The Mediating Role of Self-Esteem and Acculturative Stress in The Relationship Between International Migration and Migratory Grief: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

Abstract

In the past years, migration has become a critical global subject. Previous research suggests that immigrants are prone to experience a large range of stressors, which can lead to mental health issues. The novel concept of migratory grief has been put forth as a notion to potentially explain the particular distress some immigrants might experience. Nonetheless, relatively little research has examined this construct, and tried to unravel which factors might be linked to migratory grief. The present study investigated the effects of the cultural discrepancy in terms of individualism-collectivism between the country of origin and the host country, self-esteem, and acculturative stress on migratory grief in Danish, Greek, and Swedish immigrants through a proposed serial-multiple mediation model. 2237 immigrants (781 Danish, 375 Greek, and 1081 Swedish) participated in the study. The findings suggested that self-esteem and acculturative partially mediate the pathway between migration and migratory grief as higher self-esteem and lower acculturative stress was related to less migratory grief. In addition, a larger cultural discrepancy between the country of origin and the host country directly prompted more migratory grief, but it was not significantly related to acculturative stress. The current study is the first to examine the effects of self-esteem and acculturative stress in the pathway between migration and migratory grief through a serial-multiple mediation model. The findings add to the scarce body of literature on migratory grief, and they provide directions for further research that might enhance our knowledge of this novel construct.