The current study aimed to investigate the effects of expatriation, gender, and living with family on stress levels among young Arab expatriates in Malaysia, furthermore, to examine the effects of sociocultural adaptation on their stress levels. In accordance with the aim of the study four hypotheses were proposed: (Hl) There is a significant difference between young Arab expatriates living in Malaysia and young Arabs who live in their native countries in terms of stress levels, (H2) Better sociocultural adaptation will affect stress levels of the young Arab expatriates. (H3) There is a significant difference between male and female young Arab expatriates in Malaysia in the matter of stress levels. (H4) There is a significant difference between Young Arab expatriates in Malaysia who live with their families and those who live alone in the context of stress levels. The results supported H3, however, H1, H2, and H4 were rejected.
Stress levels and expatriation
Contradicting with the existing literature that expatriates experience higher levels of stress because of the challenges they face when adapting to the new culture (Noethen & Alcazar, 2019; Campos et al., 2018; Brown, 2008), and that many Arabs struggle to adapt to new cultures, especially non-Muslim cultures, and that Arab students who study abroad experience higher levels of psychological stress than those who study in their respective countries (Acevedo & Chaudhary, 2015; Magzoub & Elzubeir, 2010; Amal Norhaizah, 2017; Green, 2018) . Results showed that H1 was rejected, as there was no significant difference between the stress levels of young Arab expatriates living in Malaysia and those who live in their native Arab countries. Both groups of young Arabs showed high levels of stress, regardless of where they live, and the difference in the levels of stress between them was not significant.
This could have been due to various reasons, firstly, the negative impacts of the recent COVID-19 pandemic on the mental well-being of Arab young adults even the ones who live in their native countries. The recent pandemic has brought with it many challenges in different aspects for people of all ages, and to help stop the spreading of this disease serious implementations were carried out such as the lockdown and quarantine. Those COVID-19 implementations have led to significant psychological and social impacts on the whole population (Sameer et al., 2020). In many Arab countries, the negative impacts of COVID-19 showed that people experienced higher levels of stress since the beginning of the pandemic. In Bahrain, results of online stress scale (DASS-21) that was given during the pandemic presented that 30-35% of the participants suffered from depressive and stress symptoms (Alsalman et al., 2020). In a recent research conducted by El-Zoghby et al. (2020) to investigate the effects of COVID-19 on Egyptian adults’ mental health and social support during the pandemic, 52% of the participants showed increased psychological impact, 34.1% reported an increase in work stress, 55.7% reported an increase in financial stress, and 62.7% reported an increase in home and family stress. Findings of another recent study in the United Arab Emirates showed that there is an increase in stress levels during the pandemic (Cheikh Ismail et al., 2021), especially among younger population, and highly educated people (Cheikh Ismail et al., 2021; El-Zoghby et al., 2020; Qiu et al., 2020).
In accordance with these results, it can be concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted the social and psychological well-being of many individuals around the world, it also led to an increase in Arab adults’ stress levels in various Arab countries. This could be one of the reasons why young Arab expatriates who live in Malaysia did not have higher stress levels than young Arab adults, because both groups reported significantly high stress levels.
This study focused only on young Arab expatriates who live in Malaysia, and existing has shown that Arabs struggle when they move to non-Muslim countries, and they experience higher levels of psychological stress due to challenges such as discrimination, unfair treatment, and dealing with the misconceptions non-Muslims often have about Islam literature. Though Malaysia is a multicultural country, the main religion in the country is Islam, and 61.3% of the country’s population are Muslims (Department of Statistics Malaysia Official Portal, 2011). As discussed before many of the Arab culture’s values and beliefs stem from (Islam), therefore, when they move to Malaysia they do not face a cultural shock due to the similarities that both culture’s share from Islam such as. It is less common for Arabs to experience a cultural stress when they move to Malaysia than to the United States or other non-Muslim countries. Furthermore, the Arab community in Malaysia is one of the largest. Young Arabs in Malaysia have the chance to interact with people who share the same language, as well as cultural values and traditions as them thus, making it easier for them to live in the in Malaysia. This could be one of the reasons why there is no significant difference in stress levels between young adult Arab expatriates in Malaysia and young Arab adults who live in their respective countries.
2021-6-9-1623256312