Abstract
The modern immigrant no longer has the freedom of the early settler, who usually simply transferred his own ways of doing things. Upon arrival in a new country, today’s immigrant faces a task of integration into a new culture; there are psychological stresses and strains, which have become magnified with the complexity of modern social organization. Present-day immigration has a desocializing effect on individual life, involving complex disorganization of the individual’s role system, and some disturbance of social identity and self-image (Cf. Eisenstadt, 1955). This chapter argues that the possession of adequate information about the social-support systems of the new country lessens the desocializing effect of immigration. The conceptual theme of this study is that psychosocial adaptation is a function of information seeking which facilitates, and is facilitated by, use of social-support networks. Some information is sought before the arrival of immigrants in a new country, and some after arrival.
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© 1980 Plenum Press, New York
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Nair, M. (1980). New Immigrants and Social-Support Systems: Information-Seeking Patterns in a Metropolis. In: Coelho, G.V., Ahmed, P.I. (eds) Uprooting and Development. Current Topics in Mental Health. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-3794-2_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-3794-2_18
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