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Sense of Belonging and Life Satisfaction among Post‐1990 Immigrants in Israel
Author(s) -
Raijman Rebeca,
Geffen Rona
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
international migration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.681
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1468-2435
pISSN - 0020-7985
DOI - 10.1111/imig.12386
Subject(s) - immigration , acculturation , life satisfaction , ethnic group , social psychology , context (archaeology) , ideology , sociology , meaning (existential) , judaism , identity (music) , psychology , demographic economics , political science , law , geography , anthropology , politics , archaeology , economics , psychotherapist , physics , acoustics
In this paper we contribute to the study of immigrants’ integration into the host society by focusing on two subjective indicators of integration: life satisfaction and sense of belonging. The analysis is performed on post‐1990 immigrants in Israel with data obtained from the ‘Immigrant Survey’ conducted by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. The findings show that while life satisfaction is affected by all forms of incorporation (structural, acculturation, identificational), immigrants’ sense of belonging to Israeli society seems mainly related to processes of identity re‐definition in the host society, and mostly determined by strength of Jewish identity, ideological motives for going to Israel, and the ways by which immigrants perceive they are defined by Israelis (as a member of the majority group or as a member of an ethnic group). The results also reveal that when utilizing SEM procedure for estimating simultaneous effects of both subjective measures of assimilation, sense of belonging to the new society strongly affects immigrants’ life satisfaction but not the other way around. We discuss the findings and their meaning in light of theory and within the context of Israeli society.