Interaction between Human and Socio-ecological Trends

Figure 4: Multi-faceted interaction during the integration of immigrants. Multi-scale resilience to understand integration and transferability.

 Source: own elaboration

The integration process requires not only subjective participation but also embedded multi-faceted environments across/through the entire lifecycle.

The integration of immigrants into a given territory is an agglomeration of interaction from the micro level to macro level (Bronfenbrenner 1977, 1979, 1989). Immigrant territoriality suffers from the multi-faceted normative process for better integration into the host territory. Integration necessitates illuminating patterns in particular domains.

Integrating immigrants under the social-ecological paradigm involves an appreciation of how immigrants interact with people, groups, and other macro-level actors. To survive in the host region, it may be essential to create relationships among regular interactors and the semiotic systems of the host, and likewise immigrants need to learn the signs and symbols as elements of communicative behaviour and communication systems (Stokols et al. 2013).

This paradigm draws upon the key concepts and assumptions of integration systems such as interdependency between members of the host society and the

homeostasis concepts that maintain and balance social groups and persons, and deviation amplification in order to understand the interrelationships among immigrants and their surroundings (Maruyama 1963; Katz and Kahn 1966;

Emery 1969; Stokols et al. 2013).

On the other hand, this paradigm indeed clarifies that effective integration needs efforts to promote organisational or community resilience, which should ideally be based on many supportive, dynamic, mutual transactions that occur across diverse levels of environmental and individual factors. These mutual influences are relationships that produce structures wherein individual immigrants are not only influenced by their environment but also by other strategic plans of various organisations in different levels act to modify these (Giddens 1984; Stokols et al. 2013).

Development paradigms and patterns should change in terms of innovation and novelty in integration. Immigration in the Arctic is a positive, profound change in society that is required for determining stability in the Arctic domain.

The resilience of behavioural patterns in the socio-ecological model, especially on the Exo-Meso-Macro levels, is notoriously strong (see Figure 3). The study shows that effective integration requires social change for social-ecological system resilience. Adaptability to integrating any new variables into the social-ecological system demands learning, combining experience and knowledge (Sack 1983), adjusting responses to changing external drivers and internal processes, and continuing to determine the stability domain (Berkes et al. 2003). Adaptability in a new social-ecological system has been defined as “the capability of actors in a system to influence resilience” (Walker et al. 2004:5; Folke et al. 2010; Folke et al. 2009).

Individuals go through the psychological adaptation process as they interact with a culture that is different from their original one (Berry 1997).

This process requires effort and a long learning path of new ways of living and then consolidating them with one’s habitual ways of being and identity, which can be stressful. Acculturative stress is an inner stress of an individual to some extent, and it is expressed in the form of anxiety or other forms of mental and physical symptoms of maladaptation (Rudmin 2003), and to the extent that immigrants face structural barriers and inequities (Liebkind & Jasinskaja-lahti 2000; Potochnick, Perreira, & Fuligni 2012). A successful integration process is characterised by low levels of distress and high positive affect. The sociocultural adaptation process is a feeling of intercultural competence and comfort i.e., socio-cultural adaptation (Ward 2013).

A key mechanism of successful adaptation is the capacity to adopt both heritage and mainstream cultural contexts. Biculturalism, then, builds on the idea that heritage and mainstream immigrants who have integrated these orientations will be better able to cope with their acculturative challenges.

Conversely, society needs both the adaptability and transformability capacity of immigrants and the social-ecological system of the host country. There are many other factors that influence integration in the host society. A positive atmosphere or social-ecological systems that are immigrant-friendly could also support the orientation of immigrants into a new culture and society. Adaptability always maintains certain processes excluding changing internal demands and external forces on the social ecological model (Carpenter and Brock 2008; Locke et al. 2000). Conversely, “transformability is the capacity to construct or design a fundamentally new system when an ecological system makes the existing system unsustainable” (Walker et al. 2004:5; Folke et al. 2010). In this context, individual immigrants, their families, organisations, societies, and cultures form a complex construct. With regard to the determinants to the adaptability and transformability capacity between the individual and the social-ecological system, there is a need to approach it from a multiple level of analysis that includes human ecological, developmental, demographic, cultural, economic, and social variables.

This paradigm is the example of the inclusion of immigrants in the host sociological system in which immigrants play as “agents of ecosystem” (Folke 2006) and reconstruct this ecosystem-oriented branch of ecology from the mainstream ecological system of the host country (Folke 2006). The mainstream social ecological system (SES), whether or not included in or excluded from individual ecology, treats human ecology actions as external to the ecological system of immigrants. The interdependencies and feedback between immigrants and the host society develop social dynamics and impersonal relationships (see Sack’s tendency analysis 1983), which then evolves into the resilience perspective of this paradigm. On the other hand, the paradigm indeed encompasses understanding, acquiring knowledge, and incorporating the emergence of adaptive management as well as governance between actors and interest groups for the paradigm. Interdependencies between the human and social-ecological systems create a power dynamic between agents, which is the ability to feel their presence in a certain social system. Here the power could be the property of both immigrants and society. Socio-cultural integration with the host society affects the economic integration of immigrants, and even immigrant entrepreneurial development, in many cases, significantly facilitates the effective integration of an immigrant into the host SES (Kushnirovich 2015).

