LIFE SATISFACTION OF EAST EUROPEAN MIGRANTS IN THREE CLUSTERED EUROPEAN DESTINATIONS.

This paper looks at the declared levels of happiness and life satisfaction of migrants from three East European countries: Bulgaria, Poland and Romania. The Inglehart-Welzel cultural map is used for grouping the main destination countries for East European (EE) migrants into three clusters: the Protestant cluster, the Englishspeaking cluster and the Catholic cluster. The well-being of East European migrants is compared between the three clusters and with that of natives using data from the first 7 waves of the European Social Survey. The article contains the following findings: both as a group and as distinct groups from the three countries of origin, EE migrants are most satisfied with life in the Protestant cluster and the least happy in the Catholic cluster; democratic structures are a key element for the life satisfaction of East European migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]