Attachment and Immigrants: Emotional security among Dutch and Belgian Immigrants in California, U.S.A. (UvA Proefschriften)

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Attachment and Immigrants

Lay out: Anke Ente Cover design: René Staelenberg, Amsterdam Cover illustration: La creazione by Michelangelo ISBN 978 90 5629 480 9 NUR 772 / 775

© Vossiuspers UvA – Amsterdam University Press, 2007

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.

ATTACHMENT AND IMMIGRANTS Emotional security among Dutch and Belgian Immigrants in California, U.S.A.

ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT

Ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. dr. J.W. Zwemmer ter overstaan van een door het college voor promoties ingestelde commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Aula der Universiteit op dinsdag 26 juni 2007, te 10:00 uur

door

Yolanda Herda Petrus van Ecke geboren te Westdorpe

Promotor:

Prof. Dr. Paul M.G. Emmelkamp

Co-promotor:

Prof. Dr. Robert C. Chope

Faculteit der Maatschappij- en Gedragswetenschappen

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Introduction

p.

1

Chapter 2

Immigration from an attachment perspective

p. 16

Chapter 3

Immigrants and attachment status

p. 30

Chapter 4

Unresolved attachment among immigrants

p. 52

Chapter 5

Attachment and personality facets

p. 64

Chapter 6

Attachment style and career thoughts dysfunction

p. 77

Chapter 7

General discussion

p. 95

Chapter 8

Samenvatting/ Dutch Summary

p. 110

Chapter 9

Acknowledgements

p. 115

Chapter 1 - Introduction

1 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

During the 1950’s and 1960’s many Dutch and Belgian nationals emigrated to Canada and the United States for economic reasons. In the 1970’s I was a teenager in Amsterdam, when a friend told me that friends of her parents who had emigrated to the United States had come back for a visit. There was a pause, and then she said “ze kunnen niet meer zo goed Nederlands praten.” (They can’t speak Dutch so well anymore) We were both silent for a moment at this grave fact. I took this in, realizing I felt these people had lost part of their Dutch identity, which was their fluency with the language. I met the people briefly, and hearing their accented Dutch, I felt sorry for their loss. They seemed so eager, so friendly. Then they left, again. I wondered why anyone would leave. Had they been so unhappy? At the time I was unable to know that some years later I would become a Dutch immigrant to the United States myself. The dissertation that follows seeks to elucidate that group of individuals, Dutch and Belgian immigrants in California, USA in the context of attachment theory. Since all but one of the empirical articles in this dissertation are published or currently in press, some overlap is unavoidable.

Attachment Attachment Theory Attachment theory was developed by the British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby (Bowlby, 1944, 1969/1982, 1973, 1980) over a period of forty years to describe the centrality of emotional connection for healthy human development. Although trained in the psychoanalytic tradition, he was “Alive to the deficiencies of Freud’s metapsychology, especially his concepts of psychic energy and drive (1988, p. 60)” and looked to cognitive psychology and ethology to


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formulate his biggest difference with psychoanalytic tradition. Bowlby saw himself as a therapist who viewed his patients as rational beings whose understandings and assumptions were logical conclusions derived from real experiences, not as individuals struggling with irrational unconscious drives, and saw this as perhaps his most fundamental “difference with the psychoanalytic approach” (1988, pp. 141-142) . He viewed attachment as an implicit understanding of how dependable and sensitive the significant other is, that is formed before we can talk, permeates our psyche and personality, yet remains flexibly open to developmental change “throughout the lifespan” (1988 p. 136). Attachment theory suggests that early, preverbal interactions between child and caregiver(s) create a detailed understanding about how reliable, responsive and understanding our caregiver is (Bowlby, 1969/1982). These models continue to inform our behavior later in life, and become active when we experience separation or threat of loss from significant others, and during times of stress, frustration, or anger. These experiences activate our attachment system leading to attachment behavior. Attachment is formed very early and is a universal (Main, 2002) psychobiological process in that attachment system activation is related to stress hormones (Fox & Card, 1999). Bowlby considered whether the terms for describing and assessing assessment should include strength of attachment but concluded that “it seems clear that strength of attachment to one or more discriminated figures is itself altogether too simple a concept to be useful” (1969/1982, p. 336) and appears to agree with Ainsworth as to “the absurdity of trying to arrange children in simple linear order of strength of attachment” (1969/1982, p. 337). Clearly, Bowlby preferred discussing attachment in terms of security, and in terms of status. Mary Ainsworth and her colleagues (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978) delineated three attachment statuses in responses of children who were being reunited with their mother after short absences in a procedure called the Strange Situation. Secure attachment status meant these infants were readily reassured upon being reunited with mother. Anxious avoidant attachment status meant the infant avoided mother upon reunion and often was more friendly toward a stranger or eager for toys than for mother. Anxious resistant attachment status meant the infant’s behavior included moving back


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and forth between seeking contact and avoiding the mother upon being reunited(Bowlby, 1969/1982). A fourth category of attachment behavior initially termed “cannot classify” became classified as disorganized/disoriented attachment status because the infant lacked any coherent strategy for relating to the attachment figure and had opposing behaviors such as approach and freezing (Main & Solomon, 1986, 1990). Attachment status designations for adults have similar terminology. Generally, four attachment statuses are recognized: One is secure attachment, also called autonomous (F), the other three are insecure and are called dismissing (Ds), preoccupied (E) and unresolved (U). The letters represent the symbols used for the four attachment statuses in the attachment status literature, see for example Hesse’s chapter (1999, p. 399) in the Handbook of Attachment . The attachment designations are called attachment styles by many social psychologists and most often referred to as ‘attachment representations’, or ‘states of mind with respect to attachment’ by clinical and developmental psychologists (Arindell, 1983; Choi, Lee, & Kim, 1998; de Haas, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 1994; George & Solomon, 1999; Main, 1999). An adult person’s state of mind is autonomous or secure when there is faith that the attachment figure is available should anything untoward happen. The attachment classification can turn insecure when there is doubt, that in times of need, the attachment figure will be there. The insecure state of mind with respect to adult attachment can take two organized forms, dismissing or preoccupied, meaning the individual still applies mental rules for handling activation of the attachment system upon sensing threat, danger or loss. The first organized insecure state, dismissing attachment suggests that the person seeks other forms of safety during danger instead of interpersonal closeness. Preoccupied attachment is a state of mind that creates a relationship rule to focus as much as possible on the attachment figure, the significant other. A final category in attachment classification is unresolved. In these cases, the person is more than confused about what to do in times of need or danger. Confusion is also seen in individuals with preoccupied status. The person with unresolved attachment has a profound inability to resolve the opposing impulses of confusion. We also see this state of mind with respect to attachment when a person has recently experienced a trauma or loss. There is no clear strategy for how to resolve the activation of the attachment system and return to feeling


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organized, safe and able to meet one’s needs. The intense need and simultaneously experienced lack of any way to meet these attachment needs can be overwhelming to the individual. The person may break of conversation, become emotionally overwhelmed, or unable to stay on the topic of discussion. The past is intruding on the present. In the case of secure attachment, we have received consistent, sensitive care giving, and later tend to respond in confident and flexible ways to others and ourselves. The three categories of insecure attachment develop in different ways in early childhood: Dismissing attachment develops when the caregiver rejects or ignores the child’s feelings of need, fear or anger, which the child, in turn, learns to suppress within him or herself in order to get along with the attachment figure(s). Preoccupied attachment develops in response to inconsistent, even needy care giving that causes increased sensitivity to fear, anger or neediness in the attachment figure in order to stay connected to her or him. The fourth category, unresolved attachment, results from threats of, or actually being abandoned, hurt or ignored by attachment figures. The attachment figure has possibly been a source of danger leaving the child no way of resolving the crisis (Hesse, 2001). Bowlby is clear that “systematic threats” of abandonment can be just as damaging as the actual event (1988 , p. 136). During mourning Bowlby reasoned that humans have a temporary, unresolved state of mind with respect to attachment before experiencing a reorganization that is “cognitive as well as emotional” (1980 p. 85). Bowlby saw the food and sex drives as completely different from the attachment drive, although also organic in nature: “although food and sex sometimes play important roles in attachment relationships, the relationship exists in its own right and has a key survival function of its own, namely protection (1988, p. 121).” Protection consists of care giving and care seeking, the first two components of attachment that are complementary, while the third, exploration, is antithetical to attachment behavior. “When an individual (of any age) is feeling secure he is likely to explore away from his attachment figure. When alarmed, anxious, tired or unwell he feels an urge towards proximity.(1988, p. 121).” This last statement is particularly relevant for the study of attachment and immigrants. Those who have emigrated from their country of birth in a spirit of exploration might be considered secure enough to explore, while those who emigrate to escape from persecution or


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starvation may be already be traumatized in their own country (Bhui et al., 2003; den Velde et al., 2000; Perez-Foster, 2001). Separation from family and a thinner social support network are commonly reported as a severe ongoing stressors among immigrants (Patel, 1992; Sinnerbrink, Silove, Field, Steel, & Manicavasagar, 1997). Other stressors reported by immigrants are social isolation and the loss of social roles (Miller, Worthington, Muzurovic, Tipping, & Goldman, 2002). These circumstances could then be a motivation to seek proximity to attachment figures that are not available.

