Acculturation processes and intercultural relations in peripheral and central domains among native Italian and migrant adolescents. An application of the Relative Acculturation Extended Model (RAEM)

Abstract

The aim of the study is the examination of the quality of the intercultural relations in central and peripheral domains of adolescent life, through the application of the Relative Acculturation Extended Model (RAEM) of Navas and co-workers to a sample of 355 hosts Italians and 175 migrant adolescents. Participants completed a questionnaire similar to that used by Navas et al., reworked for a different context (Italian) and age (adolescents) and distributed in two versions: for hosts and for migrants. Differences both at an intergroup level of analysis (between hosts and migrants points of view) and at an intraindividual one (between acculturation strategies and attitudes) were explored referring to three central (family, religious and way of thinking) and three peripheral (school, economic habits and friendships/relationships) domains of acculturation.For strategies, results about hosts’ perspective showed a perception of migrants as separated, more in the central domain than in the peripheral one. This perception does not coincide with the choice of migrants who declared to use integration strategy in both kinds of life domains.Also for attitudes results demonstrated high discordances, while migrants reported that they would prefer integration into the peripheral domain and separation into the central one, hosts reported that they would prefer migrants adopted assimilation, regardless of esteemed domains. These discordances at intergroup as well as at intrapersonal level of analysis, predict conflictual intercultural relations more in central than in peripheral domains. Data also showed that for host adolescent types of intercultural relations empirically predicted attitudes toward the immigrants.