Predictors of the actual degree of acculturation of Russian-speaking immigrant adolescents in Finland

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Abstract

This study examines what kind of interrelatedness exists between various aspects of the acculturation process and to what extent they predict the actual degree of immigrants’ acculturation. In a comparison of a sample of Russian-speaking immigrant adolescents (N=170) living in Finland with a sample of their native Finnish peers (N=190), the actual degree of acculturation is conceptualized as changes in the immigrants’ family-related values, which represent a deep cultural inheritance transmitted to the adolescents by their parents. Immigrants’ demographic characteristics, ethnic identity, acculturation attitudes, and experiences of family support are found to be important predictors of the actual degree of acculturation. Conditions and specific features of specific acculturation modes are discussed, and the importance of identifying and analyzing separately the distinctive components of the acculturation process is stressed.

Section snippets

Acculturation as resocialization

Socialization has been seen as a lifelong process of development, involving changes and continuities of the human organism in interaction with the environment (Kağitçibaşi, 1988). The total cultural context affects the socialization process and produces at the same time cultural variations in socialization patterns. The acculturation of immigrants has been conceptualized by psychological disciplines as a case of resocialization involving such psychological features as changes in attitudes,

Russian-speaking immigrants in Finland

Russian-speaking immigrants constitute the most numerous immigrant group in Finland. However, the majority of these are returnees of Finnish descent from the former Soviet Union. Their ancestors are Finns who emigrated to the former Soviet Union mostly during the 1930s from Finland, Canada and the USA, and so-called Ingrian Finns (i.e., the descendants of Finns who emigrated between the 17th and the beginning of the 20th century to rural Ingria, which is located partly in Russia and partly in

Participants

In all, 360 young people were studied: 170 Russian-speaking immigrants and 190 native Finns. The immigrant group consisted of 93 boys and 77 girls who had arrived in Finland between 1987 and 1996 and were living in the region of Helsinki. Their overall mean age was 15.01 years (SD=1.49 years). The native group was composed of 103 boys and 87 girls. The overall mean age of the native group was 14.5 years (SD=1.01 years).

Descriptive data collected for the immigrant group provided the following

Results

Before addressing the main questions of the actual degree of the immigrants’ acculturation the relationships between their ethnic identity, acculturation attitudes, family-related values, experiences of family support, and such demographic variables as age on arrival and duration of residence in Finland were investigated using Pearson correlation coefficients. Due to large number of intercorrelations only those statistically significant (p<0.01) and very significant (p<0.001) are discussed (see

Discussion

The findings of this study indicate that there are complex relations between the different processes underlying acculturation. The ethnic identity of immigrants does not seem to be related to their actual degree of acculturation in terms of the cultural values they actually have adopted. This finding supports notions of the relative independence of these two components of the acculturation process (Driedger, 1976, Der-Karabetian, 1980, Hutnik, 1986, Hutnik, 1991). The absence of

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by grants from the Ministry of Education and 350th Anniversary Foundation of the University of Helsinki (Finland) to Inga Jasinskaja-Lahti.

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