Beyond the modes and changes: An interpretive study of Chinese immigrant women's acculturation experiences in globalization

John W. Berry's positivist, behaviorist acculturation model has been long established as the foundational theoretical tool to understand migrate population's acculturation experience. This project endeavored to find what the constituting four modes and six changes of Berry's model mean qualitatively and interpretatively in a group of first-generation Chinese immigrant women's lived acculturation experiences in the United States. As a result, the rich qualitative data collected from intensive interviews present additional aspects as well as alternative gendered perspectives to Berry's model. The researcher uses the qualitative data of gendered perspectives and experiences to rearticulate and reconstruct the understanding of acculturation, and draws three important theoretical issues of transnational feminism and cultural studies to interpret the richness of meaning in such gendered experiences of acculturation and migration in globalization.