Immigrant and Refugee Adolescents’ Resilient Adaptation: Who does well and Why?

acculturation, adaptation, adolescent, development, immigrant, refugee, resilience Resilient adaptation of immigrant and refugee youth in receiving societies is consequential for the wellbeing of the youth and the prosperity of the receiving societies. Yet there is significant diversity in their adaptation. The central question addressed in this article is: “Who among immigrant and refugee youth do well and why?” To address this question, we present an integrative model for conceptualizing immigrant-youth resilience, which integrates developmental, acculturation, and social psychological perspectives. This resilience framework frames research on the basis of two key questions: First, what challenges immigrant youths’ adaptation? Second, what resources protect their positive adaptation? Accordingly, we present scientific evidence regarding the influence of immigration-specific challenges and contextual and individual-level resources on their positive adaptation. Extant evidence suggests that focusing on strengths and resilience, instead of on weaknesses and psychological symptoms, among immigrant and refugee youth may have significant implications for policy and practice. CORRESPOND ΕNCE

Convention) defines a refugee as someone who has a ''well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion'' (UNHCR, 1951).
The current number of refugees worldwide is overwhelming resources in destination countries, creating challenges both for these immigrants and receiving societies (Masten et al., 2019). However, the positive integration of immigrants and refugees in their new home is crucial for both their wellbeing, as well as for the prosperity of society (Motti-Stefanidi, 2018). According to a 2012 report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the litmus test for how well immigrants are integrated into a receiving society is to assess how well their children are doing.
This paper focuses on immigrant and refugee youth-positive adaptation, which is examined from a strengths-based resilience perspective. Thus, instead of adopting a deficit view focusing on symptoms and disorders, we focus on protective factors and positive adaptation. We address the key question: "Who among immigrant and refugee youth adapt well, and why?" To address this question, we draw scientific evidence from the Athena Studies of Resilient Adaptation (AStRA) project, which was conducted in Greece (Motti-Stefanidi, 2014, 2019, as well as from the international literature. The AStRA project is a large, two-cohort, three-wave longitudinal project on immigrant-youth adaptation. The project was framed on the basis of an integrative model for conceptualizing immigrant-youth resilience, which integrates developmental, acculturation, and social psychological perspectives on immigrant youth adaptation (Motti-Stefanidi et al., 2012a;Suárez-Orozco et al., 2018). Participants were 2,300 immigrant adolescents and their Greek classmates. They were in the first year of middle school (mean age =12 years) at Wave 1 and were followed through middle school for 3 consecutive years. Longitudinal data on the first cohort were collected before the Great Greek Economic Recession and on the second cohort during the economic crisis.
This resilience framework for understanding immigrant youth resilience frames research on the basis of two fundamental questions: First, what are the risks that threaten immigrant youths' adaptation? Second, what are the promotive or protective influences that support their positive adaptation? Accordingly, the article includes three sections. In the first section, we present the integrative framework for conceptualizing immigrant and refugee youth resilience. In the second section, we present scientific evidence regarding the effect of immigration-specific challenges for immigrant and refugee youth-positive adaptation. The third section examines contextual and individual-level resources for their positive adaptation.

An integrative framework for conceptualizing immigrant and refugee youth resilience
Like all youth, immigrant youth, as well as refugee youth, face normative developmental challenges (Motti-Stefanidi et al., 2012a;Motti-Stefanidi & Masten, 2017). A key index for judging the quality of their adaptation is their success in age-salient developmental tasks, such as doing well in school, having close friends and being liked by peers, knowing or obeying the laws of society, civic engagement, development of self-control and establishment of a cohesive, integrated and multifaceted sense of identity (Masten, 2014). These tasks reflect the expectations and standards for behaviour and achievement that parents, teachers, and societies set for individuals over the life span in a particular context and time in history. Success in these developmental tasks does not mean that youth should exhibit "ideal" or "superb" effectiveness, but rather they should be "doing adequately well." Families and societies value and attend to achievements in salient developmental tasks because these accomplishments forecast future adaptive success (Masten & Cicchetti, 2016).
