immigrant minority
Definition
Immigrant minority refers to individuals of immigrant descent who undergo acculturative changes when engaging with a new or dominant culture, involving both explicit processes (conscious attitudes and identifications with majority and heritage cultures) and implicit processes (unconscious psychological adaptations in cognition, motivation, personality, and emotion). In school contexts, immigrant minority youth's adjustment outcomes depend on multiple factors, including the degree to which they adopt majority culture emotion norms (emotional acculturation) and their perceptions of discrimination at school. The study of immigrant minority adjustment is particularly important in ethnically diverse secondary schools, where these youth experience continuous contact with majority culture members and exposure to majority culture norms, making schools a primary context for understanding acculturative processes and their effects on sociocultural adjustment indicators such as school motivation, behavioral engagement, and compliance with school norms.
Sources: Jasini et al. (2025)
Related Terms
Applications
Immigrant Minority and Emotional Acculturation
Emotional acculturation—the extent to which immigrant minorities adopt majority culture emotion norms without necessarily being aware of doing so—positively predicts contact with majority peers over time, yet negatively predicts school engagement, motivation, behavioral engagement, and school compliance over time. This paradoxical effect is particularly pronounced among immigrant-descent students who perceive high levels of discrimination at school, where emotional fit with the majority culture significantly predicts steeper declines in school motivation and behavioral engagement, as well as increases in problematic and non-compliant behaviors.
Sources: Jasini et al. (2025)
Immigrant Minority and Discrimination
Perceived discrimination at school serves as a critical moderator of the relationship between emotional acculturation and adjustment outcomes for immigrant minority youth. Among students perceiving high levels of discrimination, emotional fit with the majority culture acts as a liability for academic adjustment and school engagement; conversely, students perceiving low discrimination show no such negative effects.
Sources: Jasini et al. (2025)
Immigrant Minority and School Adjustment
School adjustment of immigrant minority youth, operationalized as sociocultural adjustment indicators including school motivation, behavioral engagement, compliance with school norms, and peer relationships, is influenced by implicit acculturation processes such as emotional fit with the majority culture. The longitudinal effects of emotional acculturation on school adjustment depend critically on the school context and students' perceptions of the school climate, particularly the extent to which they experience discrimination.
Sources: Jasini et al. (2025)