Attachment Assessments A large number of measurement instruments have been developed specifically for assessing attachment state of mind and attachment style and many are reviewed in the Handbook of Attachment (Cassidy & Shaver, 1999). Measures for adult attachment include the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; George, Kaplan, & Main, 1984 1985 1996), the Adult Attachment Projective (AAP; George & West, 2001, 2003; George, West, & Pettem, 1999) and the Current Relationship Interview (CRI;Crowell & Owens, 1996). The CRI captures the representation of adult attachment in close relationships that may or may not be romantic, by including in the evaluation the individual’s coherence during the interview, their behavior and their partner’s behavior. It also uses the classifications of secure, dismissing, preoccupied and unresolved attachment, and is correlated with the AAI (Crowell, Fraley, & Shaver, 1999). The AAI and the AAP will be discussed in more detail below. Among the many self report instruments in use today are the Attachment History Questionnaire (AHQ; Pottharst, 1990), the Reciprocal Attachment Questionnaires for Adults (RAQ; M.L West & Sheldon-Keller, 1992) and the Avoidant Attachment Questionnaire (AAQ; Malcolm L. West & Sheldon-Keller, 1994). Unique to the RAQ is that it assesses attachment quality toward whomever the subject designates as primary attachment figure, whether romantic, friendship, familial or parental. If an adult answering questions for the RAQ claims not to have an attachment figure, then the AAQ can be used. Hazan and Shaver (1987; 1990) developed a measure that asked individuals to agree with one of three short descriptions of attachment


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styles which became very popular as this measure was easy to use, but was criticized for having low reliability due to the possible artificial nature of the classifications (Crowell et al., 1999). Consisting of four sentences rather than three, the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ;Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991) showed similar reliability. The Relationship Styles Questionnaire by Griffin and Bartholomew (RSQ; Griffin & Bartholomew, 1994) also assesses styles in current romantic relationships but in a 30 question self report format. More lately, the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised (ECR-R;Fraley, Waller, & Brennan, 2000) consists of 36 items and assesses for anxiety and avoidance in attachment. This attachment assessment can be done online, and scored immediately at http://www.yourpersonality.net. The ECR-R data are provided on a continuum, and may allow certain correlation statistics with other instruments that provide scores in terms of continuous data such as the NEO for personality, or the Career Thoughts Inventory (CTI; Sampson, Peterson, Lenz, Reardon, & Saunders, 1998) for career attitudes. A recent review of the self report measures by Noftle and Shaver (2006) found attachment style measures predicted relationship quality better than personality measures. In general, however, attachment status is more stable over time than attachment style. Crowell, Fraley and Shaver in The Handbook of Attachment (Crowell et al., 1999) conclude that “all the self report attachment scales whether conceived originally in terms of Bowlby’s specific constructs…or Ainsworth’s…load substantially on the same two major factors.” These are “anxiety” vs. “avoidance” or “model of self” vs. “model of other”(1999, p. 451). There does not seem to be a great amount of overlap between how adults say they are attached, and these same adults’ implicit or unconscious blueprints about attachment as measured by attachment status instruments such as the AAI (de Haas et al., 1994) .

The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). The AAI is an hour-long semi structured interview in which people are asked a series of specific questions, which elicit their mental representation of the relation with a parent. The way the person responds to questions becomes the basis for classifying the attachment representation into four different categories: autonomous, dismissing, preoccupied, or unresolved.


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The diagnostic power of the AAI lies more in the coherence of answers than in the actual history of a person’s life (Main, 2000). Bad events can still leave an individual able to give love, and establish a warm, supportive relationship. The reliability and validity of the AAI have been researched and found to have consistency and meaning (Bakermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 1993; Crowell et al., 1996; Griffin & Bartholomew, 1994; Sagi, van IJzendoorn, Scharf, & Koren-Karie, 1994) The AAI administrator records information on two levels: First, there is the story of how a person remembers a caregiver, and second the way the individual discusses past events. An interviewee could be saving wonderful things about his or her parents (story), and have large gaps in their discussion, two indicators of dismissing attachment, or be unable to prevent going into a long emotional account of certain experiences , an indicator of preoccupied attachment (Hesse, 1999). An online protocol for the AAI that lists the questions and discusses how they should be asked by the interviewer may be viewed at http://www.psychology.sunysb.edu/attachment/measures/content/aai_intervi ew.pdf.

The state of mind with regard to attachment is thought to be part of our implicit memory, which is not conscious and therefore not accessible via the facts of our lives. Other research shows that explicit memory of the facts of our lives is highly changeable (Lannon, 2002; Lewis, 2002). Therefore, it is not the events of life, but the way the individual understands, and thus discusses them that is the basis for assessing attachment.

The Adult Attachment Projective (AAP) Although the AAI has a lot of validity evidence, it has the drawback of being cumbersome in administration. It is time consuming and lengthy (de Haas et al., 1994), but it has been the only way to allow the adult state of mind with respect to attachment to be delineated. As noted earlier, George, West and Pettem (1999) developed the Adult Attachment Projective (AAP). In several studies, which compared AAP classifications for individuals who had also been given the AAI, the consistency of agreement between AAP and AAI assessment was strong, between .96 and .94. (George & West, 2001) . A major advantage of the AAP is that it takes about one half hour to


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administer, versus one hour for the AAI. It takes less time to transcribe and to decode, about one hour to transcribe and two to decode, whereas the AAI takes about four hours to transcribe. The AAP also targets the state of mind with respect to attachment, like the AAI, but comes in the form of a projective test using eight drawings about which the individual is asked to tell a story, describe what is happening, what led up to it, and what will happen next. The AAP allows delineation of the four categories of state of mind with respect to attachment by analyzing three dimensions of story telling: defensive process, discourse and content. Defensive processes are further delineated into, cognitive disconnection (related to a preoccupied state of mind), deactivation (related to dismissing state of mind) and segregated systems (related to an unresolved state of mind) (George et al., 1999). The developers of the AAP have made a webpage available that shows one of the pictures of the AAP, as well as current research, psychometric information and discussion of the defensive processes at www.attachmentprojective.com. The AAP interview has to be transcribed, and the transcript coded for attachment status. Coders must be trained in this technique and have reliability as coders. AAP training information is available online at the same website noted above. . Immigrants and Attachment Today, more than 20% of children in the United States are from immigrant families in which one or both parents emigrated from their home country (Landale & Oropesa, 1995). A steady influx of Dutch immigration to the United States is well documented for centuries starting in the 1600’s. During the years after World War II, Dutch emigration to the US and Canada experienced an upsurge, due to government incentives and bad economic conditions in the Netherlands and Belgium (VanderMey, 1983), with another upsurge during the 1990’s to California. Presently Dutch speaking immigrants represent 1.25% of California’s foreign born population and 1.6% of the U.S. foreign-born population (Modarres & Aleman, 2003). Although much is known about their integration into the middle class of U.S. society less is written about the psychological well being of this group of immigrants. In general, educational and economic achievements are correlated with psychological well being, or more precisely, educational and economic underachievements are correlated


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with stress and hardship. A large study of nearly 20,000 individuals comparing immigrants and native born individuals showed that immigrants have more mental health problems even when socioeconomic status was controlled (Angel, Buckley, & Sakamoto, 2001). Most research related to immigrants has focused on those who are minorities based on language, religion, skin color, or income. This is appropriate because it characterizes the majority of immigrants. Less is known about the psychology of immigrants who resemble their host culture in many ways. According to attachment theory, the desire for closeness is part of our evolutionary drive and extends to both people and environment. Bowlby writes, “There is a marked tendency for humans, like animals of other species, to remain in a particular and familiar locale and in the company of particular and familiar people” (1973, p. 147). Obviously, immigrants have broken out of this mold. How then does attachment theory view immigrants?

