  The cultural integration of immigrants conditions their overall
socio-economic integration as well as natives' attitudes towards globalisation
in general and immigration in particular. At the same time, excessive
integration -- or acculturation -- can be detrimental in that it implies
forfeiting one's ties to the home country and eventually translates into a loss
of diversity (from the viewpoint of host countries) and of global connections
(from the viewpoint of both host and home countries). Cultural integration can
be described using two dimensions: the preservation of links to the home
country and culture, which we call home attachment, and the creation of new
links together with the adoption of cultural traits from the new residence
country, which we call destination attachment. In this paper we introduce a
means to quantify these two aspects based on Twitter data. We build home and
destination attachment indexes and analyse their possible determinants (e.g.,
language proximity, distance between countries), also in relation to Hofstede's
cultural dimension scores. The results stress the importance of host language
proficiency to explain destination attachment, but also the link between
language and home attachment. In particular, the common language between home
and destination countries corresponds to increased home attachment, as does low
proficiency in the host language. Common geographical borders also seem to
increase both home and destination attachment. Regarding cultural dimensions,
larger differences among home and destination country in terms of
Individualism, Masculinity and Uncertainty appear to correspond to larger
destination attachment and lower home attachment.
