Ebook: Kenyan Immigrants in the United States : Acculturation, Coping Strategies, and Mental Health

Odera’s work yields rich data on Kenyan immigrants and reveals a highly educated group of foreign-born individuals. She adapts a multidimensional conceptual framework that combines both the stress-and-coping model of acculturation proposed by Berry (1980) and the sociocultural model proposed by Ward and Rana-Deuba (1999); both of which govern the relationship between acculturation and mental health. Findings indicate that Kenyan immigrants’ acculturation is determined by their gender, age, immigration status, duration of stay in the United States as well as their ties to Kenya. Acculturative stress is one of the main predictors of depressive symptoms and subjective health evaluation. Social support and religious coping styles are salient to Kenyan immigrants as they navigate American society.