Is It All About the Costs? Cultural Distance and Adjustment of Recent German Migrants

Genoni, Andreas; Décieux, Jean Philippe; MURDOCK, Elke

doi:10.1177/00220221261455885

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Is It All About the Costs? Cultural Distance and Adjustment of Recent German Migrants

Genoni, Andreas; Décieux, Jean Philippe; MURDOCK, Elke

2026 • In Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology

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https://hdl.handle.net/10993/68505

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10.1177/00220221261455885

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Keywords :

Cultural distance; adaptation; adjustment; recent migrants; voluntary migration; social production function theory

Abstract :

[en] The cultural distance (CD) between migrants’ origin and destination countries has long been considered important for adjustment. Past research predominantly followed a cost perspective, emphasising rising adjustment costs with increasing CD and postulating a negative linear relationship. Previous studies, therefore, overlooked the potential benefits of CD for adjustment. We address this gap by testing an integrated theoretical framework and taking a more differentiated perspective on country-level CD and adjustment. Using probability-based survey data on recent German migrants worldwide ( N = 3,368), we examined their sociocultural and psychological adjustment at different country CD levels, whereby country-level CD refers to aggregated individual-level value differences. Employing multilevel regressions, we reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between country-level CD and both adjustment dimensions, and find similar patterns for two other frameworks of national culture. This result extends the cost perspective, indicating that the “optimal” country-level CD range for adjustment lies between minimum and maximum distances. While the study’s insights directly apply to German migrants, they also provide first empirical indication that the prevailing view on the negative consequences of country-level CD for adjustment may underestimate the challenges in culturally similar settings and overlook that certain levels of cultural dissimilarity can facilitate migrants’ adjustment.

Disciplines :

Sociology & social sciences

Author, co-author :

Genoni, Andreas; Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB), Wiesbaden, Germany ; University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Décieux, Jean Philippe ; Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB), Wiesbaden, Germany ; University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg ; University of Bonn, Germany

MURDOCK, Elke ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE) > Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences (DBCS) > Lifespan Development, Family and Culture

External co-authors :

yes

Language :

English

Title :

Is It All About the Costs? Cultural Distance and Adjustment of Recent German Migrants

Publication date :

30 May 2026

Journal title :

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology

ISSN :

0022-0221

Publisher :

SAGE Publications

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Focus Area :

Migration and Inclusive Societies

Additional URL :

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/00220221261455885

Funders :

Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Federal Institute for Population Research
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

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since 03 June 2026

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