L’influenza degli atteggiamenti verso l’acculturazione sull’adattamento psicosociale di immigrati adolescenti in Sicilia.

The outcomes of the integration process of immigrant youth are affected by two dimensions, namely “acculturation attitudes”: the attitude towards the maintenance of the heritage culture (cultural maintenance)and the attitude towards the contact with the host culture (cultural contact). Cultural maintenance andcultural contact affect the psychosocial adjustment of immigrant youth either directly and indirectly, throughthe mediator action of other variables, such as intergroup attitudes. The study was aimed at analyzing the relations between acculturation attitudes and psychosocial adjustment among Tunisian adolescents living in Sicily. Particularly, the aims of the study were twofold: (a) to analyze the relations between cultural maintenance, cultural contact, and attitudes towards participants’’ ethnic in-group and out-groups; (b) to analyze the role playedby the intergroup attitudes within the relation between acculturation attitudes and adolescents’’ psychosocialadjustment. One hundred forty-eight Tunisian adolescents (73 males and 75 females), aged from 14 to 18 yearsold and living in Mazara Vallo (TP), participated to the study. Data were collected during the school time thoroughself-report measures of the following dimensions: acculturation attitudes; in-group attitude; out-group attitude;self-esteem; perceived discrimination; perceived quality of intercultural relations. Data were analyzedusing the Structural Equation Model technique. The results are in line with the study’’s hypothesis. Firstly, culturalmaintenance and cultural contact give separate contributions to immigrant’’s adjustment: on the one side,high levels of cultural maintenance promote a positive attitude towards the in-group; on the other side, highlevels of cultural contact promote a positive attitude towards the out-group. Secondly, the action of acculturationattitudes on adolescents’’adjustment seems to be not direct, but mediated by the intergroup attitudes: culturalmaintenance and cultural contact affect, respectively, the attitude towards the in-group and the attitude towardsthe out-group which, on their turn, positively affect the levels of self-esteem, perceived discrimination and perceived quality of intercultural relations showed by the participants to the study.