The Role of Leisure on Migration:The Case of South Australian Migrants

Migration is inherently a disruptive life event, and is reported to be accompanied with acculturative stress during migrants’ early settlement in a new country. This stress is caused by difficulties in their adjustment to the culture and lifestyle of their host country. How such stress can be ameliorated through leisure activities is an under-researched area. In an effort to further discover the role of leisure for migrants, the present study explored whether migrants’ leisure participation during their early acculturation years can alleviate the stress. This study involved two stages; qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative phase was an exploratory analysis of migrants’ leisure participation and settlement challenges that used dialogue with South Australian experts in leisure and migration departments. The qualitative findings were integrated into the quantitative phase, which was an examination of the dimensionality of migrants’ leisure participation. A survey instrument was formulated to explore the effect of the frequency of migrants’ leisure participation on their acculturative stress and the possibility of developing their place attachment and community embeddedness.