Acculturation process in Romanian immigrants in Spain: The role of social support and perceived discrimination

This work focuses on the study of the psychological acculturation process of the largest immigrant group in Spain: Romanian immigrants. It is known that both social support and perceived discrimination affect the acculturation process of immigrant people, but not how those three variables act together. This study aims to analyse the mechanism by which social support affects the acculturation of immigrant people –both maintenance and adoption dimensions in public and private acculturation domains– and the role played by perceived discrimination –both group and individual– in that relationship. In order to fulfil this goal, 150 immigrant people of Romanian origin (49.3% male) with a mean age of 35.33 years ( SD = 11.84) answered a questionnaire, which included the aforementioned variables. Results show that social support has a positive indirect effect on the degree of adoption of Spanish customs (both in public and private domains) by Romanian immigrants through a reduction of their perceived discrimination. Besides, social support has no effect on Romanian immigrants’ maintenance of home society customs. This research contributes to knowledge on how immigrants’ perceived social support is related to their adoption of host society’s customs, highlighting the mediating role of the perceived discrimination in this process.