Immigrant adolescents’ adaptation to a new context: Ethnic friendship homophily and its predictors

Although interethnic friendships are among the best indicators of social adaptation to a new cultural context, adolescent immigrants form friendships predominantly within their own ethnic community, a phenomenon called friendship homophily. In this article, I focus on the acculturation of immigrant adolescents and on the factors that lead them to form friendships within their group, including acculturation-related behaviors, mutual attitudes of native and immigrant groups, developmental agerelated considerations, and the context in which these adolescents live. The results present opportunities not only for reducing friendship homophily but also point to the complexity of acculturation research and the need to study side effects of adolescents’ adaptation to a new context. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12072 Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-102183 Accepted Version Originally published at: Titzmann, Peter F (2014). Immigrant adolescents’ adaptation to a new context: Ethnic friendship homophily and its predictors. Child Development Perspectives, 8(2):107-112. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12072