A multilevel review of the psychological and emotional challenges faced by skilled migrants: Extending the psychological toll model

Despite decades-long research on global migration and mobility, our understanding of how migrants integrate into contemporary society is far from complete. This gap primarily results from knowledge fragmented across disciplines and the absence of a comprehensive perspective on skilled migrants’ organizational and life experiences in foreign countries. Particularly, insufficient attention has been paid to the various psychological and emotional challenges migrants face during cross-cultural interactions throughout their socioeconomic integration journeys. To address this gap, we conduct a systematic review of 153 empirical studies spanning multiple disciplines to explore the psychological challenges skilled migrants experience. Building upon Molinsky’s (2007) psychological toll model, we incorporate multilevel contextual factors, unveil a new categorization of emotions, and introduce individual-level outcomes that have been overlooked. Our new model also points to the critical moderating roles of stakeholders, who can either amplify or diminish the impacts of contextual factors on psychological and emotional states. Our findings have significant implications for future research at the intersection of migration and cross-cultural management and for scholars and practitioners interested in enhancing skilled migrants’ integration into both the workforce and society.