2022 International Conference on Aging in the Americas

Abstract

My study ascertains to what extent acculturation and native cultural values and resources shape how loneliness and cognitive outcomes of cultural adjustment develop in older Mexican American immigrants. The current study employs a sociocultural approach to discover how individual and community influences, such as practices of familism and neighborhood engagement, can shape older immigrants’ health outcomes. It introduces typological analyses to build a multicultural model of immigrant wellbeing. This study uses data from the Hispanic Established Population for the Epidemiological Study of the Elderly (wave 7), a survey of older Mexican Americans in the southwestern U.S. Among over 400 older Mexican immigrants, the current study focuses on vulnerabilities in the health outcomes of later-life immigrants who tend to be poorly acculturated and isolated. [Analysis in progress] Results are expected to show that the lack of native cultural resources, in conjunction with low acculturation, is likely to be associated with greater loneliness, which can also be a mediator of cognitive impairment. Among older immigrants, those who arrived in the U.S. at an earlier age are better adjusted in the mainstream society and less likely to suffer from loneliness and cognitive impairment compared to those who arrived at later-life. Discussion centers on how acculturation emerges under different native cultural contexts and how various cultural readjustment processes can create diverse pathways to older immigrants’ psychological and cognitive health outcomes. The proposed study advances our theoretical understanding of the significance of native cultural resources on wellbeing among the poorly acculturated and has policy implications in terms of the development of culturally sensitive intervention programs to promote wellbeing of the Mexican older immigrants.