Dissertation Outline The thesis begins with chapter two, which reviews the research on attachment, and immigration, using an attachment framework to discuss the immigrant experience according to the four stages of vulnerability for immigrants as reflected in current immigrant mental health literature. These stages are premigration (conditions that produce or promote emigration), transit, the period of resettlement, followed by long-term adjustment and adaptation(Perez-Foster, 2001). Chapters three to six are empirical studies. The first study (chapter three) examines whether the immigrant group is characterized by a certain attachment status. The second study (chapter four) examines how attachment status and immigrant status are related to the perception of attachment danger, and to the ability to resolve perceived danger. The second study also asks whether immigrants differ from non-immigrants with respect to the specific events that they perceive as dangerous and if danger is resolved more successfully in certain situations than others. The situations examined are those that tend to activate the attachment system such as depictions of mourning or grief, possible abuse, illness, death, loss or isolation.


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The next several studies explore the links between attachment among the immigrant group on the one hand, and work and personality, respectively, on the other hand. These studies use attachment style measures, as well as attachment status assessment. The third empirical study (chapter five) explores how attachment style relates to personality. More specifically, it investigates whether the two major factors underlying the self-report measures (anxiety and avoidance) correlate with certain aspects of personality as delineated in the NEOFFI such as openness, conscientiousness. Being less anxious and dismissing of attachment needs seems related to being more conscientious or responsible as a person, and anxious attachment corresponds with increased emotionality, whereas dismissing attachment is linked to so little emotionality that the individual may be accused of being cold (Noftle & Shaver, 2006). The final and fourth empirical study (chapter six) asks how attachment style relates to thoughts about work among the group of immigrants under investigation. In short, these four studies explore whether being an immigrant is correlated with attachment status, and how, in turn, unresolved attachment status is linked with specific images of experiences rather than with others, and also how attachment is correlated with cognition about work as well as with our personality facets. The final section (chapter seven) of this dissertation summarizes the research and suggests further avenues of inquiry.

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de Haas, M., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M., & van IJzendoorn, M. H. (1994). The Adult Attachment Interview and questionnaires for attachment style, temperament, and memories of parental behavior. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 155(4), 471(416). den Velde, W. O., Hovens, J. E., Bramsen, I., McFarlane, A. C., Aarts, P. G. H., Falger, P. R. J., et al. (2000). A cross-national study of posttraumatic stress disorder in Dutch-Australian immigrants. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 34(6), 919-928. Fox, N. A., & Card, J. (1999). Psychophysiological measures in the Study of Attachment. In J. Cassidy & P. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of Attachment. Theory, Research and Clinical Applications (pp. 226-245). New York: The Guilford Press. Fraley, R. C., Waller, N. G., & Brennan, K. A. (2000). An itemresponse theory analysis of self-report measures of adult attachment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 350-365. George, C., Kaplan, N., & Main, M. (1984 1985 1996). Adult Attachment Interview Protocol.Unpublished manuscript, Berkeley, University of California. George, C., & Solomon, J. (1999). The development of caregiving: A comparison of attachment theory and psychoanalytic approaches to mothering. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 19(4), 618646. George, C., & West, M. L. (2001). The development and preliminary validation of a new measure of adult attachment: the Adult Attachment Projective. Attachment and Human Development, 3, 55-86. George, C., & West, M. L. (2003). The Adult Attachment Projective: Measuring individual differences in attachment security using projective methodology. In M. Hilsenroth & D. Segal (Eds.), Objective and projective assessment of personality and psychopathology (Vol. 2. Personality Asessment. In M. Hersen (Ed.-in-Chief), Comprehensive handbook of psychological assessment). New York: John Wiley & Sons. George, C., West, M. L., & Pettem, O. (1999). The Adult Attachment Projective. Disorganization of adult attachment at the level of representation. In J. Solomon & C. George (Eds.), Attachment disorganization. New York: The Guilford Press. Griffin, D. W., & Bartholomew, K. (1994). Models of the self and other: Fundamental dimensions underlying measures of adult


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attachment. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 67(3), 430-445. Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 52(3), 511-524. Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. R. (1990). Love and work: An attachmenttheoretical perspective. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 59(2), 270-280. Hesse, E. (1999). The Adult Attachment Interview: Historical and Current Perspectives. In J. a. S. Cassidy, Phillip R. (Ed.), Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research and Applications. New York: The Guilford Press. Hesse, E. (2001). Unclassifiable and disorganized responses in the adult attachment interview and in the infant strange situation procedure : theoretical proposals and empirical findings. Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands. Landale, N. S., & Oropesa, R. S. (1995). Immigrant children and the children of immigrants: Inter- and intra-ethnic group differences in the United States (Population Research Group Research Paper No. No. 95-2). East Lansing: Michigan State University. Lannon, R. (2002, October 12). The psychobiology of attachment. Paper presented at the Cohesive Self: The Critical Role of Implicit Memory and Attachment in the Development of the Sense of Self., Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A. Lewis, T. (2002, October 12). Implicit memory. Paper presented at the Cohesive Self: The Critical Role of Implicit Memory and Attachment in the Development of the Sense of Self., The Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco, U.S.A. Main, M. (1999). Mary D. Salter Ainsworth: Tribute and portrait. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 19(5), 682-736. Main, M. (2000). The organized categories of infant, child, and adult attachment: Flexible vs. inflexible attention under attachmentrelated stress. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 48(4), 1055-1096. Main, M. (2002, October 12). Longitudinal studies on attachment. Paper presented at the Cohesive Self: The Critical Role of Implicit Memory and Attachment in the Development of the Sense of Self., The Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco, U.S.A. Main, M., & Solomon, J. (1986). Discovery of a new, insecuredisorganized/disoriented attachment pattern. In T. B. Brazelton


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& M. Yogman (Eds.), Affective development in infancy (pp. 95-124). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Main, M., & Solomon, J. (1990). Procedures for identifying infants as disorganized/disoriented during the Ainsworth Strange Situation. In M. T. Greenberg, D. Cicchetti & E. M. Cummings (Eds.), Attachment in the preschool years: Theory, research, and interventions. (pp. 134-146). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Miller, K. E., Worthington, G. J., Muzurovic, J., Tipping, S., & Goldman, A. (2002). Bosnian refugees and the stressors of exile: A narrative study. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 72(3), 341-354. Modarres, A., & Aleman, E. (2003, retrieved 3/22/05). State of Immigration. from www.patbrowninstitute.org Noftle, E. E., & Shaver, P. R. (2006). Attachment dimensions and the big five personality traits: Associations and comparative ability to predict relationship quality. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(2), 179-208. Patel, N. (1992). Psychological disturbance, social support and stressors: A community survey of immigrant Asian women and the indigenous population. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 5(3), 263-276. Perez-Foster, R. (2001). When immigration is trauma: Guidelines for the individual and family clinician. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 71(2), 153-170. Pottharst, K. (1990). The search for methods and measures. In K. Pottharst (Ed.), Explorations in adult attachment (pp. 9-37). New York: Peter Lang. Sagi, A., van IJzendoorn, M. H., Scharf, M., & Koren-Karie, N. (1994). Stability and discriminant validity of the Adult Attachment Interview: A psychometric study in young Israeli adults. Developmental Psychology., 30(5), 771-777. Sampson, J. P., Peterson, G. W., Lenz, J. G., Reardon, R. C., & Saunders, D. E. (1998). The design and use of a measure of dysfunctional career thoughts among adults, college students, and high school students: The Career Thoughts Inventory. Journal of Career Assessment, 6(2), 115-134. Sinnerbrink, I., Silove, D., Field, A., Steel, Z., & Manicavasagar, V. (1997). Compounding of preimigration trauma and postimigration stress in asylum seekers. Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary & Applied, 131(5), 463-470.


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VanderMey, A. (1983). To all our children: The story of Dutch postwar immigration to Canada. Jordan Station, Ontario Canada: Paideia Press. West, M. L., & Sheldon-Keller, A. E. (1992). The assessment of dimensions relevant to adult reciprocal attachment. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 37, 600-606. West, M. L., & Sheldon-Keller, A. E. (1994). Patterns of relating: An adult attachment perspective. New York: The Guilford Press.

Chapter 2 – Immigration from an Attachment Perspective

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CHAPTER 2

IMMIGRATION FROM AN ATTACHMENT PERSPECTIVE1

Abstract The current literature on attachment and immigration is reviewed and attachment theory is used to illuminate immigrants’ responses during the stages of pre-migration, transit, settlement, and adjustment/adaptation. The author argues that immigrants are more likely than non-immigrants to have an insecure attachment representation, and considers both causes and effects of immigration from an attachment theory perspective. It is suggested that long-term implications of immigration experience may include increased vulnerability to attachment trauma and that understanding social support and clinical aspects of immigrants’ needs will benefit from the application of attachment theory. The author considers the usefulness of applying attachment theory to non-immigrant groups including expatriate employees, members of the armed services, government employees stationed abroad and even foreign students. Several attachment-based research focuses to examine attachment among immigrants are proposed.

