that we can expect emotions to be “distributed differently in segments of the population based on social stratification” (Turner / Stets 2006: 39). Based on these insights, this study assumes that power and status dynamics play a role in the emotional lives of first-generation Dominican immigrants and their appraisal of social relations and interactions in Switzerland as their host society.

One final theoretical point of relevance is that people experience emotions recurrently in response to institutionalized triggers. This means that by and by certain emotions become familiar to people, and then they move in and out particular emotional states that arise under the influence of recurrently experienced societal facts. Based on this understanding, this study treats emotions not only as recurrent individual states, but rather as emotional repertoires. The term emotional repertoires refers to the stock or range of emotions experienced and espoused by people or groups under the influence of specified social structures. The study assumes that certain emotions have become habitual to first-generation Dominican immigrants under a set of societal influences in Switzerland. Dominican immigrants interact within Swiss social structures. It could be said that racist social structures have served as context for the development of specific emotional repertoires in the lives of first-generation Dominican immigrants in Switzerland. (cf. Swidler 1986: 276–278).

2 Background: Dominicans in Switzerland

Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and the Netherlands host the largest number of Dominicans in the European continent (cf. Guarnizo / Chaudhary 2014: 10). Many of them migrated to Europe starting in the 1980s because of lack of opportunity to migrate to the United States. The search for economic opportunities was a key reason to move for many of them (cf. Petree / Vargas 2005: 6).

Switzerland has one of the most robust democratic and economic systems in the world. It is by many standards one of the most sophisticated societies. Dominicans have migrated to Switzerland in three identifiable waves: 1973–1991, 1992–1998, and 1999 to the present (cf. Petree / Vargas 2005: 6). The greater number entered between 1992 and 1998 (cf. Petree / Vargas 2005: 29). About 61.0% of the permanent Dominican population live in German-speaking cantons. Cabaret dancing, prostitution, and work as DJs offered the only labor migration opportunities for Dominican women and men in Switzerland. DJ jobs and positions as dance instructors and party MCs at bars are still common occupations for Dominican men, along with maintenance, custodial, and other service jobs. Many female ex-dancers / prostitutes have transitioned into service occupations such as housekeepers, sales representatives, and caregivers after securing permanent residency through marriage. Today, just as in the United States, “family reunification and the growth of the second generation” are the means of growth of the Dominican population in Switzerland (Petree / Vargas 2005: 8).

Table 1 confirms the significant presence of Dominican women in the population. It also shows the higher prevalence of naturalization among Dominican women as compared to men. In fact, their rates are more than three times the rates of Dominican men. However, only 40% of the Dominican population has acquired Swiss citizenship. About 1,387 of them obtained it between 1990–2005 (cf. Petree / Vargas 2005: 29).

Table 1:Basic Profile of the Dominican Population in Switzerland.

Characteristic	%
Female	70.8
Male	29.2
Naturalized foreign born (total)	40.1
Naturalized (female)	30.4
Naturalized (male)	9.2
N	10,743^1

(cf. Federal Office of Statistics–Population and Household Statistics 2013)

Dominicans, and immigrants in general, encounter a complex naturalization process in Switzerland. Depending on cantonal residency status, citizenship petitions can be approved in a diversity of ways, including citizenship commissions, town meetings, and delegate legislature or executives a...

Índice

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introducción: emociones y desplazamientos históricos, viajes y migraciones en el mundo hispano en el punto de mira Aproximaciones interdisciplinarias
• Parte I: Anhelar un hogar: las secuelas emocionales de los desplazamientos históricos
• Parte II: Viajar: las emociones en los relatos de viaje
• Parte III: Migrar: las emociones en diferentes medios contemporáneos