Quick summary: Life satisfaction among Argentinian migrants in Spain is shaped by self-esteem, personality and acculturation, not only by legal status or work. Higher self-esteem, extraversion and conscientiousness, together with integration or assimilation into Spanish life, predicted greater satisfaction, while neuroticism and cultural separation predicted less. Mental health practice and migration policy should therefore support personal resources and contact with host society as a practical route towards well-being, while applying the findings with caution because the sample was cross-sectional and heavily female.

What helps migrants feel satisfied with their lives in a new country? A study of Argentinians living in Spain suggests that how settled and satisfied migrants feel depends partly on their personality and partly on how they approach the culture around them.

The study, published in The Open Psychology Journal, was led by Oriana Ferro, PhD, a lecturer from the Universidad de Flores in Buenos Aires, with Hugo Simkin and Liliana Nieri. It examined life satisfaction among 581 Argentinians living in Spain.

Ferro said the project had a personal starting point. “The original idea for this research was inspired by my family history. In Argentina, there was a major economic crisis in 2001, which led many Argentinians to emigrate to Spain. Spain has the largest Argentine community in the world outside Argentina, followed by the United States. I found it particularly interesting to study this population and explore how life satisfaction was related to self-esteem, acculturation, and personality.”

According to official figures cited by the authors, 415,987 Argentinian immigrants live in Spain, the largest Argentinian community abroad. Their average age is 32, placing most of them in the working-age population. Many have chosen Spain because they can obtain Spanish or Italian citizenship through parents or grandparents who once emigrated to Argentina.

Most of the participants were women, who made up 78.3% of the sample. They completed questionnaires on life satisfaction, acculturation, self-esteem, and personality traits in an online survey shared through Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp groups between August and December 2024.

Self-esteem showed a strong positive link with life satisfaction and emerged as a predictor of it.

Personality also mattered. Extraversion and conscientiousness were linked to greater life satisfaction, while neuroticism, the tendency to experience negative emotions, was linked to lower satisfaction and emerged as a negative predictor.

The way migrants related to Spanish culture was important too. Life satisfaction was higher among those who favoured integration, keeping their own culture while taking part in Spanish life, and among those who favoured assimilation, adopting the new culture more fully.

By contrast, separation was linked to lower life satisfaction. This describes migrants who hold on to their original culture while keeping their distance from the host society.

All five of the study’s hypotheses were supported. The authors say both psychological and sociocultural factors play a part in the well-being of Argentinian migrants. Personal resources such as self-esteem seem to work alongside the choices people make about engaging with their new home.

Commenting on how the results sit with earlier work, Ferro said: “One of the main findings is that integration as an acculturation strategy was associated with higher life satisfaction, together with higher self-esteem and greater levels of extraversion and conscientiousness, in line with findings from previous research.”

The study has limits. It was cross-sectional, women were heavily overrepresented, and the authors say the sample was small and not representative. No minimum age or length of residence in Spain was set, and acculturation was measured with four items rather than a validated scale, so the findings should be applied to other migrant groups with caution.

The authors call for future studies with larger and more representative samples, a minimum age of 18, and a minimum residence in Spain, such as five years.

Ferro said that work is already under way. “Yes, I am continuing to conduct research on acculturation, and there will be new developments in this area soon.”

For now, the findings suggest that life satisfaction among Argentinians in Spain is closely tied to self-esteem, personality, and the way they engage with Spanish society.