Ventajas y desventajas de las tecnologías convencionales

There is wide academic interest on the relevance of effective social support to buffer the consequences of stressful experiences related to the acculturation process (Birman, Trickett, & Vinokurov, 2002; House, Umberson, & Landis, 1988; Jasinskaja- Lahti et al., 2006; Kuo & Tsai, 1986; Lin & Ensel, 1989; Lin et al., 1999; Mossakowski, 2003). Sources for social support could be confined to the immigrants’ own ethnic community, or they can extend to other communities and to the host society.

Noh and Avison (1996) sought to identify whether support from the same ethnic community would have more effective results in mediating successfully with stressful experiences or not. The results of a study with a group of Koreans in Canada showed that there are diverse factors that help immigrant to better deal with stressful experiences and then prevent psychological discomfort and depression. Individual psychological resources played a central role in the stress process of this group. Self-esteem and mastery perception of events in life (an individual’s perception of controlling events in his/her life) along with previous exposure to stressful events had a significant effect on the individual’s

psychological distress. Apart from that, support from the same ethnic social network had a direct effect on depressive symptoms and an indirect impact on other life events. As the authors concluded, “an interesting observation is that general social support from the broader community plays almost no role in this process. While it may be a truism to state that not all sources of support are equally effective in reducing psychological distress, our results provide convincing evidence that is consistent with the hypothesis of socio-cultural similarity” (Noh & Avison, 1996, p. 202).

It seems that an effective support relationship occurs when there is socio-cultural or situational similarity between the support provider and the receiver or when there is a complementarity between the needs and values of both parties. New immigrants would be expected to empathize with other immigrants as they feel they have in common main life experiences and, as a result, they would be better able to fully understand the nature of new immigrant’s acculturation conflicts.

Vega, Kolody and Valle (1987) confirmed these arguments researching Mexican immigrant women in California. Their findings reinforced the idea that satisfactory adjustment of immigrants is dependent on resolving the interpersonal stressors resulted from the breaking-up of social networks in their country of origin and replacing those ties in the host country. The perception of a large distance between immigrant’s values and the culture of the host society also facilitated the presence of depressive symptoms and feelings of marginality and discrimination. In order to solve this conflictive reality, many immigrants tended to feel comfortable and adjust more easily in their own ethnic enclaves where social discrimination is reduced, rather than living in less ethnically dense settings where they might have a daily experience of being “outsiders”.

Nevertheless, Kuo and Tsai (1986) believe that immigrants can live separated from the dominant society and not, necessarily, suffer severe social isolation. As long as the immigrants are able to re-establish strong social networks in the new country, the chances to experience a better health status increase. Within this kind of ethnic support groups, immigrants not only have better chances to cushion the life stressors as a minority group in the new country but also can have better access to specific knowledge that help them to evade economic and labour exploitation as new immigrants.

Sonn and Fisher (1998) indicated that community settings such as sporting clubs, churches, and family and friendship networks greatly enhance immigrants socialization with similar others. These contexts are seen by the authors as activity settings where immigrants have a chance to reinforce and maintain cultural values and traditions while negotiating with the new receiving cultural environment. Activity settings would promote the sharing of experiences and the creation of common understanding and meaning for the immigration and acculturation process.

Sonn (2002) concluded from his research with groups of “coloured” South Africans and Chileans in Melbourne that social settings within these immigrant communities have played protective and integrative roles. Participation in cultural and social activities helped immigrants not only to reinforce their common sense of identity and sense of connectedness, but also gave meaning and direction to their experiences while connecting to the broader society. These findings support the idea that community ethnic support functions as a buffer of external social pressures, supplying immigrants with a more resilient attitude to adapt to the new environment.

Experiences of discrimination also have a strong impact on immigrants’ lives. Jasinskaja-Lahti, Liebkind, Jaakkola, and Reuter (2006) observed that discrimination episodes had a significant connection to individuals’ psychological wellbeing among three groups of Finish, Russian and Estonian immigrants in Finland. As expected, the more immigrants experienced discrimination from the broader society, the lower their level of psychological wellbeing in general, and anxiety, depression and psychosomatic symptoms in particular. In this case, the levels of psychological distress due to discrimination remained significant, regardless the frequency of contact with social support networks. To the authors, it seems that the positive and protective effects of ethnic social support in the new society enhance feelings of psychological wellbeing, only when immigrants are not subjected to discrimination. Following the authors’ hypothesis, immigrants who perceive discrimination from the broader society would tend to avoid ethnic behaviour and interaction with similar ones in order to protect themselves from enhancing the causes of further discriminatory experiences.