Immigration has become one of the most important challenges in Europe. Spain has experienced one of the major growths in the number of immigrants in the last years. Work is a central issue in the immigration phenomenon, and workers' wellbeing and organizational practices are particularly sensitive to culture. This paper analyses the relationship between acculturative strategies and a specific work-related response: emotional exhaustion, the main dimension of burnout syndrome. Three thousand and eighty six workers (47.9% immigrants, 52.8% nationals) took part in the study. Acculturative strategies, emotional exhaustion, and demographic variables were assessed with a selfadministrated questionnaire. Descriptive, reliability and analysis of variance analyses were performed. Results show that immigrants have a tendency to choose integration as their acculturative strategy at work, while host nationals mainly choose separation and integration. Adding to this, national workers with more adaptive strategies report higher levels of emotional exhaustion. We conclude that the effort to understand the other group may increase the risk of developing emotional exhaustion. Finally, we present the limitations of the study and further research lines about the relationship between work and immigration. © 2011: de los Editores de Ansiedad y Estrés.

Acculturative Strategies Emotional exhaustion Acculturation Immigration Burnout

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