Moreover, both immigrant and nonimmigrant youth also face the acculturative challenges that stem from living and growing in the context of different cultures. They need to learn to understand, respect, and live with people from other cultures (Sam & Berry, 2016). This requires that all youth, immigrant and nonimmigrant alike, develop intercultural competence (Council of Europe, 2016), which could be considered an index of positive adaptation in contemporary highly diverse societies. Intercultural competence is defined as the ability to mobilize and deploy relevant values, attitudes, skills, knowledge, and/or understanding in order to respond appropriately and effectively to the demands, challenges, and opportunities that are presented in intercultural situations.
However, immigrant and refugee youth, more than nonimmigrant youth, also have to develop cultural competence, which is another key criterion for judging how well they are doing. Cultural competence is an acculturative task, which involves the acquisition of the knowledge and skills of both ethnic and national cultures (Oppedal & Toppelberg, 2016). Culturally competent immigrants are able to communicate effectively in ethnic and national languages, have friends from both their own and other ethnic groups, know the values and practices of both groups, code-switch between languages and cultures as necessary, and also to make sense of and bridge their different worlds.
A related criterion for judging whether immigrant youth are well-adapted concerns the development of strong and secure ethnic and national identities, which is an aspect of acculturation (Phinney et al., 2001). These concepts are multidimensional and developmental in nature (Motti-Stefanidi, 2015;Umaña-Taylor, et al., 2014). Ethnic identity focuses on the subjective sense of belonging to an ethnic group or culture, whereas national identity refers to the subjective sense of belonging to the national (host) culture (Phinney & Ong, 2007). Even though an integrated identity, that is, the combination of strong ethnic and national identities, is considered an important index of positive adaptation (Phinney & Ong, 2007), the former has received significantly more attention particularly from developmental researchers than the latter (Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014). Young people are considered to have achieved a strong and secure sense of ethnic identity only after they have, first, explored their ethnicity and what it means to them and, second, accepted and internalized it (see Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014).
Finally, an additional index for judging how well immigrant youth are doing concerns their internal psychological adaptation, which is evaluated mainly by indices of perceived psychological wellbeing versus distress (Motti-Stefanidi & Masten, 2017). The presence of self-esteem and life satisfaction and the absence of emotional symptoms, such as anxiety and depression, are common markers of psychological wellbeing used by developmental and acculturation researchers (Berry et al., 2006;Masten, 2014). The absence of other psychological symptoms, such as those related to PTSD, is another key index of positive adaptation particularly in the case of refugee youth who have been exposed before and during migration to highly traumatic experiences (e.g., Fazel et al., 2012).
These indexes of positive adaptation are closely linked, both concurrently and over time. The link between acculturative tasks, on the one hand, and developmental tasks and wellbeing, on the other, is of particular interest for understanding group and individual differences in immigrant youth adaptation. Extant literature suggests that learning and maintaining both ethnic and national cultures are linked to better developmental outcomes and psychological well-being (Berry et al., 2006;Motti-Stefanidi et al., 2008;Oppedal & Toppelberg, 2016). For example, in a meta-analysis of 83 studies, Nguyen and Benet-Martinez (2013) found an overall positive association between biculturalism and adjustment. They also found that bicultural individuals tended to be as psychologically adjusted (e.g., higher self-esteem and lower anxiety) as they were adjusted with respect to developmental tasks (e.g., better academic performance and conduct).
In some cases, the acquisition of acculturative tasks is actually expected to precede the acquisition of developmental tasks. For example, immigrant youth's proficiency in the national language, a key acculturative task, is essential for doing well academically in the schools of the receiving nation, which is a developmental task (e.g., Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco & Todorova 2009). In another example, a cross-lagged study that examined the longitudinal interplay between immigrant youth's orientation towards the host culture, an acculturative task, and their self-efficacy, a developmental task showed that their orientation towards the host culture predicted changes in self-efficacy, and not vice versa (Reitz et al., 2013). These results suggest that the acquisition of acculturative tasks may function over time as a resource for immigrant youth's success in developmental tasks.