Power is indeed a relationship between two actors: “people-people” or

“people-context”. The power of interdependency “…only exists in one’s capacity to influence another’s attainment of some positive goal or avoidance of some negative event” (Complexity Labs 2016). Society can depend on immigrants if the society has goals and needs that immigrants can fulfil. For example, in the Arctic immigration contexts, the Arctic society depends on human capital to fulfil demographic challenges. Similarly, immigrants depend on the Arctic society to become more fully integrated. Immigrants are vulnerable and at risk of being isolated. Therefore, a synergistic relationship between the human ecology of immigrants and the social-ecological system of the host territory adds value to an immigrant’s adaptive approach.

3.2.1. Micro-level Approach

Territorial identity as well as self-identity can affect integrating immigrants (Learner et al. 2007). Immigrants try to re-construct their identities based on the paradigm of interpreting factors and templates. The multi-faceted interaction process supports them to negotiate their identity (Swann Jr. & Bosson 2008;

Ting Tommy: Learner et al. 2007). Multiple territorial identities (Marks 1999) such as state and sub-state identity attachment are required for territoriality (Hooghe & Marks 2005). Territorial commitment increases among immigrants by the functioning of the micro to macro level of interaction (see Figure 3). The micro-level approach is associated with acquaintance, importance, types of social associates, and the gender composition of the social background of individuals.

Higher familiarity and importance between individuals create a higher level of positive interactions (Vogel et al. 2017). Same-gender composition could have a more positive affect on human behaviour (Vogel et al. 2017). This biological tradition of human interactions with family and peers is linked to a more positive valence. Relationships with non-family social partners is linked to more positive outcomes in the integration process (Vogel et al. 2017). It is a result of the introduction of the human ecological theory into resilience studies, which usually focuses on the biological interaction trends between individuals and their micro-level environments, i.e. nature of self, location, livelihood, background, and situation in the society (Kolar 2011).

The nature of relational selves is a source of interpersonal relationship patterns involving affect, motivation (Andersen et al. 1996; Berk & Andersen 2000), self-evaluation and self-regulation. All of these cognitive characteristics of individuals are controlled by the actors themselves and are relevant with significant others (Hinkley & Andersen 1996). This nature of humans is shaped by experiences with significant others and derives from their emotional relevance

for the self (Andersen et al. 1998; Higgins 1987). Here the micro-level focuses on immigrants, and the view of evolutionary psychology would propose that their cognitive systems and fundamental cognitions such as values (i.e. cultural) are critical mechanisms for adapting, along with interpersonal networks, to their social and ecological surroundings. Usually, immigrants have a limited number of significant others in the host society.

The relationships include interaction between immigrants and their immediate families and peers from the same country who have migrated either before or after them. It even includes the effect of either positive or negative attitudes towards their families as part of their relationships, which creates bi-directional contacts and balance across the multiple roles and activities of immigrants and their immediate network. Under these circumstances there are lower levels of depression and higher levels of self-esteem contingencies (Crocker & Wolfe 2001) and well-being (Marks and Shelley MacDiarmid 1996). But there is much evidence to suggest that they do not necessarily have a good relationship with all peers from the same country who are living in the same host society. Significant others’ habits, nature, inner qualities, or ways of thinking and reacting might seem to match with each other in interpersonal relationships (Markman & Genter). In this respect, combination and value creation (Moral and Ghosal 1996; Schumpeter 1934; Kogut & Zander 1992), cultural values, trust and trustworthiness (Gambetta 1988; Gulati 1995; Ring &

Van de Ven 1994), and the shared vision of individuals (Chow & Chan 2008) can create mutual understanding. According to Bourdieu, individual interaction and the reinforcement of these relationships depends on mutual recognition and acknowledgement between members of a network (Coleman 1990) while emphasising how individuals maintain relationships with their interpersonal network by classifying opportunities (Sack 1983), enforcing control (Sack 1983), and using experience and skills, which are a form of human or social capital.

In the micro-level paradigm, the individual’s actions devote much discussion on the collective nature of social capital like the trust, sanctions, authority and trustworthiness as part of social capital. In the micro-level perspective, it is easier for an individual to exert control over that social capital nature than over any other level in the social ecological paradigm. Conversely, it is not easy to have some representations of significant others for immigrants. As the study shows, there are stereotypes in the social categories who are non-significant others for creating interpersonal networking (Yeasmin 2016, Chen & Andersen 1999) e.g.

peers from the same country of origin also represents non-significant others, in case their values are different.

