Minority and Majority Adolescents’ Attitudes toward Mutual Acculturation and its Association with Psychological Adjustment

Abstract

Although acculturation is considered a mutual process, no measure assesses attitudes toward mutual acculturation. Through a novel four-dimensional measurement, this study addresses this research gap by assessing attitudes toward minority and majority acculturation and its relation to psychological adjustment for immigrant-background minority and non-immigrant majority adolescents in public secondary schools in three European countries: in Germany (n = 346, 46% female, Mage = 12.78 years, range 11–16), Greece (n = 439, 56% female, Mage = 12.29 years, range 11–20), and Switzerland (n = 375, 47% female, Mage = 12.67 years, range 11–15). Latent profile analyses led to three distinct acculturation profiles in all three countries: strong and mild mutual integration profiles, where both migrant and majority students are expected to integrate, and a third profile assuming lower responsibility upon the majority. Additionally, those in the strong- and mild-integration profiles reported stronger psychological adjustment than those assuming lower responsibility upon the majority, which held for all students in Switzerland and mostly for those without a migration background in Germany. The findings demonstrate the importance of a mutual acculturation framework for future research. Moreover, as most adolescents fit in with one of the mutual integration patterns, findings stress that no matter their migration background, adolescents favor mutual integration including the expectation on schools to enhance intercultural contact.

Adolescents' mutual acculturation attitudes and their association with national self-identification in three Swiss cantons

“…Finally, the cultural distancing profile demonstrated a tendency to agree with the heritage culture maintenance dimension and a tendency to disagree with the dominant culture adoption dimension and disagreement with both majority dimensions. The three profiles found in this study resemble the three profiles found in the first year of the longitudinal data collection (Sidler et al, 2022 ), showing only a slight variation in the cultural distancing profile in terms of shifting from disagreement to agreement concerning migration background students' heritage culture maintenance.…”

“…This study was aimed at assessing whether adolescents differ in their mutual acculturation attitudes based on their national self-identification as being Swiss and/or having a migration background. Whereas, mutual acculturation attitudes have already been assessed in the school context (Sidler et al, 2022 ), how adolescents' self-identification relates to these mutual acculturation attitudes presented a research gap. Self-identification measures are key because in defining individuals' categorization in relation to ongoing norms of national belonging, researchers implicitly play a role in defining belonging and otherness (Moffitt and Juang, 2019 ).…”

“…Additionally, adolescents' development is influenced by schools' organizational contexts and cultural diversity climates (Juang and Schachner, 2020 ), particularly in terms of students' acculturation and school adjustment (Schachner et al, 2017 ). Thus, in addition to providing an important acculturation context (Arends-Tóth and Van de Vijver, 2006 ), schools serve as important acculturation agents in adjusting their cultural diversity policies to the needs of adolescents with and without migration backgrounds to promote their intercultural competencies and development (Sidler et al, 2022 ). Practically, these findings stress the importance for adolescents that schools implement diversity policies that include endorsing intercultural contact and exchange for students with and without a migration background.…”

“…Acculturation conditions and attitudes lead to outcomes such as psychological, emotional, and sociocultural adjustment. Acculturation attitudes have been assessed for minority acculturation (e.g., Berry et al, 1989 ; Bourhis et al, 1997 ), majority acculturation (e.g., Haugen and Kunst, 2017 ; Kunst et al, 2021 ), and mutual acculturation (Sidler et al, 2021 , 2022 ). This study assessed mutual acculturation attitudes of adolescents in the school context and focused therefore on acculturation conditions and acculturation attitudes of Arends-Tóth and Van de Vijver ( 2006 ) theoretical model.…”

Intercultural experience facilitates majority-group acculturation through ethnocultural empathy: Evidence from a mixed-methods investigation in Japan

“…Currently, several public elementary schools in Kawaguchi host a large number of children whose parents moved to Japan as asylum-seekers. Research is limited on acculturation in school settings where ample intercultural interaction takes place between majority and minority group members (Sidler et al, 2022). Particularly, no majority-group acculturation research has explored the experiences of teachers as majority-group members and their interactions with children of asylum-seekers within Japanese school settings.…”