| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 社會工作學研究所 === 105 === This study aimed to explore the social support networks among "new immigrants in the tribe", and chose the new immigrants from Vietnam who are married to the Amis men and live in Chang-Guang Tribe, Chang-Bin Township, Taitung County as a case. Besides the methods of six-week participatory observation, five new immigrants in the tribe, four representatives of social service units, three tribal youths and two representatives of religious organizations were in-depth interviewed.The first question in this research was to analyze the sources and types of social support among new immigrants in the tribe. After reviewing some literature, social support could divide into four types. The strong links which based on homogeneity and kinship are usually the primary sources of emotional supports; in contrast, the weak links which associated heterogeneity or crossed different stratifications are the fundamental basis for instrumental supports. It was found that the sources of social support among new immigrants in the tribe might be grouped into three categories under the combination of events, locality and kinships: "family and relatives", "employers, colleagues and peers" and "formal supporters" who provide resources through informal pathways. The strength of the link was quite difficult to distinguish between formal and informal network, in addition, the sources and types of supports were complicated in this research. The results revealed appraisal support which the literature in Taiwan often overlooked is quite an important one for new immigrants; furthermore, providing emotional supports is the foundation to establish long-term reciprocal relationships.
The second question was to explore the social cultural factors which sustain the support networks among the new immigrants in the tribe through social network perspective. It showed that both the fictitious relation system as having a “godmother” and becoming one of the Christians or Catholics were helpful for establishing their support networks. However, the collective attitude of the tribe was contradictory to the outsiders—on the one hand, the members of the tribe expected that new immigrants could immerse themselves in the tribe, on the other hand, there were some local standards in their mind to measure whether new immigrants were qualified or not as one of them. At the same time, some members of the tribe seemed to have stereotypes of new immigrants. Due to all the factors above, the new immigrants did not join the female group of age ranking in the tribe, and had little interaction with the members of the tribe, instead, they built up their own peer group as an ethnicity-based community network. Nonetheless, this network was highly recognized in such a small rural area and easily monitored by other residents. These situations were seriously affecting their social networks.
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