Immigrants' Life Satisfaction in Relation to Country-Level Tolerance and Trust: A Multilevel Approach

Background/Purpose:

Over the last few decades, many countries in the world have experienced a remarkable increase in the number of immigrants. The number of international immigrants increased from 154.2 million in 1990 to 232 million in 2013 (UN DESA & OECD, 2013). As the number of immigrants increase, immigrants' adaptation to the host society becomes one of the most pertinent issues to address. There can be various predictors of immigrants’ adaptation. This study focuses, in particular, on immigrants’ perceived life satisfaction, which is one of the most important measures of immigrants' adaptation.

A large body of studies has focused on the individual characteristics of immigrants as predictors of immigrants’ life satisfaction, such as demographics and cultural factors. However, the social-environmental contexts surrounding an immigrant have not received much research emphasis. People interact with their environments, and they affect each other (Kondrat, 2013). Drawing from this Person-In-Environment perspective, this study aims to examine the association between immigrants’ life satisfaction and the individual- and country-level factors, in particular – tolerance and generalized trust of the receiving country.

Methods and Data:

Multilevel random coefficient modelling was used to assess the main and interactive effects of individual- and country-level factors on immigrants’ life satisfaction. This study uses the World Value Survey Wave 6 (2010-2014) including 90,350 citizens from 59 countries. We limited the sample to 3,451 immigrants in the 52 countries.

Results:

Our results show that individual level factors of subjective health, age, being female, and income levels are positively related to immigrants’ life satisfaction. Also, being divorced or separated is negatively associated with immigrants’ life satisfaction. At the country level, tolerance level of the host country is positively related to the immigrants’ life satisfaction while trust is not significant. The results also show that the effect of income on life satisfaction varies across countries. The effect of income is smaller in the countries with higher life satisfaction. The effect of gender on immigrants’ life satisfaction does not differ according to the country’s tolerance level.

Conclusions and Implications:

Our findings show that not only individual level characteristics but also country level characteristics impact immigrants’ life satisfaction. In particular, a country’s tolerance level is an important predictor of immigrants’ life satisfaction. By shedding light on the multilevel aspects of immigrants’ life satisfaction, this study can contribute to an understanding of contexts in which immigrants reside and could be used to shape an effective public policies. Also, social work could serve immigrants by bringing awareness of the importance of tolerance to the host society. This would benefit both the host the immigrant populations. Future research could explore other factors, such as the effect of pre-immigration experience and time spent in the host country.

References

UN DESA & OECD. (2013). World Migration in Figures. Paris, France: OECD.

Kondrat, M. E. (2013). Person-in-Environment. Encyclopedia of Social Work. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.