Acculturative stress of internal migrants: impact on work attitudes

Accelerated urbanisation and industrialisation have engendered more employment opportunities in the urban areas of India. The constant flow of migrants to the metropolitan cities each year makes the study more vital. These internal migrants strive hard to acquire better well-being in their life. The employees who migrate to industrialised urban areas for job are the major component of this internal migrants. These internal migrants are unaware of the cultural and environmental changes that they experience which in turn leads to acculturative stress. The major objective of the study is to understand the role played by acculturative stress on the work attitudes of internal migrants. The work attitudes considered in the study are job satisfaction and intention to quit. The moderating effect of perceived income adequacy and migration characteristics is also studied. The 607 respondents of the study are internal migrants who are working in organisations at Chennai. Acculturative stress has a negative effect on job satisfaction of internal migrants whereas it has a positive effect on intention to quit the job. Perceived income adequacy is contrary to the effect of acculturative stress on work attitudes. Migration characteristics enhance the effect of acculturative stress on work attitudes. Based on the outcomes, the implications for the various stakeholders are discussed.