Personal Values Before and After Migration

We investigated the process of value change in a migration context. Specifically, in a longitudinal panel design with around 19 months between measurement points, 145 Ingrian–Finnish migrants from Russia to Finland completed the same measures of personal values both before and after migration. As expected, the importance of both Universalism and Security values increased after migration, whereas the importance of Power and Achievement values decreased. Although this pattern of value change was reliable at the level of the group, any two migrant’s value change profiles shared only 2% of their variance, suggesting divergent patterns of value change across migrants. At the level of the individual, the structure of value change was similar to the typical between-subjects structure of values.