Social Sciences

Migrating people fleeing violence and persecution face narrowing options to seek safety through the U.S. immigration courts. Social work’s historical and ongoing commitment to immigrant health and immigrant justice supports an enlarged presence within asylum and other immigration processes. In the role of experts, social work clinicians can evaluate displaced people to collect evidence of harm, draft reports and affidavits for the lawyer, and may even testify to educate the court on the physical and mental sequelae of violence and trauma. They play an essential part in communicating the complexity of migrating people’s stories to adjudicators. Social work clinicians seeking to join this work will attune to cultural humility, relationship building, and an opportunity to support displaced peoples’ human right to safety, in line with the skills and values of the profession. This paper serves as a brief introduction to how clinical social workers can use their mental health expertise to contribute to immigrant legal proceedings, as well as a call to action to invite both new and established social workers to use their clinical skills to meet our profession’s ethical obligations to the human rights of migrating people.

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This study challenges the traditional perception of cultural values as uniform at the national level, particularly in light of globalization and demographic changes that reveal substantial intra-nation diversity. Utilizing a person-centered approach through Latent Profile Analysis (LPA), the research synthesizes Schwartz’s value orientations and Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to analyze data from 595 respondents in the United States, exemplifying a multicultural diverse society. The findings indicate that cultural value profiles primarily cluster around hierarchy and power distance, reflecting sociocultural attitudes toward authority and relational dynamics relevant to current social and political contexts. Notably, individual-level analysis reveals significant variations in how cultural values are internalized and enacted, suggesting that these values influence personal behavior rather than merely serving as collective descriptors. The study emphasizes the coexistence of conflicting cultural and value orientations within an individual and highlights the need to consider individual differences in cultural analysis. While the research contributes valuable insights into cultural psychology, the research is limited by its cross-sectional design and focus on a single nation, suggesting the need for future studies to adopt longitudinal and cross-national approaches. This research advances a more nuanced understanding of cultural values, with implications for management, policymaking, and education in multicultural societies.