Globalization: Psychological Problems and Social Needs

Globalization fosters a re-examination of multiculturalism in the United States. Existing historical multicultural populations comprise assimilated or bicultural af- fluent and professional class resident ethnic minorities as well as a resident ethnic minority underclass. In addition, rapidly expanding new multicultural populations include migrant laborers, refugees, and transnational elite students and sojourners. These new populations maintain their occupations and activities by necessary, regular, and continuing social contacts across national boundaries and work settings in diverse cultures. Transnationalism in these new multicultural populations produces a sense of common history with shared affective bonds of culture, language, and religion in the absence of continuing affiliation with either their original or host societies. These individuals have reconstituted identities that include awareness of deteritorialization, a loss of traditional and dedicated living space as a result of exclusion, discrimination, and distinctive human problems.

The unprecedented mobility of these new, diverse multicultural populations in order to remain alive or pursue improved living conditions has resulted in counter pressures by host countries to maintain the status quo. These counter pressures stimulate ethnic unrest and contribute to the development of psychopathologies and problems in living that remain largely unrecognized, unaddressed, and unresolved. Pre-existing psychological injury, histories of trauma, culture shock, and negative and/or incomplete acculturation experiences arising from culture-specific expectations, beliefs, and worldviews, with cultural identification issues contribute to these sources of distress.