Culture and personality as predictors of academic resilience and psychosocial adaptation among migrant students

INTRODUCTION "Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me." ― Carlos Fuentes. The above mentioned quote expresses an attempt by acculturating beings who are striving for recognition in the new world. By new world, we mean a new culture, a new place which is altogether different from a place an individual originally comes from. A person travels to another societies and deal with new cultures for reasons like higher education, job opportunities and better standard of living etc. Such cross cultural migrations have been inevitable throughout the events of the past. The culture contact occurs among the residents of a culturally diverse nation or society when a person from one society travels to another society with a particular objective in mind such as work, adventure, study, immigrate, or provide assistance (Ward, Bochner, & Furnham, 2001).Certainly a shift from one culture to another exerts a great influence on every aspect of human life, such as beliefs, appearance, perceptions, emotions, behaviour, norms and values. Culture is defined as "complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society" (Helman, 2000), which relates to the point that culture influences virtually every part of our lives. Culture is a particular way of living and Acculturation signifies the transition from that particular way into the new way of life including new behaviour, customs and values. Inescapably, when people relocate from one culture to another, they undergo the Acculturation process associated with migration. This geographic movement of people across a specified boundary for the purpose of establishing a new permanent or semi-permanent residence is called migration. The term "in migration" and "out migration" are used for movement between areas within a country (internal migration). The parallel terms "immigration" and "emigration" are used to refer to moves between countries (international migration). Each migrant undergoes the process of Acculturation, and there is wide range of changes experienced by them. According to Berry and Kim (1988), four main changes can be experienced; (1) physical changes are related to factors such as increased population density, new place to live and climatic conditions, (2) biological changes refers to availability of different food, nutritional value of different pattern of food,