Culture, Reti e Comunità : gli atteggiamenti di acculturazione e gli outcomes di benessere psico-sociale dei rifugiati nella provincia di Parma

Psycho-social literature on the acculturation processes of forced migrants highlights an implicit assumption of the "refugee experience" (Lacroix, 2014) as a deterministic process of “resource loss”: a progressive deprivation of personal, social, identity, and health resources, necessarily leading to negative acculturation outcomes. This study aims to propose a different hypothesis about the relationship between the concepts of "resources", "acculturation attitudes" and "acculturation outcomes", by observing the refugee experience through a diachronic perspective (Rossi & Mancini, 2016), as a process of continuous restructuring, reconfiguration and transformation of personal, social and contextual resources along the different stages of the migratory process, as seen directly by the migrants’ point of view. This research reports on two studies, investigating how personal, social and contextual resources can structure the refugees experience through the crisis, flight and arrival phases (Study 1), and how the configuration and re-configuration of these resources can shape the acculturation and adjustment strategies in the following stages of settlement and establishing (Study 2). Study 1 is based on a content analysis of 400 asylum memories from official archives (third parties data), and shows that personal, social and contextual resources are shaping different refugee profiles. Specifically, three are the profiles emerging from the multivariate analysis (CATPCA) of resources related to the crisis phase: 1. the classical “political refugee”, forced to leave his country for political reasons, 2. the “citizen without a state”, generally leaving a country where state or society are unable to guarantee protection because of instability, violence and corruption, 3. the “person without community”, isolated and often blown up by his community for reasons related to the rejection of cultural practices or customs. Three are also the profiles emerging from the same analysis conducted on resources related to the flight phase: 1. the “migrant in search of stability”, who is subjected to a very long and stressful forced migration flight, 2. the “organized migrant on the run”, who invests his available economic resources to reach quickly the country chosen to seek asylum, 3. the “migrant enslaved”, subject to organizations trafficking in human beings. Finally, the resources characterizing the arrival phase configure the following profiles: 1. the “migrant in search of humanitarian and social protection”, included into institutional reception programs but not aware of his/her rights, 2. the “oriented asylum seeker”, more aware of his/her rights, and 3. the “suspended asylum seeker”, who delays the asylum application by living in the invisibility. These profiles only partially are coherent through the three phases of migration experience, showing that the refugee experience is not always just an experience of resource loss, as some literature points out. It is rather a complex and flexible experience where migrants lose and gain some personal, social and contextual resources. Study 2 is a survey study on 160 asylum seekers and refugees settled in the province of Parma, taken from the 400 asylum memories analyzed in Study 1 on the basis of their reachability, time spent in Italy (> 6 months) and willingness to participate in the research. They replied to all questions of a multilingual questionnaire composed of measures of acculturation (Attitude Acculturation Scale, Schmitz & Berry, 1991), socio-cultural adaptation (Refugees Integration Scale, Beversluis et al., 20176) and wellbeing (K-10, Kessler et al., 2003). In line with literature (Berry’s bi-dimensional model), results showed that integration was associated with better social and psychological adjustment. Connecting these data with the migration profiles derived from Study 1, CATPCA analyses showed that acculturation attitudes are partially related to the profiles identified in the previous migration phases. Specifically, assimilation attitudes are more common in migrants without communities and enslaved, separation attitudes in migrants in search of stability, and integration attitudes in organized political refugees on the run.