Acculturation of Russian immigrants in Finland : cultural maintenance, interpersonal communications and language skills

Abstract

Cultural maintenance is an important dimension of acculturation, and immigrants' attitude towards this phenomenon has been shown to vary by the change of other factors, like the intergroup relations. The present quantitative study was an attempt to study the acculturation of Russian immigrants in Finland, investigating their perceived cultural maintenance, cultural maintenance attitudes, interpersonal communication as well as language skills of immigrants.\vspace*{.50cm}

The study aimed to answer the following research questions: Does immigrants' cultural maintenance correlate with the amount of their interpersonal communication they have with the host society? Does immigrants' language skills correlate with the amount of interpersonal communication they establish with the host society? Do immigrants' cultural maintenance and their perceived cultural maintenance correlate with each other? The results indicated significant relationship between interpersonal communication and language skills, which supports Kim's (1988) theory of cultural adaptation. However, the results showed no significant correlation between other variables and cultural maintenance, which is a contradiction to some other research done on the topic.