IMMIGRANTS' COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND WELL-BEING

The present work proposes looking into whether immigrants' community engagement has any relationship with their well-being measured with self-esteem and linguistic and cultural competences. Five hundred and ten young immigrants participated in the study (Range 19-29 years; M = 23.75, SD = 2.92), filling out a self-report questionnaire containing measures aimed at investigating their wellbeing. Of these, 59.4% claimed to be engaged in local organization. We compared the groups of engaged and not engaged immigrants - with similar sociodemographic characteristics - with three indicators of well-being (self-esteem, mastery of the language, and knowledge of the culture of the hosting country). The results highlight that, compared to the not engaged, the engaged report statistically higher means for all the indicators of well-being utilized. In addition, statistically significant differences emerged with respect to the types of activities in which the young immigrants were engaged. Community engagement can thus be considered related to immigrants' well-being. The operative results are discussed.