The Effect of Ethnic Community on Acculturation and Cultural Adaptation: the Case of Russian-Speaking Older Adults

The study examined community influences on acculturation, social integration, and cultural adaptation among elderly Russian-speaking immigrants residing in two communities with different ethnic density. Results revealed direct, indirect, and moderation effects of community. The residents of the dense ethnic community had lower American social support and American acculturation than residents of the dispersed community. Both communities had comparable levels of acculturative stress and American cultural alienation, underscoring an indirect effect of community on cultural adaptation via acculturation and social support. The ethnic community also moderated relationships of acculturation and social support to cultural adaptation, suggesting their varied adaptive and maladaptive pathways. American acculturation was associated with increased acculturative stress in the dense community and reduced acculturative stress in the dispersed community. Russian acculturation and social support were typically adaptive in the dense community and maladaptive in the dispersed community. The study supported the Ecological Acculturative Frameworkxcopy (EAF) that underscores the importance of conceptualizing acculturation as embedded within the community sociocultural context that reflects the lived experiences of individuals interacting with their contextual settings, and empirically examining adaptive and maladaptive pathways provided by these settings.