Introduction As an immigrant, therapist and educator, I have found a sense of shared experience with other immigrants, regardless of where they are from or how they got here. Many who say they wanted to come to the new country (in this case, the United States) feel years later that they had not adequately considered the emotional consequences of 1

van Ecke, Y. (2005) Social Behavior & Personality, International Journal, Vol. 33, pp 467 - 477.


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realizing they will probably live out their lives without proximity to family back home. Others who were forced to leave their home country will admit they really did not expect to stay away as long as they did, and they experience longing. Over the years, I have shared with many other immigrants the excitement over new opportunities, the longing when important life events such as births, new homes and anniversaries continue to take place back home without our presence, the sense of sadness when family back home become ill and we cannot be there to support them, and the grief when loved ones pass away before we have time to see them and say goodbye. For immigrants, this is the norm, not the exception, and despite e-mail, affordable phone service and convenient travel availability, life for an immigrant has a different quality marked by both opportunity and separation. No matter how great life in the new country, at times we all miss the feelings of being surrounded with the people, sounds, smells and sights that constitute “back home”. According to attachment theory, the desire for closeness is part of our evolutionary drive and extends to both people and environment. Bowlby writes, “There is a marked tendency for humans, like animals of other species, to remain in a particular and familiar locale and in the company of particular and familiar people” (1973, p. 147). Obviously, immigrants have broken out of this mold. How then does attachment theory view immigrants? I will use an attachment framework to discuss the immigrant experience according to the four stages of vulnerability for immigrants as reflected in current immigrant mental health literature. These stages are premigration (conditions that produce or promote emigration), transit, the period of resettlement, followed by long-term adjustment and adaptation (Perez-Foster, 2001). Since attachment security, separation and loss are the core themes of attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969/1982, 1973, 1982), it seems well suited for examining the experiences that immigrants have in common. Attachment theory posits that we like to explore, as long as we have a secure base to which to return (Bowlby, 1988). Humans, like other mammals, have evolved and survived because we build and maintain close relationships. We live in groups. Separation does not devastate us as long as we are confident of the possibility of return to our secure base. Initially this base is the actual presence of our caregiver, but later on this relationship with its specific, unspoken rules and characteristics becomes a mental representation.


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This mental representation constitutes what is known as our attachment representation, or state of mind with respect to attachment. Bowlby recognized three different attachment representations: secure attachment and two forms of insecure attachment. Normally we develop secure attachment as the result of our interactions with early caregivers, and thus respond to our own emotions, to others and to our environment with confidence, sensitivity, and flexibility. Experiences of abandonment, loss, or inconsistency in relationships, however, can cause us to feel threatened at a survival level, prompting us to alter both awareness of our emotions and behaviors in attachment relationships. We are most vulnerable as children, but attachment theory holds that we have developmental pathways that are constantly open to revision (Bowlby, 1988). The first insecure form of attachment, also called ‘anxious avoidant’ when referring to children or ‘dismissive’ when speaking of adults, comes about when we come to learn, through early interaction, that our emotions and needs are rejected by our caregiver, so we reject our own emotions in order to maintain the relationship with the all-important other. We develop the second form of insecure attachment, called ‘anxious resistant’ (children) or ‘preoccupied’ (adult) (Bowlby, 1969/1982), if the care given to us is inconsistent, sometimes absent, but other times needy on the part of the caregiver. In this situation, we learn that in order to sustain the relationship, we must pay very close attention to the other, and become hypersensitive. These patterns were documented in the first assessment measure of attachment, The Strange Situation (TSS) developed by Mary Ainsworth (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978; Bowlby, 1969/1982, p. 338). Ainsworth’s behavior observation measure for attachment used the child’s reactions to the mother’s brief departures as the basis for four attachment classifications for children: secure, insecure anxious, insecure avoidant, and disorganized. The fourth attachment representation is not only insecure but more complicated. There appears to be no sense of organization about how to get one’s needs met, how to relate to the emotion, to other people, or to one’s needs; the individual’s behavior is characterized as “dazed” or “immobile”(Bowlby, 1988, p. 125). This disorganized or unresolved attachment is seen after physical abuse or gross neglect (Bowlby, 1988; Crittenden, 1985), when the caregiver treats the child in a very erratic and unpredictable way (Radke-Yarrow, Cummings, Kuczynski,


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& Chapman, 1985), is mourning a parental loss from his or her own childhood, or is a victim of abuse (Hesse & van IJzendoorn, 1998). These earliest—and many later—measures of adult attachment that are being used today are reviewed in detail in The Handbook of Attachment (Crowell, Fraley, & Shaver, 1999). In this literature review with a primary focus on adult migration and atttachment (except for an initial section on transit and children), I accordingly use the terms for adult attachment statuses: autonomous, dismissive, preoccupied and unresolved attachment. I will also discuss attachment as being secure (meaning autonomous only), and insecure (a group including dismissive, preoccupied and unresolved). This summary of attachment assessment is presented to be helpful in the review of attachment literature and immigrants that follows next.

Pre-emigration: Who Emigrates? Some leave their home countries to escape poverty, famine, or oppression, and others seek a better life enabled by the exercise of free will. At some level, all make a choice to leave their homelands as either a means of survival or a means to a better life. It appears that those who desire to emigrate tend to have higher achievement and power motivation, yet be more work-oriented and less focused on family centrality than those who do not want to emigrate (Boneva & Frieze, 2001; Frieze et al., 2004). These characteristics also apply to individuals with dismissive attachment, as one of the childhood experience criteria associated with dismissive attachment status (as measured on the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI;George, Kaplan, & Main, 1984 1985 1996) is parental pressure to achieve (George & West, 2003). It would obviously be interesting and useful to have research data on the attachment status of emigrants. A study comparing values of immigrants’ relationships, work and spirituality with those of native-born individuals showed that Caribbean women remaining in their homeland derived more meaning from relationships and found them most important, while women who had emigrated from the Caribbean to Canada derived less meaning from work and spirituality but found them still important (Ali & Toner, 2001). It is unclear whether personal relationships became less


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important for this group of immigrant women, or if they had always been less important: Attachment status of the immigrants would more likely be insecure, and, more specifically, dismissive. Transit and Attachment Transit for children.

Today, more than 20% of children in the United States are from immigrant families in which one or both parents emigrated from their home country (Landale & Oropesa, 1995). A recent study with nearly 400 immigrant youth from five different countries found that 85% experienced separations from one or both parents. These separations ranged from 6 months to 10 years. Long separations from family were linked to increased reports of depressive symptoms (Suarez-Orozco, Todorova, & Louie, 2002). Interestingly, 65% of incoming freshmen at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2002 had at least one foreign-born parent (Schevitz, 2002). Mackey’s (2003) review of the research leads to the impression that depression is more closely linked with an insecure preoccupied attachment than with other attachment statuses (Allen, Moore, Kupermine, & Bell, 1998; Kobak, Sudler, & Gamble, 1991), while dismissive attachment shows greater correlation with the tendency to externalize (triangulate) into substance abuse and conduct issues (Rosenstein & Horowitz, 1996). The lengthy separations experienced by a number of immigrant children in the Harvard study may be linked to insecure attachment representation. Attachment representation can change when an influence is persistent and negative (Waters, Hamilton, & Weinfield, 2000). Certainly prolonged separations from parents do not contribute to secure attachment for children and are almost certain to be detrimental in terms of attachment representation. Studies examining the relationships between different migration experiences and attachment among children are clearly needed.

