Sources of Social Support and Conflict for Polish Immigrants

Abstract

In this study, 25 Polish immigrants from three waves of migration to the United States were interviewed regarding their sources of social support and how social relationships facilitated their psychosocial adaptation to various stages of resettlement. Findings documented that coethnics were a major source of support, particularly during early resettlement before the study participants could access support from Americans. However, social support was not automatically forthcoming from coethnics; various contingencies for social support (i.e., resource availability, perceived cultural similarities, and so forth) differed according to people's ethnic and migration characteristics and made it problematic to obtain emotional and instrumental support from the same source. Segmentation of emotional and instrumental support by source contributed to conflict among people from different waves of migration and made it difficult for newly arrived immigrants to obtain greatly needed social support.