Acculturation, development, and adaptation

Abstract

The rapidly changing demographic landscape of the United States, brought about by immigration, has resulted in an increasingly multiracial and multicultural population. These changes have become accentuated by the phenomenon of globalization, which occurs when there is an acceleration of movement of people, ideas, and products between nations, which also brings about an increase in the complexity of everyday problems. This article discusses the concept of identity formation and how the stresses of immigration and acculturation and the factors of resiliency and risk affect immigrant children, adolescents, and their families, so that clinicians treating these populations can be prepared to understand divergent, and often well-hidden, world views, which may cause intrafamilial conflicts and interfere with the child's developmental process.