A Meta-Analysis of Social and Contextual Correlates of Migrant Adaptation to Living in Receiving Societies
Across the accumulated evidence, migrant adaptation tracks social and contextual conditions — discrimination, social support, contact with the receiving society — more than it tracks the migrant's own acculturation strategy.
The paper, in plain language
The other half of the ledger
After our meta-analysis of the integration hypothesis showed how little adaptation is explained by migrants' strategy choices, the obvious question was what explains it instead. With an international team, we meta-analysed the social and contextual side of the ledger: how migrants are treated, whom they can lean on, and how much contact they have with members of the receiving society.
What we found
These conditions carry substantial weight. Discrimination is reliably associated with worse psychological and sociocultural adaptation; social support and intergroup contact with better. Where strategy effects were small and unstable, the contextual associations are consistent — the environment shows up in the data more clearly than the coping style.
Why it matters
Public debate about integration concentrates on what migrants should do. This evidence shifts part of the burden of explanation — and of policy — to receiving societies: reducing discrimination and enabling contact are not decoration around adaptation, they are among its strongest measured correlates. Adaptation is a transaction, and this paper prices the receiving society's side of it.
Bierwiaczonek, K., Vu, D. H., Tong, R., Cheung, M. W. L., Benningstad, N. C. G., van Duin, E., Lindholm, K., Ward, C., & Kunst, J. R. (2025). A Meta-Analysis of Social and Contextual Correlates of Migrant Adaptation to Living in Receiving Societies. Nature Communications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-67468-z