Biography

Panelist 1 - Maykel Verkuyten, Professor at the Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science at Utrecht University, the Netherlands
Maykel Verkuyten is professor at the Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He also is the academic director of the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations at Utrecht University (Ercomer). By training he is a social/cultural psychologist and cultural anthropologist. His main interests are in questions of ethnic and cultural identity, acculturation and intergroup relations, especially among older children and adolescents. His work has appeared in many journals and he has contributed chapters to books such as the ‘Oxford handbook of multicultural identity’, ‘Intergroup attitudes and relations in childhood through adulthood’, ‘The handbook of race, racism, and the developing child’, ‘Peer relations in cultural context’, and ‘Realizing the potential of immigrant youth’, Furthermore, he wrote several monographs including ‘The social psychology of ethnic identity’, and recently ‘Identity and cultural diversity: what social psychology can teach us’.

Panelist 2 - Andrew J. Fuligni, Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, Department of Psychology, UCLA
Andrew J. Fuligni, Ph.D. is Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and the Department of Psychology. He also is a Senior Scientist in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. Dr. Fuligni and his collaborators employ multiple methods to study the interaction between socio-cultural experience and biobehavioral development during adolescence and young adulthood, with particular attention to teenagers from Latin American, Asian, European, and immigrant backgrounds. Receiving his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan, he was a recipient of the American Psychological Association's Boyd McCandless Award for Early Career Contribution to Developmental Psychology, a William T. Grant Faculty Scholars Award, a FIRST award from NICHD, and he is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. Dr. Fuligni recently completed a six-year term an Associate Editor of the journal Child Development.

1-005 - What Immigrants Can Teach Us about Child Development in the 21st Century

Session Type: Invited Views by Two

Integrative Statement

View 1 - The Scientific Benefits of Studying Immigrants
Different academic disciplines focus on questions of immigrants and immigration, in general and in relation to children and adolescents in particular. There are many findings on numerous topics collected via various research methods among different groups and communities and in all kinds of contexts. A great deal is known about the experiences, problems, adjustments, attitudes and behaviors of immigrant-origin youth. Systematic research is critical for developing an adequate and informed understanding of these issues. However, there are also critical voices that argue that existing theories and methods are limited for the development of a valid understanding. Furthermore, increased attention to immigrants can also have benefits for academic thinking and research. It can raise novel questions, stimulate re-thinking of existing theories, and instigate creative and alternative ways for doing empirical research. In my presentation I will discuss some of the scientific benefits of studying immigrants.

View 2 - Developmental Flexibility in the Age of Globalization: Learning from Immigrant Adolescents
The socioeconomic and cultural changes that result from an increasingly interconnected world have been speculated to have important implications for the nature of adolescent development. Unfortunately, the historical time necessary for these changes to take place means that definitive research on the impact of globalization necessarily will be slow in forthcoming. Adolescents from immigrant families, however, already experience the social and cultural shifts thought to typify globalization, and an analysis of their experiences could shed light on what to expect as existing national barriers become more permeable. The value of flexibility in the face of great social and cultural change appears to be the dominant theme from research on immigrant youth, although that flexibility can be constrained by socioeconomic, ethnic, and racial stratification systems in host societies. This talk highlights the implications of these findings for what may lie ahead for teenagers as globalization continues to expand.

Sub Unit

• SRCD Biennial Meeting

Moderator

• Robert Crosnoe, University of Texas at Austin

Panelists

• Maykel Verkuyten, Utrecht University

• Andrew J Fuligni, University of California, Los Angeles