Early adjustment for adults. A study by Pianta using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Iventory (MMPI; Butcher, 1989, 1990) shows that individuals with dismissive attachment report less psychiatric distress and anxiety


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while emphasizing independence, while those with secure attachment scored between those with preoccupied (with the highest distress, anxiety) and dismissing attachment (Pianta, Egeland, & Adam, 1996). These findings are consistent with the idea that immigrants who have dismissive attachment would have more a more favorable initital adjustment because they are accustomed to not feeling needy and to being tough, whereas those with the preoccupied and autonomous attachment representations would report more problems in postimmigration adjustment. When a person with secure attachment status experiences a separation, perhaps due to work assignment or necessary education abroad, he or she may be more keenly aware of his or her suffering than are people with insecure attachment, because securely attached individuals are less inclined to deny their own pain than those with dismissive attachment, and less likely to over focus on others’ needs than those with preoccupied attachment. Those in the dismissive attachment group would thus assign less importance to the family of origin, and be more adaptable to the initial isolation and hardships of emigration because they have a frame of mind that assumes no one but the individual herself or himself is likely to meet their needs. A study focusing on the attachment style of Chinese Indonesian immigrants using Bartholomew’s Relationship Style Questionnaire (RSQ; Griffin & Bartholomew, 1994) with a sample of 297 first-generation immigrants to the United States shows a positive correlation between secure attachment style, general satisfaction with life and ease of relating to the host culture (Handojo, 2000). More interestingly, this study finds that people with a preoccupied attachment style relate less easily to the new culture than to their culture of origin, and that those with a dismissive attachment style relate more easily to the new culture than their own. Persons with dismissive attachment may be more interested in emigrating, and after arrival in the new country appear prepared for the initial rigors of the isolation, confusion and need for personal hardiness that accompany the immigration experience. Resettlement Ataca studied 200 married Turkish immigrants from 19 to 73 years old in Toronto, Canada, and found that their psychological adaptation was correlated with “hardiness, social support, acculturation attitudes, and discrimination” (Ataca & Berry, 2002). Another study by Hovey that


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focused on Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles concluded that family dysfunction, geographical separation from family, nonpositive expectations for the future, and low income levels were also significantly related to elevated levels of acculturative stress, and that acculturative stress was the best predictor for increased risk for depression (Hovey, 2000). What is acculturative stress? It may be viewed as a the loss of familiar ways, sounds and faces, coupled with a sense of not knowing quite how to belong, connect, and get support. Mendlovic et al. propose that immigration can be associated with a profound state of anomie, the concept developed by the sociologist, Emile Durkheim, to describe a disconnect between society’s values and the individual’s aspirations (Mendlovic, Ratzoni, Doron, & Braham, 2001). Also keenly aware of our attachment to a familiar environment, Bowlby noted that “Each individual has its own relatively small and very distinctive personal environment to which it is attached” (1973, p. 147) and that “looked at in this light the regulatory systems that maintain a steady relationship between an individual and his familiar environment can be regarded as an ‘outer ring’ of life-maintaining systems complementary to the ‘inner ring’ of systems that maintain physiological homeostasis” (1973, p. 150). Acculturative stress may be seen in attachment theory as not only a separation with accompanying attachment behavior, but also as a loss accompanied by protest and despair. As Perez-Foster ( 2001) describes the experiences of immigrants, it becomes clear that previous trauma and current language issues have a profound effect on the resettlement experience. When coupled with the ongoing isolation vis-à-vis the larger society in which the immigrant functions, the separation and isolation may have the effect of an attachment trauma, that is, an unresolved, painful, emotional wound to an individual’s internal working model of attachment relationships. Adjustment and Adaptation Over time, many immigrants improve their economic status, and the next generation builds on that foundation, going to college, starting businesses and buying homes. It would seem that, in general, the higher someone’s socioeconomic security, the greater the likelihood they have secure attachment. Healthy family functioning and secure socioeconomic status seem to be more important for attachment security than one’s cultural background (Sagi, van IJzendoorn, &


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Koren-Karie, 1991; van IJzendoorn & Sagi, 1999). An interesting exception here is that although lack of poverty is generally a protection against insecure attachment, better socioeconomic status does not decrease the immigrant’s vulnerability to emotional health problems. (Angel, Buckley, & Sakamoto, 2001). Specific findings show mental health is lower for second-generation immigrants who are as diverse as South Asians in Canada (Abouguendia & Noels, 2001) and Latinos in the United States (Escobar, Nervi, & Gara, 2000). Factors discussed by Perez-Foster ( 2001) that haunt immigrants over time are for example decreasing functionality of family, sense of isolation and multiple compound losses over time. Over time these factors may lead to unresolved attachment status despite political freedom, educational opportunities and economic improvement. Indeed, one of the attachment-related risk factors for mental disorders is major separation from and permanent loss of the attachment figures (Allen, Hauser, & Borman-Spurrell, 1996; Carlson, 1995; Cicchetti, 1995; Main, 1996). In many cases, immigration permanently separates the individual from her or his attachment figures, although the immigrant had not anticipated such a result. Many of the immigrants with whom I have spoken intended to stay abroad as a trial period for a few years but wound up remaining permanently. The personal loss and grief as a result of immigration may be viewed in terms of Bowlby’s stages of mourning: the initial experience of numbness, shock and disbelief, followed by despair, homesickness and longing, and concluded by a reorganization, the end of grieving and an acceptance of one’s role in the new society (Arredondo-Dowd, 1981). Attachment theory does not say that separation and loss put people at risk for mental disorders, but major separation and permanent loss do pose a risk. Loss is a fact of life and if earlier experiences have taught us that our emotional needs are met, we presumably will adjust to losses and build new relationships. Most of the time, however, death of a loved one, a move, divorce, or lengthy separation takes place while the rest of our relationships and life structure remain the same.


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TABLE 1

Overview of Attachment Status Terms for Children and Adults. Child 1 Adult 2 Strategy to handle anxiety 3 Secure (B)

Autonomous (F)

Insecure-avoidant (A)

Dismissing (Ds)

Insecure-anxious (C) (Also termed anxious resistant/ambivalent)

Preoccupied (E)

Disorganized (D)

Unresolved (U)

Have faith, support is there Support is absent, disassociate from the source of anxiety Support is unreliable, focus intensely on the source of support Unclear Strategy

Note 1, 2:source: {Hesse, 1999 #p.399) 3 source {Main, 2002 }

,

.

With immigration, multiple changes occur simultaneously, so the overall effect is more profound (Dovidio & Esses, 2001). Attachment theory distinguishes between the experiences of separation (Bowlby, 1973) and loss (Bowlby, 1982), so I believe that in trying to understand the response of immigrants to immigration we should distinguish between initial immigration (early separation) and years of accumulated instances of separation which add up to a sense of isolation and loss. My discussions with immigrants lead me to believe that the time of initial separation, although traumatic for many, is not in and of itself the most damaging time for many immigrants. The trauma is not one that is generally recognized, as would be danger to one’s life or several serious losses in succession. More often there are many smaller events that build up to the level of trauma. Over time, the immigrant misses out on happy events such as births, new homes and anniversaries for loved ones back home. The immigrant also suffers from not being able to support loved ones in their illnesses, personal traumas and deaths. The continued inability to participate directly and


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be surrounded by loved ones at such times leaves the immigrant with a sense of isolation, multiple losses and complicated grief. Perez Foster (2001) chronicles immigrants’ pre-emigration traumas that they try to hide afterwards in order to forget and function; those suppressed traumas certainly could be a source of unresolved attachment among immigrants. In addition, I propose the possibility that the attachment representation of immigrants may suffer over time as the effects of multiple losses compound as they accumulate. Therefore, we would see more unresolved attachment among immigrants than among nonimmigrants. Further research is needed to test this hypothesis. Summary Much literature has been developed on immigrants, but not much on attachment and immigration. Since attachment research has shown that attachment status affects how we explore, play, form new relationships, and handle conflict and how vulnerable we are to mental health problems later, it is no surprise that such research has grown tremendously over the past few decades. The literature on attachment illuminates how people respond to separation, but how immigrants as a group experience the separation from family, country and other support systems over time needs to be examined from an attachment perspective. Additional research findings about attachment and immigrants would have implications for clinicians working with immigrants, and with clients in professional circumstances that require significant time away from family such as expatriate employees, members of the armed forces, representatives of government stationed abroad, and even foreign students in certain circumstances. References Abouguendia, M., & Noels, K. A. (2001). General and acculturationrelated daily hassles and psychological adjustment in first- and second-generation South Asian immigrants to Canada. International Journal of Psychology, 36(3), 163-173. Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Oxford, England: Lawrence Erlbaum.