Significant diversity is observed in immigrant youth adaptation (Masten et al., 2012). Since immigrant youth, like all youth, are developing organisms, to account for group and individual differences in their adaptation, it is important to use a developmental lens and, thus, to examine it in a developmental context. Normative developmental processes (e.g., cognitive, social, emotional), as well as the normative socio-ecological contexts (e.g., family, school, neighborhood) in which their lives are embedded, contribute to their adaptation. However, immigrant youth also face unique contextual influences, not faced by their non-immigrant classmates. Immigrant status and culture, and related social variables such as discrimination (Marks et al., 2015), also are expected to contribute to how well they do.
Thus, their adaptation needs to be examined in developmental and acculturative contexts, considering multiple levels of context. Based on the integrative conceptual model, three levels of context are proposed (Motti-Stefanidi et al., 2012a). The societal level is focused on variations in cultural beliefs, social representations, and ideologies, as well as variables that reflect power positions within society (e.g., social class, ethnicity) that have been shown to have an impact on immigrants' adaptation. The level of interaction is focused on interactions that shape the individual life course of immigrants and that take place in their proximal contexts. These contexts serve the purpose both of development and acculturation and are divided into those representing the home culture (family, ethnic peers, ethnic group) and into those representing the host culture (school, native peers). The individual-level concerns individual differences in personality, cognition, and motivation. Immigrant youth's own individual attributes, including their personal agency, contribute to the quality of their adaptation. These three levels of influence on immigrant youth adaptation are viewed as interconnected and embedded within each other. Influences stemming from each of these levels of context might place at risk or instead promote immigrant youth's positive adaptation. The next two sections examine key challenges and resources for immigrant and refugee youth-positive adaptation stemming from different levels of context.

Challenges for Immigrant and Refugee Youth Positive Adaptation
Is being an immigrant a risk for youth's adaptation? The discourse in the Northern American literature centres on a phenomenon known as the "immigrant paradox" (Garcia Coll & Marks, 2012). A collection of studies show that immigrant youth adaptation is more positive than expected and, in some cases, better than the adaptation of their nonimmigrant peers (Berry et al., 2006), or first-generation immigrants are found to be better adapted than later generation immigrants (Garcia Coll & Marks, 2012), whose adaptation converges with that of their nonimmigrant peers (Sam et al., 2008). The immigrant paradox literature focuses on indices of adaptation that are related to developmental tasks, such as academic achievement, school engagement and conduct, as well as on indices of youth's psychological well-being.
These results were not expected because first-generation immigrant youth often experience higherthan-average social and economic disadvantage, are less acculturated and less competent in the national language, than later-generation immigrant youth. However, the immigrant paradox has not been observed consistently. It seems to depend to a large extent on the domain of adaptation, the developmental stage and gender of the child, characteristics of the host society and the ethnic group (Garcia Coll & Marks, 2012). This observation agrees with Bornstein's (2017) specificity principle, whereby to complement universals in immigrant youth adaptation and acculturation one needs to focus on variations found among contemporary migrants and their circumstances.
A significant number of studies mainly conducted in the USA and Canada comparing first-with second-generation immigrants provide evidence in favour of the immigrant paradox (see Garcia Coll & Marks, 2012). First-generation immigrant youth exhibit fewer risky behaviours, such as substance use and abuse, unprotected sex, and delinquency, have more positive attitudes towards school, better academic achievement, and present fewer emotional symptoms than their second-generation counterparts. However, a more nuanced examination of these findings shows significant variability by youth's age, gender and ethnic group. For example, with respect to academic adjustment, the paradox is more pronounced among secondary school, compared to primary school, immigrant students from Asian families compared to students from Latin American (especially Mexican) families. It is also stronger for boys than for girls.
The immigrant paradox has not been widely documented in Europe. For example, a meta-analysis based on 51 studies conducted across the European continent revealed that being an immigrant was a risk factor for academic adjustment, externalizing and internalizing problems (Dimitrova et al., 2016). In this line, Motti-Stefanidi and colleagues, based on data from the Athena Studies of Resilient Adaptation (AStRA) longitudinal project, also reported that their immigrant adolescents had significantly worse academic achievement, school engagement, and conduct compared to their nonimmigrant Greek peers (Motti-Stefanidi, 2014;Motti-Stefanidi & Asendorpf, 2017). Evidence suggests that at the classroom level of analysis, classrooms with a higher concentration of immigrants also may be a risk factor for all (immigrant and nonimmigrant) students' academic achievement (e.g. Motti-Stefanidi et al., 2012b;OECD, 2010).
