Bureacuracy and Immigrant Adjustment

The gap between client's expectations & behavior of officials in a bureaucracy are explored. In the specific case of the interaction between immigrant & official in Israel, a difference is suggested between immigrants from traditional vs modern countries. The former are more troubled by the official's conformity to bureaucratic norms, the latter, by the official's deviance from such norms. The study was based on a sample of 1,649 immigrants from North America. 4 hypotheses were tested: (1) Contact with the Israeli bureaucracy will be more problematic for American immigrants than other experiences. (2) Immigrants with knowledge concerning conditions in Israel (adequate anticipatory socialization) will have fewer problems with the Israeli bureaucracy than those with less knowledge. (3) Immigrants will describe their contact with bureaucracy as problematic in terms of deviations from bureaucratic norms rather than in terms of bureaucratic norms per se. (4) Those whose contacts have been problematic will tend to be low on subjective adjustment. Findings are presented which clearly support these hypotheses. 2 Tables. AA.