Preparing Hypotheses when Working with Foreigners

4.3 Preparing Hypotheses when Working with Foreigners

In the complex helper systems of other cultures we often discover very contra-dictory standpoints about what is causing the problems and how best to solve them. Intercultural teams are well acquainted with situations in which heated debates take place about whether the foreign family should be supported or rather confronted – about how much assimilation can be expected of them. Much par-tisanship and identification is found here, with creeds taking the place of sober professional judgment. The many and contradictory hypotheses proffered for the counseling of migrant families represent not only an opportunity but also a source of many questions and problems:

– Which of the many hypotheses shall be our working hypothesis?

– Why do we decide for or against a hypothesis?

– Which of our implicit assumptions about migration and mental health are deci-sive here?

In such cases it is best to have a model available for organizing and classifying our hypotheses, to ensure that the discussion returns to methodological terrain. We like the model developed by Norbert Kunze, head of an intercultural team in Reutlingen, Germany (Kunze, 1998). According to this model, hypotheses may be classified in three categories:

bal means – even if they consider themselves to be nondirective and neu-tral.

– Our professional knowledge is valuable empirical knowledge. It would be irresponsible and very inefficient if we were to restrain ourselves from im-parting this knowledge on later clients. Yet we must introduce it with hu-mility and respect for the self-regulating nature of a system and not force it upon the clients.

Our own position toward this disaccord within the systemic camp supports one side as well as the other. The idea of not-knowing can be very helpful when exploring extensively the way the system sees things, recounts things and interprets things. From what we hear, we develop hypotheses – if neces-sary, even structuralistic hypotheses. We consider this important for explicat-ing our inner conclusions and makexplicat-ing them available to revision: by our-selves, by the clients, by other colleagues or by the results of actions based on these conclusions. We are well aware that hypotheses tend to constrain the possible options; but they do that no matter whether we are conscious of and express them or not – or whether we act as though they didn’t even exist.

a) Psychological hypotheses: Problems are explained exclusively via psychologi-cal theories. Depending on the respective school the counselor belongs to, there is an emphasis on psychoanalytic, behavioral, humanistic or systemic ex-planations. The fact that one is dealing with an immigrant family is of little relevance here.

b) Culture-specific hypotheses: The context of a “strange” or “different” culture is viewed as relevant to the problem, or rather: the relationship of the help-seeking immigrant family to its own background explains the problem. Thus, the source of the problem lies in the client’s culture, even though the behavior may not be a problem within the client’s cultural context and only becomes one because the family is no longer in its native cultural environment. The difference between, or incompatibility of, the two cultures is seen as the true reason for the problem.

c) Migration-specific hypotheses: Here the immigration situation, the status of being a minority, the history of migration in general, racism, xenophobia, dis-criminatory institutions as well as the reactions of the immigrants to life in another society, their experiences as minority figures and the consequences thereof – all of these are seen as the reasons behind the problems.

To illustrate this model, let us look at some hypotheses drawn from a supervision session that took place as part of a conference (Conference on Migration of the National Catholic Counseling Association – BAG) in 1998 in Freiburg, Germany.

Case example: The supervision group consisted of counselors from various cultures as well as the ethnologist Tirmiziou Diallo from Frankfurt and Norbert Kunze. A (female) colleague introduced her work with a binational couple that had several children and now lived in Germany; the father was from the Ivory Coast, the mother was German. The counselor mentioned that the father consistently spoke of “my children” when speaking of the couple’s children. During the supervision the following hypotheses were offered (Figure 24):

– Psychological hypothesis: The husband wants to say to the counselor and to his wife that he sees the children more as his and belonging to his sphere of responsibility – and that in the end his custodial powers are greater than those of his wife. This is an implicit threat that he will assert his rights in the case of separation.

– Culture-specific hypothesis: The use of the possessive pronoun “my” or “our” is much more differentiated in West African tribes than in European or Anglo-American society.

In West Africa, there are two different expressions for “our”: One is inclusive and ex-presses that the object in question belongs to both the speaker and his group and thus also to the listener; another is exclusive and is used when the speaker wants to express that the object belongs to his own group but not to that of the listener. As a member of such a cultural and semantic background, he may be uncomfortable having to express himself in this matter in a less-differentiated (European) way than he is used to. If he uses “our” in the first sense, he might have the feeling of attributing his and his wife’s children to the counselor and making her part of the family (or at least being ambiguous about it). His solution is to use the phrase “my children” to express the fact that they are not the counselor’s children, and that she carries no responsibility for them, only he and his wife do.

– Migration-specific hypothesis: As a Black man in a white European society he has surely experienced some discrimination. Indeed, he considers himself part of a discriminated minority. Yet he would like to show the counselor and his wife as well that they are his children, that they belong to him, have his skin color, that he sees them as part of his people, that he would someday like them to come to Africa – and that he would defend them as members of a minority against the German majority society.

With this model we can assign the hypotheses to the three categories. The follow-ing requirements seem to be reasonable:

– One should establish hypotheses for each of the three categories.

– These hypotheses should be tested together with the clients.

– The relationship of the counselor to the working hypotheses should remain easy-going (see Background Text on hypothetizing above).

But why should counselors be so careful and so self-critical of their own assump-tions and working hypotheses when dealing with migrants? When working with migrants, the danger lies in identifying with one’s own nationality, even idealizing it, or ideologizing the known and the unknown. This is true for both native and foreign-born counselors. A further argument for employing the three types of Figure 24: The three categories for the classification of hypotheses and assumptions when working with migrants (after Kunze, 1998)

hypotheses is that families themselves often have a “trifold” way of thinking about themselves and their problems. They, too, frame their problems in a culture-spe-cific, in a migration-speculture-spe-cific, and in a psychological manner. Often there are even different fractions within a family regarding this question.

Using the three working hypotheses allows us to switch between the hypothe-ses from time to time and to make each of the three hypothehypothe-ses the object of study. One will quickly notice which of the three is met with the strongest re-sponse within the family and can develop it further. For the family it is advanta-geous to be mindful of all three aspects of their situation. The reaction to such a broadly based approach is often positive.

Reducing the three categories to a single one, on the other hand, has a number of inherent dangers:

– Using only the psychological perspective leads a psychologization and neglects all cultural, sociological, political and social aspects.

– Using only a culturally oriented approach means ethnizing the client while ne-glecting the client’s individual psychological biography, indeed that of the entire family. Further, sociological, political and social connections tend to slip out of sight.

– Reducing one’s view solely to a migration-specific one results in the politiciza-tion of the client. One neglects the individual psychological development and the development of the entire family as well as the client’s specific cultural back-ground and the differences found among cultures. 4.4 DefiningGoodGoals