Coping with Cultural Transition: A Psycho-social Model of Acculturative Stress in Indian Internal Migrants

Migration is the most noticeable and remarkable fact in the growth of cities, and it is also considered the root cause of urbanization in the world. Major Indian cities have reported a 30%–40% increase in population due to migration. In this article, the impact of cultural intelligence and sense of coherence on acculturative stress experienced by internal migrants has been studied. The data were collected from 607 internal migrants in India. Acculturative stress experienced by migrants varies between rural-to-urban migrants and urban-to-urban migrants. The results showed that cultural intelligence and sense of coherence are predictors of acculturative stress. But sense of coherence failed to moderate the cultural intelligence and acculturative stress relationship. Implications for migrants and counsellors are also discussed.