ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cultural Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1597967
This article is part of the Research TopicIntercultural Communication and International StudentsView all 8 articles
How Perceived Discrimination and Trust Dynamics Influence Social Integration in Acculturation and Reacculturation: The Case of Chinese International Student Returnees
Provisionally accepted
- 1Independent researcher, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
- 2Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China
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Background: When coming to a new social environment, many people unfortunately are under the mental burden of perceived discrimination. The Chinese international student returnees in the post-COVID-19 era present a special case where they experienced considerable discrimination issues during both the processes of acculturation in the host countries as well as reacculturation after returning to China. This study aims to investigate group-based influences on the impacts of discrimination-related perceptions toward social integration (and reintegration) degrees through different psychological pathways of trust. Analysis: Employing Bayesian analyses aided by Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms on survey data of 1014 Chinese international student returnees, the study examines the multi-layered influences of perceived discrimination and trust (both generalized and personalized) on social integration. Findings: We found that in the foreign social environment, interestingly, the degree of acculturation and perceived discrimination has a positive association. Generalized trust positively moderates this association while personalized trust has a negative moderating effect. In the domestic social environment, perceived discrimination is positively associated with the degree of negative mental health induced by concerns about whether to stay in China or emigrate. Generalized trust positively moderates this association, while personalized trust negatively moderates it. Conclusions: The findings suggest the possible information exchange pathways where different types of trust and group-based perceptions interact.
Keywords: Generalized trust, Personalized trust, Discrimination, Acculturation, Returnees
Received: 04 Apr 2025; Accepted: 24 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Le and Jin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ruining Jin, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China
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