Does being a refugee present similar challenges for youth compared to being an immigrant? Refugee youth need to address similar developmental and acculturative issues, as well as similar challenges related to their social status in the host society (e.g., discrimination), as immigrant youth. However, unlike most immigrant youth, they face additional challenges linked to the adverse events that necessitated their flight from their country of origin (war, pain, death), the hardship endured during their perilous journey to a destination, and the complex, lengthy and uncertain legal immigration process after seeking asylum. Thus, they have to deal with developmental and acculturative challenges in the context of dealing with significant trauma and insecurity.
Such negative cumulative experiences throughout the migratory process constitute significant risk factors, concurrently and over time, particularly for refugee youth's mental health and psychological wellbeing (Eide & Hjern, 2013;Fazel et al., 2012). Extant scientific evidence suggests that refugee youth often suffer from psychological distress in the form of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and other symptoms such as irritability, restlessness, sleep problems, somatic symptoms, and conduct disorders (e.g., Bronstein & Montgomery, 2011). Being an unaccompanied minor, having been exposed (personally or as a witness) to violence, as well as losing family support by death or violence, significantly worsen youth's mental health outcomes (Fazel et al., 2012). The few longitudinal studies available show that in the long-term refugee youth follow variable mental health trajectories. In one study posttraumatic stress disorder tended to persist, but depression 3-6 years after arrival in the host country decreased, only to rise again after 6-12 years (Sack et al., 1999). According to another study, 8-9 years after migration, post-migration experiences were more important for youth's mental health than pre-migration experiences. However, significant resilience has also been reported (see Fazel et al., 2012).
Immigrant and refugee status is associated with a host of social challenges. Both groups often have to deal with the challenges of adapting to a new culture in a context replete with prejudice and discrimination. Perceived discrimination has been shown to have deleterious consequences on immigrant youth's adaptation with respect to developmental tasks, psychological wellbeing, and mental health (Marks et al., 2015;Vedder & Motti-Stefanidi, 2016). It is a risk factor for academic outcomes, such as academic achievement, academic motivation and goals, perceived academic efficacy, academic persistence, and for conduct. However, the domains of mental health and psychological wellbeing are the ones worse affected by perceptions of discrimination (Marks et al., 2015). Higher perceived discrimination is linked to higher depression, more depressive and anxiety symptoms, conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (e.g., Brody et al., 2006), as well as to lower self-esteem. Furthermore, longitudinal studies show that the negative consequences of perceived discrimination tend to persist (see Marks et al., 2016).
Immigrant youth's proximal family context also may present challenges for their adaptation. Immigrant adolescents and their parents have different experiences of cultures and different future expectations (Kwak, 2003). This acculturation gap between parents and their children may result in conflicts within the family (Vedder & Motti-Stefanidi, 2016). The underlying assumption regarding this conflict is that immigrant children acquire the prevailing values and norms of their settlement society, which often stress the need for the development of autonomy, much faster than their parents do, who often emphasize more the need for relatedness.
Differences in acculturation between parents and their children may intensify the normative challenges of this developmental phase. The acculturation gap and the resulting parent-adolescent conflict have been found to be significant risk factors for immigrant adolescents' adaptation and psychological well-being (e.g. Kwak, 2003). However, immigrant youth's cultural orientation towards the mainstream culture may not inevitably lead to higher levels of parent-adolescent conflict or poorer adaptation. For example, in a study of Chinese-American families living in Canada, Costigan & Dokis (2006) found that youth's higher engagement in Canadian culture did not lead to more parentadolescent conflict or worse adaptation, even when parents did not share their children's orientation towards the host culture. It is plausible, that parents want their children to become culturally competent in the host culture, which is a prerequisite for their academic and occupational success.

