Psychosocial Assets as a Factor of Emigration Intentions in Youth

Abstract

Contemporary researchers note the emergence of new motives for emigration activity. Before recently, Russian citizens used to emigrate mostly for political and ethnic reasons; however, in the beginning of the XXI century those emigration motives had been joined by economic and social grounds. This paper examines emigration intentions of youths (N=240) and their correlations with psychosocial assets. Psychosocial assets represent a dynamic system of personal relations, a resource that facilitates achievement of various personal goals. Psychosocial assets include trust (general, social, and institutional), civic identity, and ethnic tolerance. The current study is based on the Theory of Planned Behavior proposed by Icek Ajzen and Martin Fishbein. A model of planned emigration behaviour is considered along with its link to psychosocial assets on the sample of youths aged 18 to 24 years. The analysis included several structural models and confirmatory factor analysis. It has been shown that emigration intentions were affected by individual attitude toward emigration whereas perceptions of the attitude toward emigration among significant others or perception of own abilities to emigrate did not have significant impact. It has been shown that civic identity and institutional trust were negatively correlated with emigration intentions: the intention to emigrate decreased with the increase of the psychosocial assets level. Thus, increasing civic identity and trust toward social and government institutions and might lead to a decrease in youth emigration levels. The current research might form a basis for development of youth development and support programmes in Russia.