Analysis and Mapping of Scientific Literature on Cross-Cultural Adaptation of Global Immigrants (1963–2022)

Abstract

This study extensively investigates 4,557 articles pertaining to immigrants’ cross-cultural adaptation (ICCA) published between 1963 and 2022 in Web of Science (WoS)-core collection database by presenting a state-of-the-art bibliometric analysis and visualizing knowledge maps with a set of analytical tools including VOSviewer, CiteSpace, and Bibliometrix. The collected sample covers 9,791 authors, 1,473 sources, 81 countries and regions, and 2,682 institutions. The major aim of the study is to explore the research status and progress on a global scale in terms of different parameters in a quantitative and visual manner and discern the overall development in research hotspots. The research findings reveal that publications on ICCA have registered marked increases over time and that the degree of research varies remarkably in countries/territories, authors, institutions, and sources. A host of scholars are predominantly focused on “acculturation,”“integration,” and “attitude” in addition to “immigrant” themselves, whereas some started to take up research on emerging topics like “social network,”“national identity,”“Syrian refugee,”“resilience,”“social integration,”“work,” and “employment.” Future research directions on ICCA research have been justified accordingly. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first review of its kind in the field and offers multiple influential research avenues, which may provide unique and essential perspectives and ideas for scholars to carry out relevant research down the road. It is hoped that this study is expected to stir up more research interest in ICCA research.