Resources for Positive Immigrant and Refugee Youth Adaptation
Scientific evidence indicates risk for immigrant and refugee youth, concurrent and long-term, adaptation. However, significant variation is also reported in the quality of their adaptation. Some youth show resilience whereas others does less well. Social and personal resources may make a difference as to who among them will do well in spite of the challenges. Resources for youth's positive adaptation and development, just as risks, may stem from factors situated in the (a) distal (societal, cultural, institutional levels) and (b) proximal (e.g., family, school, community) contexts in which their lives are embedded, as well as within individuals (e.g., personality, motivation, intelligence).
Starting from distal-level contexts, the acculturation ideology and preferences of receiving societies are important influences on immigrants' adaptation (Sam & Berry, 2016;van de Vijver, 2017). Societies that value cultural diversity and adopt a multicultural ideology promote their integration and positive adaptation. Furthermore, receiving societies, whose immigrant laws are more liberal and grant more rights to immigrants support them in learning the mainstream language and culture, help them develop a sense of belonging to the larger society, and, thus, promote immigrants' (and their children's) wellbeing, as well as that of society (van de Vijver, 2017). In such a context intercultural dialogue can flourish. Intercultural dialogue has been defined as "the open and respectful exchange of views between individuals and groups with different ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic backgrounds and heritage, on the basis of mutual understanding and respect" (Council of Europe, 2008). It contributes to the harmonious interaction between people and groups from different ethnic and religious backgrounds and provides the basis on which immigrants and refugees' successful integration can be built.
The effective and swift implementation of immigration, health-care, and educational and social policies is another distal-level contextual influence particularly on refugees' adaptation and integration into the host society (Fazel et al., 2012). However, the large influx of refugee youth in European countries these past two years revealed a great unevenness between countries in their openness and preparedness to manage efficiently this challenging situation. In certain cases, current asylum conditions place at risk the adaptation and wellbeing of refugee youth. Extant literature shows that post-migration conditions may actually have a more adverse effect on their adaptation and mental health than what they have experienced either before or during their migration. A number of societal-level driven policies and practices are consequential for refugee youth longterm adaptation and mental health. The speed of processing asylum requests, and the interim living conditions of refugee youth and their families may support or instead, may hinder their concurrent and long-term adaptation and mental health. For example, post-migration detention seems to be deleterious for youth's mental health (see Fazel et al., 2012). Girls are particularly vulnerable to being confined in restrictive reception settings compared to being hosted in routine reception facilities. Insecure asylum status and the fear of deportation are also associated with a host of psychological problems. Finally, unaccompanied minors seeking asylum are an especially vulnerable group of refugees for developing post-traumatic stress disorder because they are deprived of their closest relationships (Eide & Hjern, 2013). In one study, four or more relocations of unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors within the asylum system predicted poor mental health outcomes (see Fazel et al., 2014).
Distal-societal level variables often have an impact on youth indirectly, by filtering through the contexts of youth's proximal context (Motti-Stefanidi et al.,2012a). Two key proximal contexts that contribute to individual differences in immigrant and refugee youth adaptation are schools and families.
Schools are a key social context for immigrant and refugee youth. They contribute both to their development and their acculturation (Vedder & Motti-Stefanidi, 2016). The school climate, the educational programs schools adopt, the quality of relationships in the school context, reflect a large extent the attitudes of mainstream society towards the presence of immigrants and refugees in the country. Schools that respect their students' fundamental needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness are expected to promote their self-determined behaviour, intrinsic motivation, sense of belonging to their school, as well as their engagement with the learning process (Roeser et al., 1998). For example, meaningful and relevant curricula, related to students' own interests and goals, promote greater school engagement and intrinsic motivation in all students but may be especially important for immigrant youth who need to navigate between at least two cultures. Similarly, caring relationships with teachers have been shown to be particularly important for immigrant youth, supporting them to better adapt to the new country, language, and educational demands (Suárez-Orozco, Pimentel, & Martin, 2009). Thus, educational programs implemented in schools may significantly contribute to immigrant and refugee youth acculturation and development. Programs that foster equality and inclusion and/or value cultural pluralism reflect an acknowledgement that schools are culturally diverse (Schachner et al., 2016). Those that foster equality and inclusion draw on social psychological research on intergroup contact (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). They encourage contact, cooperation and common goals between students of different ethnic groups and stress equal treatment of all groups. They aim at the reduction of prejudice and discrimination. Programs that value cultural pluralism, on the other hand, consider cultural diversity as an asset that can enrich everyone's learning in school. Schools that implement such programs adopt multicultural, multilingual education and culturally responsive teaching. Both types of educational programs promote positive adaptation and development in immigrant and non-immigrant youth. They have been linked to lower perceived discrimination, more out-group friendships, fewer conduct problems and emotional symptoms, and a higher sense of belonging to the school (Schachner et al., 2016).
