Aim of the studyThis research suggests a way of modeling the interaction of several different origins within the self. The intercultural subject incorporates a set of heterogeneous dispositions and therefore has to come to terms with this plurality. We take coping strategies and defense mechanisms as indicators of the adjustments produced by such interculturation. Population and methodWe conducted a survey based on questionnaires (40-item Defense Style Questionnaire for defense mechanisms and Brief COPE for coping strategies) given to 479 university students between the ages of 18 and 26, distributed according to degree of immigrant ascendance (2nd–4th generation). Our study is based on the univariate comparison between the following groups: “non-immigrant” vs “Second-generation immigrants” vs “Third-generation immigrants” and “Fourth-generation immigrants”. ResultsOur hypotheses explored the notion of an intercultural actor, with the ability to negotiate these plural dispositions and even benefit from them. The mechanisms involved in the process of interculturation reveal the actor's contrasting dispositions through the prevalence of humor and the active stance he/she adopts. The latter's participation in several spaces of socialization is indicated by repression, anticipation and isolation, but also, where the fourth generation is concerned, by denial and dissociation. While incorporating different influences, a cohesive sense of self is maintained by religious coping, by acceptance and also, for the fourth generation, by positive reinterpretation and autistic reverie. The results that we obtained are to a large extent consistent with this model, but at the same time still allow certain questions to be raised about the evolution, from one generation to the next, of the influence exerted by the degree of immigrant ascendance on the mechanisms involved in the process of interculturation. ConclusionBeing of immigrant ascendance presupposes plural dispositions and this seems to be a strong and coherent aspect of the differences observed with the native subjects. The substantial differences between 2nd to 4th generation immigrant subjects raise questions about the psychodynamic effects that occur when the conditions necessary for permanently maintaining certain cultural dispositions are no longer met in the social world.