Abstract
Psychological research has identified various migration stressors and ways of coping with them among international migrants. Comparative studies suggest that migration is also stressful for people who relocate within their nation (e.g., Hendriks, Ludwigs, & Veenhoven, Soc Indic Res, 125(2), 481–508, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0856-7, 2016; Strohmeier, & Dogan, Emot Behav Diffic, 17(3–4), 287–304, https://doi.org/10.1080/13632752.2012.704311, 2012) but the factors that elicit stress among internal migrants and how they cope with these stressors are unclear. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of perceived cultural distance and migration motivation in the adjustment of internal migrants by extending the resilience framework to theories of acculturation. Specifically, it was hypothesized that (1) perceived dissimilarity between one’s culture of origin and (2) the culture of the new city and involuntary versus voluntary migration would be risk factors for psychological and sociocultural adjustment among internal migrants. It was also hypothesized that individual (self-efficacy), relational (relationship satisfaction), communal (city and neighborhood identity), and cultural resources (cultural identity and acculturation orientations) would be protective factors against these risks. Multiple regression analyses on data from a community sample of 431 rural- and urban-origin migrants residing in a large city of Turkey largely confirmed these hypotheses. Cultural distance and involuntary migration predicted less positive adjustment In addition, cultural and communal resources, but not individual and relational resources, emerged as protective factors against these risks, especially in relation to psychological adjustment. These results have implications for the adaptation of internal migrants who comprise a large part of population move and for psychology of migration.
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Acknowledgments
This paper was partly written while the author was an associate professor of social psychology at Yaşar University in Turkey. Data collection was facilitated by a grant from the Yaşar University Scientific Project Support Office to Derya Güngör (grant #BAP023). Special thanks to Esra Şahin, Ezgi Bayırlı, and other project assistants who collected or prepared data for the analyses.
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Güngör, D. (2020). Positive Adjustment Among Internal Migrants: Acculturative Risks and Resources. In: Güngör, D., Strohmeier, D. (eds) Contextualizing Immigrant and Refugee Resilience. Advances in Immigrant Family Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42303-2_7
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