The language(s) taught in school also contribute to immigrant youth adaptation. Some countries use subtractive forms of bilingual education which are designed to assimilate students to the mainstream language and do not protect their ethnic language (Esposito et al., 2017). Other countries adopt programs based on an additive bilingual education model. These are designed to teach both the language of the mainstream culture and that of immigrants' home culture. The latter type of program promotes immigrant youth's academic achievement, social competence, and provides cognitive benefits for both immigrant and non-immigrant students.
Immigrant composition of the classroom also significantly contributes to group and individual differences in immigrant youth peer relations (Bellmore et al., 2011). How well immigrant youth are doing in this domain is consequential both for their development and their acculturation (Motti-Stefanidi et al., 2012a). Immigrant adolescents, like all adolescents, need to be liked and accepted by their peers, independently of the ethnicity of these peers, but they also need to navigate successfully between intra-and interethnic peers (Motti-Stefanidi & Masten, 2017).
Some immigrant families reside in ethnic enclaves and their children are enrolled in schools of their neighbourhood with high immigrant composition. Other families live in communities with fewer co-ethnic residents. Their schools and classrooms may be composed of a nonimmigrant majority or may have a high ethnic diversity. Such differences in classroom composition often present a double-edge sword for immigrant youth's development and acculturation with respect to peer relations.
Extant evidence suggests that at first contact in the classroom, based on the homophily phenomenon (McPherson et al., 2001), immigrant youth are less liked and have fewer friends compared to their nonimmigrant classmates (e.g., Motti-Stefanidi & Asendorpf, 2017;Titzmann, 2014). However, the classroom context differentiates these results. When immigrants are the majority in the classroom, they are more liked and have more friends than the students who are the minority (e.g., Jackson et al., 2006). Over time, through intergroup contact (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006), immigrant students who were the minority in their classrooms became increasingly more liked by their nonimmigrant classmates (see Motti-Stefanidi et al., 2012a;Motti-Stefanidi & Asendorpf, 2017;Titzmann, 2014).
These results suggest that classrooms with high immigrant composition may promote positive youth development. First, they promote immigrant students' positive peer relationships (to have a friend and to be liked by peers) and second, they protect them from experiences of discrimination and prejudice (Thijs & Verkuyten, 2013). However, they may at the same time contribute negatively to immigrant youth acculturation (to have-and be liked by-both intra-and interethnic friends). It should be noted that in addition to their effect on peer relations, such classrooms present a risk for all students' academic achievement (Motti-Stefanidi et al., 2012b;OECD, 2010). In contrast, classrooms with low immigrant composition promote positive acculturation but present a risk for immigrants' development since they place them at risk for low peer acceptance as well as for discrimination. However, over time and through intergroup contact immigrants become more liked and accepted by classmates (Asendorpf & Motti-Stefanidi, under review). All in all, segregation of immigrants in classrooms with a high proportion of immigrants is not conducive to positive social and educational outcomes.
Immigrant families are a key proximal context that contributes significantly to youth's adaptation. Immigrant parents need not only to enculturate their children to their home culture, but must also support them in getting along in the culture of the receiving society and in succeeding in society at large, and, furthermore, to help them understand and teach them how to deal with issues of discrimination and prejudice (Hughes et al., 2006). Family values, which involve a sense of family cohesion, closeness and obligation, high parental aspirations for education, and an emphasis on education, have been shown to promote the positive adaptation of first-generation immigrant youth as compared to their latergeneration counterparts (e.g., Garcia Coll & Marks, 2012;Kwak, 2003;Suárez-Orozco et al., 2008). First-generation immigrant youth, many of whom share their family's values and attitudes, are academically motivated and invest energy in school and learning, characteristics that are also connected to positive adaptation. It should be noted that immigrant families differ significantly in their ability to help their children translate their aspiration into success in the educational system (Garcia Coll & Marks, 2012). However, higher levels of parental education, more financial resources, and better information and access regarding educational resources and opportunities are promotive for immigrant youth's academic achievement.
