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Immigration issues relate to many scientific research fields, including cross-cultural social psychology. Along with interest in the attitudes toward immigrants, cross-cultural psychology addresses how people make decisions to change the country, how they evaluate this decision, how they deal with the new culture as well. The current paper addresses psychological features of the immigrant experience in the Canadian context. The essay examines the literature on the topic and pinpoints the leading opinions about the mental well-being of immigrants and the factors affecting it. One can derive from the literature research that the studies are mostly focused on how challenging the experience is. However, the current paper argues that most studies tend to reflect immigrant life in Canada as rather pleasant.
To start with, it is worth mentioning that immigrant’s mental health is vulnerable because of several factors. First, it is usually some unpleasant event, such as wars or crises which force people to leave their homes, and these events are stressful. The process of moving per se is also intense because people have to deal with several urgent questions and cope with unpredictable situations, which may cause anxiety. Finally, the new culture and society are the most durable, and therefore potentially the most critical factors for psychological stability. In a new circumstance, people have to learn new rules which may be demanding. They may face discrimination, isolation, and cultural incompatibility in general. Therefore, it is essential to pay attention to the well-being of the immigrant community.
Canada seems to be a highly attractive country for immigration. Canada has a long history of immigration processes and has developed a unique system of immigration control. Consequently, there is much research about the cross-cultural experience in this country. Berry and Hou (2016) concentrated on the strategy people use to get used to the new cultural and social environment or acculturation. Depending on the relation between the native identity and the new culture of an immigrant person, they suggested four possible styles of four acculturation strategies, namely, integration, separation, marginalization, and assimilation.
The study of Canadian immigration styles included 7000 participants from different backgrounds. The results showed that most of the participants demonstrated integration, which is a “high sense of belonging to both their source country and to Canada” (Berry & Hou, 2016, p. 255), as a preferable strategy. Integration implies accepting and utilizing both cultures’ norms. This is probably the most beneficial variant in terms of immigrants’ well-being because it lowers anxiety and fear of unknown society.
Canada has created an advantageous condition for life, and it certainly influences immigrants. Berry and Hou (2016) identified that there was a correlation between the acculturation strategy and mental well-being. The authors also discussed the phenomenon of the “immigrant paradox” that has been observed in surveys on the well-being of immigrants in Canada. The paradox is consisting of the phenomenon of immigrants reporting on a higher level of life satisfaction than the non-immigrant community. Berry and Hou (2016) highlighted that immigrants often move to Canada because the country is safer and friendlier than their homeland. Therefore, the integration strategy of acculturation is probably connected to mental well-being and at least partly determined by the conditions in the country.
Immigrants’ mental well-being also depends on how the host community perceives the newcomers. Discrimination is one of the most potent deteriorative factors of people’s happiness (Berry & Hou, 2016; Na et al., 2016). Some studies addressed the ways to lower the aggression towards immigrants. For example, Harell et al. (2017) showed that if people believe in the stability of society and feel that internal personal factors determine their life, they are less likely to express negativism about immigration. It was shown that Canada is indeed a country where people, in general, ensure that their life is in their control, and that is why they tend to be tolerant of immigrants. Thus, Canadian socio-economic policy is beneficial for a more positive perception of immigrants and, therefore, for their better experience of living in the country.
Canada has been adjusting its immigration policy for a long time. The government and the society had to face the difficulties much earlier than many other countries, which is why it had to be more creative and come up with the idea when there was little information about the most reasonable practices. Nowadays, Canada leads quite a strict immigration policy, which allows entering the country only with a certain level of education and economic status, possibly creating a bias for research of immigration processes (Harell et al., 2017).
Berry and Hou (2016) mentioned that Canadian borders are quite far from most of the other countries, which can also influence the likeliness of people to choose the country for immigration. It has been shown that such a policy may explain the phenomenon of immigrants being healthier than non-immigrant citizens (Vang et al., 2017). In other words, people often need a considerable amount of resources to move to Canada, and it may correlate with these people’s life satisfaction even before immigration.
Furthermore, it is worth taking into account whether and how people think about their mental health issues. For some cultures, psychotherapy is not a meaningful concept, or it is a socially undesirable matter, whereas, for Canada, psychological help is generally supposed to be as important as any other medical service. There are suggestions that it is crucial to find out the way to address people from diverse backgrounds and to provide them with the necessary help even if it is not conventual (Na et al., 2016). This leads to the question of providing the necessary mental health services.
Immigrant citizens may need professional psychological help. However, one of the main problems is the cultural differences in the services expected. People from different backgrounds got used to a particular approach in medicine. It is especially salient when concerning psychological issues because this sphere is usually highly variable across cultures. Na et al. (2016) argued that a multicultural approach is necessary for the Canadian mental health service system.
