L’influenza degli atteggiamenti verso l’acculturazione sull’adattamento psicosociale di immigrati adolescenti in Sicilia.

Abstract

The outcomes of the integration process of immigrant youth are affected by two dimensions, namely “acculturation attitudes”: the attitude towards the maintenance of the heritage culture (cultural maintenance) and the attitude towards the contact with the host culture (cultural contact). Cultural maintenance and cultural contact affect the psychosocial adjustment of immigrant youth either directly and indirectly, through the mediator action of other variables, such as intergroup attitudes. The study was aimed at analyzing the relations between acculturation attitudes and psychosocial adjustment among Tunisian adolescents living in Sicily. Particularly, the aims of the study were twofold: (a) to analyze the relations between cultural maintenance, cultural contact, and attitudes towards participants’’ ethnic in-group and out-groups; (b) to analyze the role played by the intergroup attitudes within the relation between acculturation attitudes and adolescents’’ psychosocial adjustment. One hundred forty-eight Tunisian adolescents (73 males and 75 females), aged from 14 to 18 years old and living in Mazara Vallo (TP), participated to the study. Data were collected during the school time thorough self-report measures of the following dimensions: acculturation attitudes; in-group attitude; out-group attitude; self-esteem; perceived discrimination; perceived quality of intercultural relations. Data were analyzed using the Structural Equation Model technique. The results are in line with the study’’s hypothesis. Firstly, cultural maintenance and cultural contact give separate contributions to immigrant’’s adjustment: on the one side, high levels of cultural maintenance promote a positive attitude towards the in-group; on the other side, high levels of cultural contact promote a positive attitude towards the out-group. Secondly, the action of acculturation attitudes on adolescents’’adjustment seems to be not direct, but mediated by the intergroup attitudes: cultural maintenance and cultural contact affect, respectively, the attitude towards the in-group and the attitude towards the out-group which, on their turn, positively affect the levels of self-esteem, perceived discrimination and perceived quality of intercultural relations showed by the participants to the study.