I’m an Alien in Deutschland: A Quantitative Mental Health Case Study of African Immigrants in Germany- With an Epilogue by John W. Berry

The book presents a study of - legal, illegal, and incarcerated - African immigrants in Germany. Participants responded to a selection of scales from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2), the Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ) by Schwartz, and a measure of acculturative stress. Acculturative stress and German racism emerged as strong predictors of poor mental health, with problems becoming worse over the years of stay in Germany. Particularly among 'economic refugees' a precarious job situation and family fragmentation added grossly to acculturative stress. As John W. Berry, the nestor of acculturation research puts it in his epilogue: What can only help is an increase in basic hospitality: Making African immigrants welcome in their new home is needed, not a bulwark Europe.

The Authors: Erhabor S. Idemudia is a clinical psychologist and full professor at North-West University (South Africa) and the University of Limpopo (South Africa). He earned his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in 1995 from the University of Ibadan (Nigeria). He has been an Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) fellow at Jacobs University Bremen.
Klaus Boehnke, Professor of Social Science Methodology at Jacobs University Bremen and former Secretary-General of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) is Vice Dean of the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS). He earned his Ph.D. in Psychology in 1985 from Berlin University of Technology.