Family, both immediate and extended, is an important source of support for refugee youth adaptation and wellbeing (e.g., Fazel et al., 2014). Extant evidence suggests that unaccompanied refugee youth, who either migrated alone or lost their family during the migratory journey, had significantly worse developmental and mental health outcomes compared to accompanied youth. Refugee boys living with both parents had significantly, and by a large difference, lower rates of psychological symptoms compared to boys living in other arrangements (Tousignant et al., 1999). Interestingly, unaccompanied refugee youth who had contact even from a distance with their families abroad perceived higher levels of support from them compared to youth who did not have such contact (Oppedal & Idsoe, 2015).
Even though contexts play a preponderant role for immigrant youth adaptation, they are clearly not its sole determinant. Young immigrants are active agents in their development and acculturation (Motti-Stefanidi et al., 2012a). For example, immigrant youth higher in self-efficacy beliefs and locus of control, which are central mechanisms of personal agency, have been shown to predict higher academic achievement and peer acceptance, and few emotional symptoms (anxiety and depression) (Motti-Stefanidi et al., 2012b). In another example, higher openness to experience also promotes immigrants' positive adaptation in the new country, since individual high in this trait is expected to have less rigid views and to make greater efforts to learn the new culture (see Bornstein, 2017).

Public policy implications
In 2015 a mission statement titled "Positive Development of Immigrant Youth: Why Bother?" was drafted during an Experts' meeting 1 that took place on the island of Hydra in Greece and was funded and organized by SRCD, in collaboration with the European Association for Developmental Psychology (EADP) and the European Association for Research in Adolescence (EARA). The mission statement, based on extant scientific evidence, recommended that policies and practices in receiving countries concerning immigrants should: (1) Be informed by research and interventions that have been shown to have beneficial results. (2) Promote non-segregated, welcoming environments and opportunities for intercultural communication and collaboration at all ages. (3) Provide economic opportunities to ensure that immigrant families do well and contribute to the country. (4) Provide early childcare, education, and health-related prevention and intervention programs to ensure that immigrant youth have the basis for successful integration. (5) Create public campaigns that show the contribution of immigrants to the host countries as well as respect to the diversity and needs of various ethnic groups. (6) Incorporate these considerations as part of choosing where to resettle refugees in addition to the availability of spaces."

Conclusion
Who among immigrant and refugee youth do well, concurrently and over time, and why? The results highlighted in the paper reveal a mixture of risk and paradox in adaptation. Impressive resilience was noted, for example, in studies focusing on refugee youth, who often have experienced for prolonged periods of time extreme adversity (Fazel et al., 2014).
This diversity arises from multifaceted and multi-determined processes. Special emphasis was placed on the role of societal-level factors for immigrant and refugee youth long-term adaptation. These influences are filtered through, and materialized, at the level of youth's proximal contexts. Youth themselves contribute to their adaptation but within the limits placed by society.
In general, youth who are equipped and bring to the experience solid, normative human resources adapt more successfully than those who do not have such social and personal capital (Masten, 2014).
However, following the specificity principle in acculturation science (Bornstein, 2017), we need not only focus on universals but also disaggregate the data at least by domain of adaptation, age, gender, ethnic group, and receiving society. Bornstein actually argued that this approach brings greater explanatory power than the "one fits all" belief.
The scientific evidence presented examines the barriers and resources for positive immigrant and refugee youth adaptation and is directly linked to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (2016), namely to survive, thrive, and transform. Eliminating the barriers to immigrant and refugee youth-positive adaptation, enhancing their social and personal resources, and implementing the recommendations presented in the mission statement helps materialize key elements of these goals.