Psychological adjustment and cultural identities of immigrant adolescents
On October 20th a public lecture "Psychological adjustment and cultural identities of immigrant adolescents" by Eugene Tartakovsky, a professor at the University of Tel-Aviv (Israel) was held in Psychology Department within the scientific seminar “Culture matters”.
Students learned about the results of research conducted by E. Tartakovsky in 1999 and 2006. He compared adolescents of 15-16 years: immigrants and those who didn’t intend to emigrate. Sample consisted of adolescents who emigrated from Russia and Ukraine to Israel through the program Na'ale, which provides approximately 80% of immigrants.
Firstly, researchers studied the psychological focus of immigrants and those who decided to stay in their country. The main parameters of psychological focus were self-esteem, social competence, school competence, loneliness, emotional and behavioral problems.
The obtained results showed that immigrant adolescents have higher rates of self-esteem, feelings of social competence and school competence, in contrast to their friends who did not intend to emigrate. Adolescent immigrants reported fewer emotional and behavioral problems, and also smaller index of loneliness.
Studies showed that a perception of discrimination in the receiving country greatly reduces the level of psychological adjustment. Social support from peers, teachers and parents has a positive effect on the psychological level of adjustment for those adolescents who have already immigrated.
Next, the results of the research of adolescent cultural identity were presented. Identitity includes parts associated with the culture of origin and of the host country. It appears that immigrants still maintain a strong identification with the old group after their arrival in the host country. Attitudes toward cultural identity can be both positive and negative in the receiving society.
The level of cultural identification was measured with two scales: the relation to the country and identification with the main ethnic group in the host country. These studies showed that attitudes of immigrants toward the country of origin are more negative than the non-immigrant adolescents’ attitudes. Similar results were shown for identification with the country of departure: relation to the receiving side is much higher in immigrants. Identification with the ethnic group to which a person migrates is considerably higher than the identification with the group he leaves. There is a strong link between the existing discrimination in the country of origin and identification with other ethnic group and receiving country.
The overall result of the lecture is that adolescent immigrant inevitably feels the shock, his/her level of psychological adjustment and cultural identity suffers, but they will be eventually restored.
In conclusion, Eugene said that immigration is a story of a great illusion, the immigrants do not pose all the difficulties. A crash of this illusion is inevitable, but the degree of culture shock, as well as the level of adaptation may be different.
Alexander Stefanov
Trainee Researcher