Adding a Community Focus to the Psychological Investigation of Immigration Issues and Policies

As we have seen in many of the articles in this issue, a major goal of research on a topic as important as immigration is to ensure that the research is targeted where it is likely to have the greatest impact. Immigration studies are becoming increasingly important in the face of growing numbers of immigrants seeking to move to immigrant‐receiving countries, numbers that are predicted to increase with climate change, escalating international conflicts, and global economic instabilities. To address the changing immigration scene, psychologists have been extending their reach beyond the traditional domain of psychology—the study of the micro level (the individual)—to link with macro levels (such as the country level). Yet, between these two levels is the community level, where daily life takes place. Community psychologists have long shown the importance of including this highly complex level if research by psychologists is to have policy impacts. This is not only where everyday activities take place but this is where a surprising number of the policy levers exist that have the potential to effect change. This article argues that several steps will be important as psychologists bring their research expertise to advancing an understanding at the community level of immigrant experiences: researching the complex systems at the community level, integrating psychological research with insights from other disciplines, and taking seriously what thought‐leaders have begun to argue about the importance of integrating scales from micro to meso to macro to ensure impact and usability of research. This is a call to raise the profile of community psychology. It is a call to integrate community focus in other areas of psychological research. And it is a call to conduct interdisciplinary work that integrates community focus by sociologists, anthropologists and researchers from other disciplines.