The authors insisted on the significance of a culturally responsive framework of mental health services because the extent to which the help is adjusted to people’s expectations should consider the cultural background as well as other individual differences of clients. Although this idea was proposed at least five years ago, Salami et al. (2020) identified bureaucratic issues that African parents face accessing necessary health services. Therefore, health service remains a drawback for immigrants’ well-being in Canada.
Moreover, socio-economical status also plays a role in psychological well-being. Canada has contributed to the programs of financial support for immigrants. Moreover, it facilitates the social involvement of immigrants into the community life-promoting authentic social life for a newcomer. Such a policy facilitates life satisfaction and helps immigrants to use integration as a strategy of acculturation (Berry & Hou, 2016). Thus, Canada helps immigrants to adjust their socio-economical status to the most beneficial effect, namely, for successful acculturation.
Some authors specifically address the question of the attitude toward immigration in the literature. For example, Cobb et al. (2019) examined previous studies on immigration and concluded that they specifically concentrated on negative aspects of immigration. Moreover, they argued that there were successful examples of positive immigration histories, and Canada was one of the most mentioned cases. This may mean that among other countries with the current immigration issue, Canada may present a positive example.
Despite such a positive reflection of Canadian immigration policy, studies with narrower scope reveal some problems. A recent study by Salami et al. (2020) investigated the parental experience of immigrants from Africa in Alberta. The results indicated that African immigrants faced significant challenges concerning migration issues. Along with frustration about family tension, they had to deal with undesirable state interference and limited social support. This study shows that there may be some specific problems depending on the background of each immigrant community, although in general, the situation may seem favorable.
It is also worth mentioning that the migration processes can hardly be stable. Berry and Hou (2016) showed that life satisfaction on immigrants negatively correlated with the length of stay in the country. This result may be explained not only by the internal changes of life of the people but also by the external factors unrelated to migration. For example, the current situation with COVID-19 has probably affected the lifestyle of many people in the world, and it has also affected migration. Therefore, the psychological stability may be determined by the events which are not the consequences of migration, but which may be more relevant to the immigrant community.
As it was shown above, one can consider different aspects of the mental health of immigrants. Some authors, such as Berry and Hou (2016), address cross-cultural aspects and investigate the features of initial thinking and behavior of immigrants. Harrel et al. (2017) studied attitudes of non-immigrant society and focused on the influence they may make on the mental well-being of immigrants. Na et al. (2016) pay attention to the public services accessible to immigrants and whether it is necessary and possible to improve their quality. Some authors report on problems yet to solve, such as African parental unpleasant experiences in the study by Salami et al. (2020). Overall, the situation seems to be favorable for further improvement of immigrants’ experience in Canada because the research shows both achievements and gaps.
In conclusion, literature generally reveals the beneficial condition of the Canadian environment for immigrants’ mental health. However, it is worth taking into account that Canada has a strict policy, and probably only people with a particular way of living come to the country. Mental health services seem to need cultural adaptation because this aspect is still underestimated. Some researchers argue that medical help, including psychological, should not only be individually adjusted, but also take into consideration the cross-cultural differences of the client. Although recent studies reveal significant problems with immigrants’ well-being to focus on further, the picture of the Canadian immigration situation is generally positive.
References
Berry, J. W., & Hou, F. (2016). Immigrant acculturation and wellbeing in Canada. Canadian Psychology, 57(4), 254–264. Web.
Cobb, C. L., Branscombe, N. R., Meca, A., Schwartz, S. J., Xie, D., Zea, M. C., … Martinez, C. R. (2019). Toward a Positive Psychology of Immigrants. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(4), 619–632. Web.
Harell, A., Soroka, S., & Iyengar, S. (2017). Locus of Control and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Political Psychology, 38(2), 245–260. Web.
Na, S., Ryder, A. G., & Kirmayer, L. J. (2016). Toward a Culturally Responsive Model of Mental Health Literacy: Facilitating Help-Seeking Among East Asian Immigrants to North America. American Journal of Community Psychology, 211–225. Web.
Salami, B., Alaazi, D. A., Okeke-Ihejirika, P., Yohani, S., Vallianatos, H., Tetreault, B., & Nsaliwa, C. (2020). Parenting challenges of African immigrants in Alberta, Canada. Child and Family Social Work, 1–9. Web.
Vang, Z. M., Sigouin, J., Flenon, A., & Gagnon, A. (2017). Are immigrants healthier than native-born Canadians? A systematic review of the healthy immigrant effect in Canada. Ethnicity and Health, 22(3), 209–241. Web.
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