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Ali, A., & Toner, B. B. (2001). Symptoms of depression among Caribbean women and Caribbean-Canadian women: An investigation of self-silencing and domains of meaning. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 25(3), 175-180. Allen, J. P., Hauser, S. T., & Borman-Spurrell, E. (1996). Attachment theory as a framework for understanding sequelae of severe adolescent psychopathology: An 11-year follow-up study. Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology, 64(2), 254-263. Allen, J. P., Moore, C. M., Kupermine, G. P., & Bell, K. L. (1998). Attachment and adolescent psychosocial functioning. Child Development, 69, 1406-1419. Angel, J. L., Buckley, C. J., & Sakamoto, A. (2001). Duration or disadvantage? Exploring nativity, ethnicity, and health in midlife. Journals of Gerontology: Series B: Psychological Sciences & Social Sciences, 56B(5), 275-284. Arredondo-Dowd, P. M. (1981). Personal loss and grief as a result of immigration. Personnel and Guidance Journal, 59(6), 376378. Ataca, B., & Berry, J. W. (2002). Psychological, sociocultural, and marital adaptation of Turkish immigrant couples in Canada. International Journal of Psychology, 37(1), 13-26. Boneva, B. S., & Frieze, I. H. (2001). Toward a concept of a migrant personality. Journal of Social Issues, 57(3), 477-491. Bowlby, J. (1969/1982). Attachment and loss: Vol. I. Attachment. New York,: Basic Books. Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment and loss Vol. II: Separation anxiety and anger. New York: Basic Books, Inc. Publishers. Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and Loss Vol. III: Loss Sadness and Depression. New York: Basic Books. Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base : Clinical applications of attachment theory. London: Routledge. Butcher, J. N. (1989). MMPI-2 users' guide. Minneapolis: Natural Computer Systems. Butcher, J. N. (1990). MMPI-2 in psychological treatment. New York: Oxford University Press. Carlson, E. A., Sroufe, L.A. (1995). Contribution of atachment theory to developmental psychopathology. In D. C. D. Cohen (Ed.), Developmental Psychopathology: Vol. 1. Theory and methods (Vol. 1, pp. 581-617). New York: Wiley. Cicchetti, D., Toth. S.L., Lynch, M. (1995). Bowlby's dream comes full circle: the application of attachment theory to risk and


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psychopathology. Advances in Clinical Child Psychology, 17(1), 75. Crittenden, P. M. (1985). Maltreated infants:vulnerability and resilience. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 26, 85-96. Crowell, J. A., Fraley, R. C., & Shaver, P. R. (1999). Measurement of individual differences in adolescent and adult attachment. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment (pp. 434-465). New York: The Guilford Press. Dovidio, J. F., & Esses, V. M. (2001). Immigrants and immigration: advancing the psychological perspective. Journal of Social Issues, 57(3), 375 (313). Escobar, J. I., Nervi, C. H., & Gara, M. A. (2000). Immigration and mental health: Mexican Americans in the United States. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 8(2), 64-72. Frieze, I. H., Boneva, B. S., Sarlija, N., Horvat, J., Ferligoj, A., Kogovsek, T., et al. (2004). Psychological Differences in Stayers and Leavers: Emigration Desires in Central and Eastern European University Students. European Psychologist, 9(1), 15-23. George, C., Kaplan, N., & Main, M. (1984 1985 1996). Adult Attachment Interview Protocol.Unpublished manuscript, Berkeley, University of California. George, C., & West, M. (2003). The Adult Attachment Projective: Measuring individual differences in attachment security using projective methodology. In M. H. D. Segal (Ed.), Objective and projective assessment of personality and psychopathology. (Vol. 2 in M. Hersen (Ed.-in-Chief), Comprehensive handbook of psychological assessment.). New York: John Wiley & Sons. Griffin, D. W., & Bartholomew, K. (1994). The metaphysics of measurement: The case of adult attachment. In K. Bartholomew & D. Perlman (Eds.), Attachment processes in adulthood: Advances in personal relationships (Vol. 5, pp. 1752). London: Jessica Kingsley. Handojo, V. (2000). Attachment styles, acculturation attitudes/behaviors, and stress among Chinese Indonesian immigrants in the United States. Dissertation Abstracts International 61 (4),Series B, p 2271 (UMI no 9968471). Fuller Theological Seminary. Hesse, E., & van IJzendoorn, M. H. (1998). Parental loss of close family members and propensities towards absorption in


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offspring. Developmental Science, 1(2), 299-305. Hovey, J. D. (2000). Psychosocial predictors of acculturative stress in Mexican immigrants. Journal of Psychology, 134(5), 490-502. Kobak, R., Sudler, N., & Gamble, W. (1991). Attachment and depressive symptoms during adolescence: A developmental pathways analysis. Development and Psychopathology, 3, 461474. Landale, N. S., & Oropesa, R. S. (1995). Immigrant children and the children of immigrants: Inter- and intra-ethnic group differences in the United States (Population Research Group Research Paper No. No. 95-2). East Lansing: Michigan State University. Mackey, S. K. (2003). Adolescence and attachment: From theory to treatment applications. In P. Erdman & T. Caffery (Eds.), Attachment and family systems (pp. 79-117). New York: Brunner-Routledge. Main, M. (1996). Introduction to the special section on attachment and psychopathology: 2.Overview of the field of attachment. Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology, 64(2), 237-243. Mendlovic, S., Ratzoni, G., Doron, A., & Braham, P. (2001). Immigration, Anomie and Psychopathology. Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society, 6(2), 324. Perez-Foster, R. (2001). When immigration is trauma: Guidelines for the individual and family clinician. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 71(2), 153-170. Pianta, R. C., Egeland, B., & Adam, E. K. (1996). Adult attachment classification and self-reported psychiatric symptomatology as assessed by the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2. Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology, 64(2), 273281. Radke-Yarrow, M., Cummings, E. M., Kuczynski, L., & Chapman, M. (1985). Patterns of attachment in two- and three- year olds in normal families and families with parental depression. Child Development, 56, 884-893. Rosenstein, D. S., & Horowitz, H. A. (1996). Adolescent attachment and psychopathology. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64(2), 244-253. Sagi, A., van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Koren-Karie, N. (1991). Primary appraisal of the Strange Situation: A cross-cultural analysis of preseparation episodes. Developmental Psychology, 27(4), 587-596.


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Schevitz, T. (2002, September 26, 2002). Surprise on Poll of Cal students. San Francisco Chronicle, pp. A27-Colum 21. Suarez-Orozco, C., Todorova, I. L. G., & Louie, J. (2002). Making up for lost time: The experience of separation and reunification among immigrant families. Family Process, 41(4), 625-643. van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Sagi, A. (1999). Cross-cultural patterns of attachment: Universal and contextual dimensions. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment. Theory, research, and clinical applications (pp. 713-734). New York,: The Guilford Press. Waters, E., Hamilton, C. E., & Weinfield, N. S. (2000). The stability of attachment security from infancy to adolescence and early adulthood: General introduction. Child Development, 71(3), 678-683.

Chapter 3 – Immigrants and Attachment Status

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CHAPTER 3

IMMIGRANTS AND ATTACHMENT STATUS Research findings with Dutch and Belgian Immigrants in California2

Abstract Although immigrants are an extremely diverse group, adults who emigrate nearly always experience separation from family of origin, extended family and country. This research examines state of mind with respect to attachment, using the Adult Attachment Projective (George & West, 2003; George, West, & Pettem, 1999), and compares the attachment status of adult Californians who still live near their family of origin in the area in which they were born and raised (m 12, f 18) to that of individuals who emigrated from the Netherlands and Belgium as adults to California (m 29, f 41). The findings showed a significant relationship between being an immigrant and unresolved attachment status (n= 100, X2 =5.81, p=< 0.0160) unrelated to time in the U.S., reason for immigration, being married or single. Implications and limitations of these findings are discussed. Introduction Today in the United States, immigrants are the parents of over 20 percent of children in the country (Landale & Oropesa, 1995). At the University of California, Berkeley in 2002, 65% of incoming freshmen have at least one foreign born parent (Schevitz, 2002). Many immigrants and their children are quite successful in American society (Simon, 1995; U.S., 2000), yet the four different stages of the process 2

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(pre-emigration, transit, settlement and post immigration conditions) can become traumatic under conditions related to language barriers, discrimination and poverty (Perez-Foster, 2001). Risk factors in the early years include unemployment, lack of familiarity with the environment, and not having relatives in the new country (Aroian & Norris, 2002) while later on the factor of not being married or otherwise attached appears to contribute to continued depression (Beiser, 1988). Lower mental health in the second generation, i.e. children of immigrants (Abouguendia & Noels, 2001) appears related to acculturation and alienation from family. Mental health improvements over time are due less to economic prosperity than improved social networks and attachments. Attachment theory suggests that early on in life, before we can talk, we form internal working models about how reliable, responsive and understanding our caregiver is (Bowlby, 1969/1982). These models continue to inform our behavior later in life, and become active when we experience separation or threat of loss from significant others, and during times of stress, frustration, or anger. Attachment is formed very early and is a universal (Main, 2002), psychobiological process in that attachment system activation is related to stress hormones (Fox & Card, 1999). Generally, four attachment statuses are recognized and each is designated by a letter in the attachment status literature. Table one summarizes the overview. The first attachment status is secure attachment, also called autonomous (F), the other three are insecure and are called dismissive (Ds), preoccupied (E) and unresolved (U). They are called ‘attachment representations’, or ‘states of mind with respect to attachment’ by clinical and developmental psychologists (Arindell, 1983; Choi, Lee, & Kim, 1998; de Haas, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 1994; George & Solomon, 1999; Main, 1999). In the case of secure attachment, we have received consistent, sensitive care giving, and later tend to respond in confident and flexible ways to others and ourselves. The three categories of insecure attachment develop in different ways in early childhood: Dismissive attachment develops when the caregiver rejects the child’s feelings of need, fear or anger, which the child, in turn, learns to suppress in order to get along with the attachment figure(s). Preoccupied attachment develops in response


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TABLE 1 ADULT ATTACHMENT STATUSES OVERVIEW

Adult attachment status

Implicit assumptions Mental rules to about attachment handle attachment relationships activation

Secure (F)

Needs for safety and security are recognized. Support is there when needed.

