“Heroes of adjustment”: Immigrant's stigma and identity management

Abstract

The objective of the present work was to investigate individual and collective identity management strategies in relationship with well-being, based on a probability sampling with stratification by age and sex (N=1250) of immigrants living in Spain. An exploratory factor analysis provided evidence for a five-factor model of coping with negative social identity, with two individual (individual mobility and self-regulation and temporal and intragroup comparisons) and three collective strategies (intergroup social comparisons, making attributions to prejudice, and social competition). The study also showed that individual and collective identity management strategies are related to both psychological and social well-being. Temporal and intragroup comparisons and social competition were found to be adaptive coping resources for both psychological and social well-being. Individual mobility and self-regulation together with intergroup social comparisons and making attributions to prejudice strategies were costly for immigrants’ well-being. These findings are discussed in the framework of social identity and social stigma models as well as positive psychology perspective.