Legal precarity as culturally situated acculturative stress: social support and psychological security among Akha-Hani cross-border wives in Southwest China.

This article examines how legal precarity becomes acculturative stress and how relational support shapes psychological security among Akha-Hani cross-border wives in Southwest China. Existing acculturation research has established that migration involves psychological and sociocultural adjustment, but less is known about how stress develops when substantial cultural proximity coexists with legal and administrative uncertainty. Based on prolonged field engagement between 2022 and 2024 and formal ethnographic data collection from July to September 2024 in Xishuangbanna, the study draws on 28 in-depth interviews, four focus group discussions involving 29 additional participants, and participant observation. The findings show that shared Akha-Hani language, kinship, and ritual familiarity reduced some forms of interpersonal and cultural distance, but did not remove stress associated with documentation, public procedures, mobility, and family futures. Legal precarity became psychologically consequential through uncertainty, dependence on others, restricted agency, and reduced predictability in everyday family life. Mandarin was important mainly in public and institutional settings rather than as a general barrier within Akha-Hani households. Emotional, practical, and informational support from husbands, relatives, peers, and local networks helped women manage these pressures and strengthen psychological security. However, support was sometimes ambivalent when immediate assistance also maintained dependence on particular family relationships. The study contributes to cultural and migration psychology by showing how institutional insecurity can generate acculturative stress even under conditions of substantial cultural proximity.