How Do Turkish Youth’s Individualist and Collectivist Characteristics Affect Their Willingness to Migrate? The Mediator Role of Life Satisfaction

Abstract

Many personal factors can also be effective in people's decision to migrate in addition to environmental factors. Having individualistic or collectivist tendencies is thought to be one of these factors. In this study, we will examine the relationship between the willingness of young people between the ages of 18-30 living in Turkey to migrate and their individualism-collectivism tendencies towards migration. The level of life satisfaction, which is one of the personal factors thought to be effective on the desire to migrate, was determined as the mediating variable in the research. Consistent with the prevailing trend in the literature, the main hypothesis of the research is that young people with high individualistic tendencies and young people with low life satisfaction will have a higher desire to migrate. As a result of the research, these hypotheses were confirmed. For collectivist youth, it was determined that being married and having children increased their desire to migrate. This result shows that the probability of migration is not high only for people that are classically associated with migration, such as having individualistic traits and low life satisfaction, being single and young. For the collectivist youth who attach importance to values such as family, tradition, and social solidarity, the effect of establishing a family increases the desire to migrate is due to lowering the emotional and social costs of being separated from the community.