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  Modernity Stress, Youth and Migration (09.01/408)  
 

Project summary:


The aim of the proposed project is to provide theoretical and empiric understanding of the relationship between modernity, stress and migrations by close collaboration of interdisciplinary team of scientists with anthropological background and by applying a novel theoretical and methodological concept, termed youth modernity competence. Youth modernity competence implies modernity knowledge, acceptance and integration of differences in individual modernity orientations in everyday life domains. We hypothesize that youth modernity competence is associated with specific patterns of subjective and objective stress measures as well as with delayed effects such as pre-migration expectations. The association of youth modernity competence, stress and pre-migratory expectations is moderated and/or mediated by the effects of cultural context and coping. The proposed hypotheses will be proved through the youth modernity competence concept based on the holistic anthropological paradigm and interdisciplinary integration of ethnographic (detailed descriptions and interpretations of the context and individual modernity orientations) and psychological perspectives (self-reported stress and coping) with demographic (socio-economic, identity, migration status) and biomedical data (state-of-the-art salivary, anthropometric and physiologic biomarkers). Croatia is a relevant anthropological site for this research because it is an example of the uncertain and stressful modernity context, marked by complex migrations and associated phenomena (e.g. displacement and exile during conflicts in 1990’s, the post-conflict return, coexistence, forgiveness and reintegration, new internal migrations and immigrations), recent political and economic transitions, recession and globalization. This research will be useful for achieving excellence in research in Croatia because it represents the first ever complementation of ethnography with salivary biomarkers and the first interdisciplinary research of the relationship between modernity, stress and migrations in youth though the novel theoretical and methodological youth modernity competence concept. By effectively using the areas of convergence between anthropology and other sciences we accent the advantage of integrating the humanistic, reflective and critical approach with the quantitative paradigm. The results of this research will transgress beyond theoretical and methodological scientific spheres and will address the issues of broad social interest such as understanding of how processes of cultural change affect individual stress and how stress outcomes reflect back on society.