Dismissing (Ds)

Needs for safety and security are ignored or rejected. Support is not there when needed.

Preoccupied (E)

Needs for safety and security are sometimes ignored. Sometimes the caregiver is needy of help. Care and security are inconsistent.

Unresolved (U)

Potential isolation when needy, or even danger from those on whom you depend. Loss of attachment

Express what is needed or feared.. Problems are addressed and processed. Do not express what is needed or feared. Suppress anxiety. Do not depend on others. Be extra sensitive towards attachment figures as they are not dependable. Worry about them.

There is no resolution to a dangerous situation. Sometimes you are left to fate, isolated and/or threatened. figure There is no time to think or feel, strong emotions that can There is danger from overwhelm. those you need.

Source: Main, 2002 to inconsistent, even needy care giving causing the child to have increased sensitivity to fear, anger or neediness in order to stay connected to the attachment figure. The fourth category, unresolved attachment, results from threats of being abandoned, hurt or ignored by our attachment figures when we are most needy, or as a consequence of not being able to do anything about loss or hurt.


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Although attachment status as developed in childhood becomes more stable as we age, changes in the way we feel treated can shift our attachment organization in a more or less favorable direction throughout life (Bowlby, 1988). Attachment status can change at any stage in life under profound influences such as loss, separation and trauma. In general we respond to separation with one of the three organized attachment statuses (secure, dismissive or preoccupied), unless the experience is traumatic such as abuse, loss or disaster, in which case we all exhibit signs of the fourth status, disorganized attachment. After a certain time, however, most of us reorganize our attachment representation through emotional change and cognitive restructuring. Bowlby notes that “this redefinition of self and situation is no mere release of affect but a cognitive act on which all else turns” (1969/1982, p. 94), after which we revert to the organized status we had, i.e., secure, dismissive or preoccupied. Attachment theory views exploration as a normal, voluntary separation and a sign of secure attachment: "Exploring the environment, including play and varied activities with peers, is. seen as a third basic component and one antithetic to attachment behavior. When an individual (of any age) is feeling secure he is likely to explore away from his attachment figure. When alarmed, anxious, tired or unwell he feels an urge towards proximity." (Bowlby, 1988, p. 121) We apply Bowlby’s perspective on exploration to emigration by viewing travel to other countries, in this increasingly international world, as a normal behavior of which permanent residence in another country may be the end result. We want to explore as long as we feel we have a secure base to return to, and we generally explore within boundaries of the familiar: “It is still too little realized, perhaps, that the individuals of a species...usually spend the whole of their lives within an extremely restricted segment of it, known as the home range.” (1973, pp. 146-147). While leaving one’s country of origin is often exploration into what appears to be the familiar based on previous exposure to brochures, movies and books, being an immigrant goes further; it results in life characterized by separation from country, culture, extended family and (often) family of origin.


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Arredondo-Dowd (1981) has proposed how attachment theory should serve as a model for understanding personal loss and grief as a result of immigration, and others have argued that whether emigration is voluntary or not, it eventually is accompanied by loss, grief and even trauma (Levenbach & Lewak, 1995; Marlin, 1992, 1994; Mendlovic, Ratzoni, Doron, & Braham, 2001). Given the characterization of immigration as a traumatic event, as well as existing evidence that ongoing loss and separation may relate to unresolved attachment status (Bowlby, 1969/1982; Hesse & van IJzendoorn, 1998; Main, 1996; Sable, 1995; van IJzendoorn, Feldbrugge, Derks, & de Ruiter, 1997) we tested as the first hypothesis whether immigrants are characterized more by unresolved attachment than non-immigrants. As a second hypothesis we examined whether being with an attachment figure (being married), was related to lower rates of unresolved attachment, and as the third hypothesis whether length of stay in the new country decreased the rate of unresolved attachment. Hazan and Shaver (1990) showed that those with secure attachment view exploration (work) as equally important to home base (personal relations), while those with dismissive attachment assign work a higher priority, and those with preoccupied attachment give more priority to personal relations. We have argued that the initial emigration process is one of exploration. We tested as the fourth hypothesis whether reason for immigration was linked to attachment status, in that those with dismissive attachment would more frequently report immigrating for education and work, while those with preoccupied attachment would immigrate for love, and those with secure attachment more often as a result of tourism. Method Measures Research participants were assessed for attachment state of mind with the Adult Attachment Projective (AAP ;George & West, 2003; George, West, & Pettem, 1999), a series of eight drawings about which the individual is asked to tell a story. He or she is asked to say (1) what is happening, (2) what led up to this situation, (3) what might happen next, and (4) what the story subject might be feeling or thinking. The entire set of 8 stories is taped, then transcribed, and decoded by a trained, reliable coder to assess the subject’s state of


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mind with respect to attachment. The instructions are similar to those given with administration of the Thematic Apperception Test (Murray, 1943). Coding AAP story transcripts for attachment status requires a lengthy training and acquiring reliability as a coder. The process of coding is quite detailed and systematic. A summary of the process may be helpful at this point. The Adult Attachment Projective coder first assesses the coherence of the stories, based on manner of storytelling, lack of personal relations brought up in the story, as well as the quantity and quality of the story. This is not unlike coding rules for AAI transcripts that the storyteller will adhere to Grice’s principles of cooperative discourse Quality, Quantity, Relation and Manner (Hesse, 1999). Next, the coder assesses other aspects of attachment that are revealed in the story such as the character acting in one’s own behalf, and being connected to others. This is followed by deciding the level of synchrony (a feature of a goal-corrected relationship) in the stories about drawings with more than one person. The coder also examines all stories for defensive processing against attachment system activation, which are infrequent and mild in stories evidencing secure attachment. These defensive processing markers are hallmarks of insecure attachment. Words and themes in the story that show deactivation of attachment related anxiety indicate dismissive attachment. Signs of hyper activation of attachment anxiety, called cognitive disconnect markers such as indecision, worry and emotionality, are signs of preoccupied attachment status. Finally the stories are examined for indicators of danger, isolation and fear called segregated systems markers which when they are not resolved, indicate unresolved attachment. The AAP assesses the same four adult attachment status classifications as the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI`; George, Kaplan, & Main, 1984, 1985, 1996), secure, dismissive, preoccupied and unresolved. These are, as is customary with the AAP, also sometimes abbreviated as F (secure), Ds (dismissive), E (preoccupied), and U (unresolved). The AAP was tested on individuals drawn from samples in the United States and Canada (see George & West, 2001 for details). Individuals were predominantly middle class, Caucasian women ranging in age from 19-65. Participants in these samples represented community and clinical populations. The authors report strong interrater reliability of .97 for secure versus insecure classifications,


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and of .92 for the four major attachment groups of secure, dismissive, preoccupied and unresolved. Construct validity evidence for the AAP was evaluated based on the convergence between AAP and the AAI classifications. Convergence between the AAP and the AAI for the four attachment classifications of secure, dismissive, preoccupied and unresolved was .94 (kappa = .86,) (George, 2003; George & West, 2001). Information on AAP studies, reliability and validity evidence is also reported on www.attachmentprojective.com, which shows one of the AAP drawings, as well. Although the AAI has more validity evidence than the AAP, we found that there was enough preliminary evidence for the AAP and some practical considerations to warrant selection of the AAP for the research instrument. The AAP measures the same attachment representation as the AAI, but takes less time to administer and score. The AAI takes up to 4 to 10 hours to administer, transcribe, and code, whereas the AAP takes 2 to 4 hours per transcript. In addition to the assessment of attachment representation above, both groups of research participants also completed questionnaires on socioeconomic background, including age, gender, education, income, religion, and ethnicity. Immigrants also provided information on length of time in the U.S., marital status and reason for immigration. Participants Lower socioeconomic status is correlated with dismissive and unresolved attachment status in some studies (van IJzendoorn & Bakermans-Kranenburg, 1996) but not in others (Barnett, Kidwell, & Leung, 1998). We invited participation from a middle class adult immigrant group. We favored a sample population with characteristics that other studies had found to be associated with a lower rather than higher rate of unresolved attachment, so that a possible finding of a higher proportion of unresolved attachment among our study’s immigrant participants might be more meaningful. Furthermore, since ethnic and racial minority status also affects socioeconomic status, we selected a group that differed as little as possible from the Caucasian middle class in the U.S. except that they were immigrants. Participants were then recruited via Dutch and Belgian organizations in the San Francisco Bay area, and with assistance of the Netherlands Consulate in San Mateo, California. A letter inviting people to participate in the research, accompanied by an introductory letter from