3.2.2. Exo-Level Approach

Emphasising the challenge of the resilience of immigrants to cope with social systems, social institutions and organisations is interpreted as social value and organisational legitimacy (see Sack’s tendency analysis). This adaptive capacity is an embedded phenomenon of all Sack’s tendencies that necessitate efforts from immigrants. The relationships of immigrants with social environments are not only the consequences of immigrants’ skills, nature and background values and their motivations, but it reflects the reaction of the host society and how welcoming they are towards immigrants. This interaction very much depends on impersonal relationships (see Sack’s explanations of tendencies), which could be positive or negative. At the exo-level of interaction there is a setting in which there is a link between the contexts.

The immigrant does not have any operational role if the context in which immigrants participate is not favourable. The exo-level comprises multiple social contexts and the interdependencies among contexts. In this level of social-ecological paradigm, relationships are based on 1) individual to individual interaction between immigrants and actors from the social environment (Ennett et al. 2008). On the other hand, the resilience of immigrants can be constructed in terms of relationships and interactions between 2) human subjects and contextual factors (Almedom 2004; Almedom & Glandon 2007; Hamiel et al.

2013). Immigrants’ interaction with the level is usually indirect. The exo-level bonds some processes that take place between two or more settings, and at least one of these settings does not usually comprise the person. At this level, the value-attitude-behavioural hierarchy creates a hierarchical form between the individual and context (Manfredo et al. 2014). Therefore, the guiding influence of the cognitive processes of values are slowly formed, and the evaluative processes of attitudes is also not rapid. The exo-level is inspired by social hierarchy and bureaucracy (see tendency analysis Sack 1983). Reducing the consequences of hierarchy-enhancing institutions can be effective in balancing the integration of immigrants.

3.2.3. Meso-level Approach

The physical environment, one’s interaction with the neighbourhood or other groups, influences over territorial characteristics, and one’s sense of community are all meso-level interactions. At the meso level, some previous research tended to study the experiences of groups and the interactions between groups. The groups are not necessarily ‘immigrants’ and ‘locals’; they could indeed be

‘immigrants’ and ‘immigrants’ (Huisman, Hough, Langellier & Toner 2011). At

this level, the ability and willingness of the groups to assimilate and be integrated with each other, depending on local social systems, are unsubstantiated. In a very different study of group-level interactions (Michael Messner 2009), finding the characteristics of the territory or finding and classifying opportunities, enforcing power over territory (see Sack’s analysis) are unconfirmed. Prejudice, stereotypes and discrimination can often make an immigrant unwilling or even opposed to interacting positively, which can cause a breakdown of the social-ecological system. Because of this, some forms of encounter can have acrimonious outcomes. Additionally, many opportunities for potential interaction occur in everyday contexts between groups to groups in which individuals have a choice as to 1) whether or not to interact, 2) with whom they wish to interact, and 3) how they might wish to do so. An individual or a group of individuals can create new opportunities to promote greater positive interaction between both immigrants and receiving communities with those who are already open to building positive relationships (Orton 2014).

The fact is that people tend to favour their own groups over others in the society (Sumner 1906), since people have been largely inspired by social identity. Conversely, social governance considers group dominance to be a dynamic system wherein inter-group bias differs systematically across levels of socio-economic status and power. Within stable group-based dominance systems, the governing power displays more inter-group favouritism, especially with respect to the dimensions of control and benefit (Sidanius & Pratto 1999, pp. 233-234; Fang, Sidanius & Pratto 1998). In an extreme form, this unequal inter-group bias is revealed as out-group favouritism among subordinates. It is true that group contact reduces prejudice (Allport 1954); however, inter-group contact does not necessarily support social inclusion. On the other hand, cross-group contact between intergroup members and out-group members can improve social relationships.

3.2.4. Macro-Level Approach

Public policies, norms, societal customs, public opinion, and legal issues are considered an outermost part of integration where the effects are larger. Macro level interactions rely on the public sector. Understanding this level allows us to understand differences in such outcomes as provision that demands interpretation of the specific motivations of government. The interpreting of policies is examined to see how governments can be persuaded to take initiatives to develop integration services. Sometimes some global influences, politics, and social media discourses turn public opinion and materialise policies that define

are indeed based on an integrally neo-liberalist ideology of governance (Joseph 2013a, b; Schmidt 2013; Whitham 2013). The majority of attitudes depend on politicised immigration issues that can affect public policies. The mediating effect of anti-immigrant rhetoric affects integration policies. Anti-immigration attitudes vary depending on religious contexts: Strongly religious people in the host country are less likely to oppose immigration than non-religious people (Bohman & Hjerm 2014). Socio-cultural, political and the economic integration of immigrants are macro-level indications.

3.3. Macro Factor Analysis of the Territorial Characteristics of