Mentality and Change in the Context of International Migration

International migration is a phenomenon with implications at social, economical, psychological, etc. level, at individual and collective level, therefore the change is the central element that defines this phenomenon. Among the multiple changes appeared as a result of international migration, is identified even the change of mentality of the immigrants. Even if the mentality is defined as the most profound cultural structure of one community, the most durable and the most resistant to changes, the migration phenomenon is noted through the mentality change as a result of some social influences and of the cultural environment pressure, which are interiorized in mentalities, as a structure of social conscience depth, from where they act as orientation factors, they require judgment and evaluation criteria, and social actions patterns. The mentalities condition the choices and the evaluations of the social group on a long term, their durability being given by the social communication and the socialization processes, as an answer to the recurrent social requirements. As generative or structuring structures, the mentalities are diffuse cultural provisions, sustained through socialization and institutionalization. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to identify the factors that have generated mentality change in emigrants, as well as their influence on individual actions, relationships within the family, the origin and destination community respectively. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).