Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Historically Spain was an immigrant-sending country—largely to Latin America—but in recent decades these immigrant flows have reversed. Resulting changes in Spanish society have posed adaptation challenges for both immigrants and natives. Unlike some receiving countries, Spain offers Latin American immigrants greater prospects for integration through a shared language and cultural heritage, but these immigrants still face formidable social and economic barriers. This study explores the adaptation experiences of adolescents from immigrant families in Spain and examines their patterns of substance use and anti-drug norms and attitudes, relative to native Spanish youth. The study examined whether differences between immigrant and native Spanish youth could be attributed to the immigrant having more protective factors and fewer risk factors for substance use, more conservative substance use norms and attitudes, isolation from native born peer and neighbor networks, less access to drugs, or stronger ethnic identity. Data were gathered through a U.S.-Spain international research collaboration involving two universities. Surveys were administered in Spring 2005 to 817students in 7th to 10th grades in 10 urban, secondary schools with high immigrant populations in Galicia, Spain. Included were Spanish natives (two-thirds) and Latin American immigrants (one-third), mainly from Colombia, Argentina, and Venezuela. Regression analyses predicted substance use intentions, as well as actual substance through a composite factor score that included measures of the amount, frequency, and typical amounts of use of alcohol, cigarette and marijuana, both over the lifetime and recently. Controlling for the fact that the immigrant students were generally older and performing less well academically than natives, Latin American immigrant youth appeared less at risk than native youth on all substance use outcomes. In a mediational analysis, most of the key explanatory variables in youth substance use etiology failed to account for the persisting immigrant versus native differences, including a range of risk and protective factors for substance use, substance use norms, strength of ethnic identity, and degree of social integration within native born social networks. Differential access to drugs did mediate the immigrant-native gap in substance us intentions, but not in actual substance use. In line with U.S. trends, immigrant youth in Spain generally used substances less, and most risk and protective factors predicted substance use outcomes similarly in the two groups. Findings are discussed in light of the specific social context in which immigrants have begun to arrive in Galicia, and additional factors related to immigrant adaptation processes that may need to be considered in future research.