Benet-Martínez, Verónica
ICREA Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF).
Social & Behavioural Sciences
Highlights
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The cultural diversity of immigrants' social networks predicts their cultural identification(s) and their psychological and behavioral adjustment. (2018)
Benet-Martínez, Verónica (UPF)
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CLOSEUsing social-network methodology, we asked Moroccan, Pakistani, Ecuadorian, and Romanian immigrants residing in Barcelona to nominate 25 individuals (i.e., alters) representative of their habitual social networks and to provide demographic (e.g., ethnicity), relationship type (e.g., family, friend, neighbor), and structural (who knew whom) information for each of these alters. Even after controlling for individual-level demographic variables (e.g., time in Spain, income, education), the content and structure of these immigrants’ personal social networks predicted their level of adjustment (both psychological and socio-cultural) and their feelings regarding how compatible their ethnic and Catalan cultures are.
Specifically, the overall degree of cultural diversity in the network, the amount of Catalan (but not Spanish) “weak” ties (i.e., acquaintances, colleagues, neighbors) in the network, and the amount of interconnectedness between local coethnic and Catalan/Spanish alters positively predicted the above adjustment outcomes. Furthermore, against a “culture and language similarity” hypothesis, Moroccan and Pakistani participants had social networks that were more culturally well-integrated, relative to Ecuadorians and Romanians. Results from this study attest to the importance of examining actual intercultural relations and going beyond individuals’ verbalized acculturation preferences to understand immigrants’ overall adaptation and cultural identity dynamics. Lastly, results highlight the interplay between interculturalism experienced at the meso, interpersonal level (i.e., having culturally diverse networks that also include ties between ethnic and Catalan alters) and intra-personal, subjective level (i.e., feeling that ethnic and Catalan cultures are compatible).
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CLOSE
Intercultural contact has a long history due to migration, transnationalism, or colonization, and more recently also due to cultural and economic globalization forces, and the speed of travel and communication. One result of this intercultural contact and mixing is the growing numbers of individuals who consider themselves bicultural or multicultural. Early sociological accounts of this phenomenon portrayed bicultural individuals as marginal and stumped between two worlds, and more recently, in the context of immigration, political discourse supportive of assimilation (i.e., abandoning the culture of origin in favor of the dominant culture) has become quite pervasive. But one question remains: What are the consequences of these intercultural and identity processes for individuals’ psychological, sociocultural, and health-related adjustment? To answer this question, we conducted a statistical meta-analysis that pooled data from 83 international studies, 322 effect sizes, and 23,197 acculturating participants (e.g., immigrants, ethnic and cultural minorities, international students). Results showed a strong and positive association between biculturalism –i.e., attachment to and competency in two cultures-- and both psychological (e.g., self-esteem, lack of depression) and sociocultural (e.g., career success, lack of delinquency) adjustment. This link between biculturalism and adjustment was stronger than the association between monoculturalism (exclusive orientation towards either the dominant or heritage/ethnic cultures) and adjustment. These results thus clearly invalidate both early sociological accounts of this phenomenon depicting bicultural individuals as “lost” between two worlds and also political discourse supportive of either assimilation or ethnic segregation. The positive relationship between biculturalism and adjustment may be due to a variety of factors internal and external to the acculturating individual. For instance, the cultural, linguistic, social, and cognitive competencies that bicultural individuals acquire in the process of learning and using two cultures may make these individuals more adept at adjusting to various life situations (i.e., have higher adjustment). Also, having social support networks in two cultures may buffer biculturals from the psychological and sociocultural challenges that sometimes result from acculturation experiences. Alternatively, perhaps better adjusted individuals find it easier to be bicultural. Lastly, societies supportive of multicultural