The main contributions of this study include proper acknowledgement of context, age, and various dimensions of acculturation in predicting long-term psychological well-being and sociocultural adapatation, as well as the relationship between these two adaptational outcomes.
As noted in section 8, because of the multitude of factors contributing to the outcomes of acculturation, longitudinal research is essential for identifying the key factors predicting psychological well-being and sociocultural adaptation over time. Cross-sectional studies can highlight essential factors entangled in this process, but to establish the direction of cause and effect, longitudinal designs are necessary (e.g., Fuligni, 2001). One of the most difficult issues in acculturation research today is the the entanglement of age and the acculturation process: are the same factors associated with psychological well-being and sociocultural adaptation in childhood and adolescence as in adulthood?
Moving and acculturating to a new country can signify
different issues of gain, loss, and change, depending on the immigrating person’s age and generation. Those who migrate as adults have grown up in their ethnic culture and environment, adopted the ethnic society’s values, formed an ethnic identity, and learned the ethnic language to the level of an adult. A child or adolescent who migrates is in a different position from the adult – she or he is at the beginning or midway in value enculturation, in forming an identity, and in learning a language. A still-developing child or youth may be more or less susceptible to the impact of the new society, possible more resilient, and possibly more open to forming ties with the members of the majority population (Garmezy, 1986).
Ideally, longitudinal studies should be able to isolate acculturative changes from shifts that would have occurred through the course of the children’s development had they not immigrated, and one possibility is that native children and immigrant children are followed together, comparatively, and for a long time span (Fuligni, 2001; Sam, 2006). While this is seldom feasible, a minimum requirement could be to distinguish between predictors of acculturative outcomes at different points in the life-span of immigrants.
As suggested by Phinney (2003b), when studying immigrant children, specific developmental issues associated with the culture of the parents, such as the role of cultural values in the dual socialization process, should be addressed.
Another factor determining relevant research and the application of research results is context, concerning the attitudes inherent in the majority population and the
existence of ethnic communities viable enough to provide support for their members (e.g., Phinney et al., 2001). Until the 1990s, most of the acculturation research on immigrants was carried out in multicultural societies such as the United States, Canada and Australia, countries with a long history of immigration, several post-immigration generations and decades of experience with conflicting values, racism and discrimination, and developing policy concerning multicultural issues (Thomson & Crul, 2007). Europe is very diverse, and while some countries have a multicultural tradition, Finland had a decades-long history of monoculturalism and very slight and recent immigration, primarily in the last two decades (see sections 1.1 and 1.2).
Ethnic minority communities are small and dispersed within the country and within municipalities, thus not leading to densely-populated ethnic communities. Proximity to ethnic community support has been found to increase well-being and sociocultural adaptation (e.g., Tran, V.T., 1987; Zhou &
Bankston, 1994) and its lack to decreased well-being (e.g., Liebkind & Kosonen, 1998). Some studies have also been made in countries that are only beginning the transformation from a monocultural state to the first vestiges of multiculturalism, such as Norway and Finland (e.g., Jasinskaja-Lahti, 2008; Liebkind & Jasinskaja-Lahti, 2000;
Sam & Berry, 1995).
Context may be a key issue in the complex relationship between ethnic identity, cultural involvement, and well-being among the Vietnamese. Although a bicultural identity has generally been found best linked to psychological
adjustment among immigrant youth (e.g., Berry et al., 2006), for the Vietnamese, identification and involvement with their own culture has been found both more positively linked (e.g., Berry et al., 2006; Nguyen, L. & Peterson, 1993) and more negatively linked (e.g., Nguyen, H. et al., 1999) to well-being than the national orientation. H. Nguyen and her colleagues (1999) suggested that this negative link between ethnic involvement and well-being, contrary to the predominant research findings of the adaptiveness of biculturality, could be explained by the salience of the context: for adolescents, especially, involvement with the ethnic culture may not act as a positive buffer for psychological adjustment, because the majority context (school and peers) is more salient and minority involvement provides no advantage in that context. On the other hand, strong involvement with the national culture has also been found to have negative consequences for young adult Mexican immigrants (Kaplan & Marks, 2002) and Vietnamese immigrants (Nguyen, L. & Peterson, 1993). H.
Nguyen and her colleagues (1999) found that for first-generation Vietnamese college students, identification with U.S. society was associated with more depressive symptoms.
It is also important to consider the relationship between different adaptational outcomes; being well and doing well may be entirely different matters, but they do seem to influence each other: in the large comparative study on ethnocultural youth called ICSEY (Berry at al., 2006), sociocultural adaptation explained variations in psychological well-being significantly, but not vice versa
(Vedder et al., 2006b). Vedder and his colleagues (2006b) concluded that indicators of psychological well-being such as self-esteem and life satisfaction are influenced by sociocultural adaptation outcomes. In contrast, Zhou and Bankston (2000) noted that the two adaptational outcomes may be unrelated to each other: Vietnamese children were doing better scholastically, but psychologically they were doing poorer than their national peers, having self-doubts, being depressed and having a poor image of themselves.
However, in cross-sectional studies like these, the long-term effect of psychological distress on sociocultural adaptation outcomes (and vice versa) could not be established. The longitudinal design of the current study allows analysis of temporal cause-and-effect. It is also designed to compare factors in childhood and adolescence with those in adulthood to bring out possible age-specific predictors of adaptational outcomes. It considers the impact of context by analyzing how perceived discrimination as well as ethnic and national language proficiency, values, and identity contribute to psychological well-being and sociocultural adaptation in the acculturation process. In addition, and as noted in section 2, the current study also addresses the relative importance of different acculturation dimensions (language, values, and identity) for the acculturation process.
The participants are now young adults, the first Vietnamese generation having grown to adulthood in Finland. They have grown up in an environment for identity and role development completely different from that of their
parents, who grew up in Vietnam. The younger generation has only a small pool of other Vietnamese role models available to them. Finland as a society has also become much more multicultural during the time they have lived here, with concurrent changes toward more postive majority attitudes to newcomers, more positive visibility of minorities in the media, and a relatively large increase in the absolute numbers of minorities and in visibility in the everyday life of the larger cities and towns.
Although the analysis of the participants’ thematic interviews was not used in this study, some excerpts from the interviews, which covered the same themes as those in the quantitative questionnaire, will be used to illustrate the discussion in the participants’ own words.
10 AIMS OF THE STUDY, RESEARCH QUESTIONS,