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the clubs, was mailed out by these organizations and the consulate. They explained that the research was entirely voluntary. A total of four hundred letters were sent out. When participants responded, they were screened to ensure they were first generation immigrants, who had come here as young adults or adults. They were given a confidential participant number, and an initial research participant introduction letter which explained the research steps in further detail to ensure informed consent. Confidentiality and anonymity were guaranteed. A total of 75 immigrants, agreed to participate in the project. Participants for a comparison sample consisting of adult Californian individuals who were born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and still living there, were recruited by e-mailing over 1400 invitations to a convenience sample of people in San Francisco Bay Area corporations, city government offices, and church groups. When potential participants responded, they were screened to ensure that they were born and raised in California, still residing within driving proximity to family of origin, whose parents were not immigrants but otherwise similar to the immigrant group in socioeconomic profile. They were given a participant introduction letter, explaining the research, and signed informed consent forms. Thirty Californians fit the criteria established for the comparison sample, perhaps illustrating the notion that most California residents have migrated from other locales. Responses among the Dutch and Belgian immigrant group who comprise 1.2% of the California population (Modarres & Aleman, 2003) were more forthcoming than among Californians born and raised in the area which may have been related to the strong support shown for the research by the Dutch Consulate and the leaders of the Dutch and Belgian social organizations in the Bay Area. Many participants said they were happy that someone was interested in their story telling, since they felt rather “onzichtbaar” or invisible as immigrants, considered themselves pretty unremarkable and focused on “aanpassen” or fitting into society. Perhaps the concept of attachments and story telling differences between immigrants and non-immigrants was just not as appealing to non-immigrants.


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Procedures Subjects in both groups were given the AAP at a private psychotherapy office, the participant’s home or their office. We felt it was important to include those participants who objected to coming to the researcher’s office in order to broaden the participant group. The AAP interview was conducted by the same researcher in all instances. All subjects were told this was a study about immigrants and the stories they tell, including those about their relationships to significant others. In order to ensure confidentiality each participant was asked to put a participant number (issued at the time of initial agreement to participate) on the audio tape used to record individual responses to the AAP test items. Participants were also provided written explanations of the research both verbally and in writing. There were a total of 105 AAP transcripts, of which 75 were immigrants’ transcripts and 30 were native Californians’ transcripts. Of the 75 immigrant AAP transcripts, 5 tapes were eliminated from the research due to bad audio quality or other problems like not being able to decipher a word that the coder found essential in order to be able to determine attachment status. We had 70 immigrant (m 29, f 41) and 30 native (m 12, f 18) transcripts. After the AAP responses were taped, they were transcribed by the interviewer and then decoded by an experienced, highly reliable coder, one of the developers of the AAP. The coder was uninformed as to the participant’s gender, age, or immigrant status. The AAP coder saw only a participant number and the text of the transcript and was “blind” to possible hypotheses on the researchers’ part. The AAP administrator was trained in administration protocol for the AAP, but at that point still untrained in coding transcripts for attachment status thus avoiding the possibility of influencing the assessment outcome by being knowledgeable about anything in the subject’s manner of answering the questions that might affect AAP coding. There were 70 immigrant AAP results and 30 native Californian AAP results. Results Sociodemographic Comparison The socio demographic profiles of those born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area, and the immigrant group are described and


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compared in Tables 2 through 6. We had 70 immigrant (m 29, f 41) and 30 native (m 12, f 18) participants. Although the immigrant sample (40% between 61 and 75 years) was significantly older than the native group (47% between the ages of 46 to 60), chi-square testing showed that age was not significantly related to attachment status (see notes to Table 2).

TABLE 2 AGE VS. IMMIGRANT STATUS (N 90)

Age group 20-35 36-45 46-60 61-75 76-91

Immigrants n 60a 7 12% 13 22% 9 15% 24 40% 7 12%

Natives n 30 8 27% 6 20% 14 47% 1 3% 1 3%

.a

of the 70 immigrant participants, 10 did not answer this item question. Note: although there was significant difference between immigrants and natives, X2 = 21.82, p < 0.0002bcd we found no significance of age to attachment status in 1 way ANOVA, f =0.74, p=

Attachment and Immigrants : Emotional Security Among Dutch and Belgian Immigrants in California, U.S.A Ecke, Yolanda Herda Petrus van. Amsterdam University Press 9056294806 9789056294809 9789048504749 English Dutch--California, Belgians--California, Dutch Americans-California, Belgian Americans--California, Immigrants--Social conditions.--California , gtt--Gehechtheid, gtt--Immigranten, gtt--Nederlanders, gtt--Belgen, gtt--Acculturatie, gtt-CalifornieÌˆ. 2007 JV6013.E25 2007eb 325.249209794 Dutch--California, Belgians--California, Dutch Americans-California, Belgian Americans--California, Immigrants--Social conditions.--California , gtt--Gehechtheid, gtt--Immigranten, gtt--Nederlanders, gtt--Belgen, gtt--Acculturatie, gtt-CalifornieÌˆ.

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Attachment and Immigrants: Emotional security among Dutch and Belgian Immigrants in California, U.S.A. (UvA Proefschriften)

Collective Talent (UvA Proefschriften)

Out of Place? (UvA Proefschriften)

The Immigrants

Russian Immigrants

Life Lines: Community, Family, and Assimilation among Asian Indian Immigrants

Topics in Market Microstructure (UvA Proefschriften)

New Immigrants in New York

Immigrants at the margins

A Nation of Immigrants

New Immigrants in New York

Social Work Practice with Immigrants and Refugees

Educating new Americans: immigrants lives and learning

Religion And Social Justice for Immigrants

Immigrants and Their International Money Flows

Manifest Destinies: Americanizing Immigrants and Internationalizing Americans

Targeting Immigrants: Government, Technology, and Ethics

Social Work Practice with Immigrants and Refugees

Immigrants and Their International Money Flows

Reactions of the organic matrix in dentin caries (UvA Proefschriften)

Korean Americans (The New Immigrants)

Ukrainian Americans (The New Immigrants)

The new immigrants. Ukrainain americans

The Confederados: Old South Immigrants in Brazil

Arguing about climate change (UvA-Proefschriften)

Immigrants and National Identity in Europe (Advances in Sociology)

Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850-1930

Toward Assimilation and Citizenship: Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States

Nations of Immigrants: Australia and the USA Compared (Monash Studies in Global Movements)

Attachment and Immigrants: Emotional security among Dutch and Belgian Immigrants in California, U.S.A. (UvA Proefschriften)

Collective Talent (UvA Proefschriften)

Out of Place? (UvA Proefschriften)

The Immigrants

Russian Immigrants

Life Lines: Community, Family, and Assimilation among Asian Indian Immigrants

Topics in Market Microstructure (UvA Proefschriften)

New Immigrants in New York

Immigrants at the margins

A Nation of Immigrants

New Immigrants in New York

Social Work Practice with Immigrants and Refugees

Educating new Americans: immigrants lives and learning

Religion And Social Justice for Immigrants

Immigrants and Their International Money Flows

Manifest Destinies: Americanizing Immigrants and Internationalizing Americans

Targeting Immigrants: Government, Technology, and Ethics

Social Work Practice with Immigrants and Refugees

Immigrants and Their International Money Flows

Reactions of the organic matrix in dentin caries (UvA Proefschriften)

Korean Americans (The New Immigrants)

Ukrainian Americans (The New Immigrants)

The new immigrants. Ukrainain americans

The Confederados: Old South Immigrants in Brazil

Arguing about climate change (UvA-Proefschriften)

Immigrants and National Identity in Europe (Advances in Sociology)

Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850-1930

Toward Assimilation and Citizenship: Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States

Nations of Immigrants: Australia and the USA Compared (Monash Studies in Global Movements)

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