To re-root or not to re-root after migration? Longitudinal effects of transnational friendship on immigrants' life satisfaction through acculturative processes

In today’s hyper-connected global landscape, immigrants often maintain ties with their country of origin upon relocation. This study integrates a transnational framework into acculturation research to predict immigrants’ life satisfaction over time. Addressing the need for robust longitudinal evidence, we use three waves of data from the Migration-Mobility Survey (MMS) with working immigrants in Switzerland (N = 1291 longitudinal panel) and employ Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models (RI-CLPM). This approach allows us to elucidate the impact of transnational ties on receiving culture adoption and origin culture maintenance, and their subsequent effects on life satisfaction, while crucially distinguishing within-person changes from stable between-person differences. RI-CLPM analyses reveal that stronger transnational ties (proportion of origin friends) negatively predict subsequent within-person changes in receiving culture adoption. Regarding life satisfaction, origin culture maintenance remains high and stable across waves but shows no significant longitudinal effect. Receiving culture adoption displays complex dynamics: while positively related to life satisfaction between individuals, within-person increases in adoption significantly predict small decreases in subsequent life satisfaction, highlighting a divergence from traditional cross-lagged findings. These results underscore the complex, dynamic nature of socio-cultural re-rooting and demonstrate the critical importance of separating within- and between-person effects in acculturation research. Practically, fostering local friendship opportunities appears key for immigrant well-being, while origin culture maintenance persists independently.