Acculturation

Acculturation Definition

The process of social, psychological and cultural change that results from blending between cultures

Models of Acculturation - Unidimensional Model

When an immigrant gradually leaves their heritage culture, adopting a host culture in its place/assimilation = results in immigrants fully embracing the culture of their new home

Undimensional Model limitations

• Assumes that assimilation is the goal of acculturation: not all immigrants want to embrace the host culture or leave behind original culture

• Assumes that adopting host cultures requires abandoning heritage culture

Models of Acculturation - Bidimensional Model

Marginalisation: when an immigrant is neither interested in keeping original culture, nor taking on culture of their new home/feelings of alienation/no firm connection with either cultural background

Separation: when an immigrant is primarily interested in maintaining their cultural background and how no desire to integrate with the larger society

Assimilation: when an immigrant has little interest in keeping their own cultural heritage and fully embraces the culture of their new home

Integration: when an immigrant wants to maintain their cultural heritage, but also wants to learn some of the values, attitudes, norms and behaviours of their new home/biculturalism/the person acquires and integrates two distinct cultures/feels equally at home in their original native culture as they do in their new foreign culture

Acculturation stress

1. pressure to learn a foreign language/may be essential for a job or school

2. maintaining language, values and belief system in a culture which may not acknowledge their worth

3. finding the balance between values and social behaviours of their native culture and new home

4. feelings of being stereotyped or discriminated against as a result of cultural heritage

Lueck and Wilson

A: factors that can affect acculturation stress in Asian immigrants to America

P: 2,000 Asian-Americans/half were born in Asia and immigrated to America/half were the children of immigrants/interviewers had a similar cultural background to the participants and could speak their native language/interviewed about acculturation experiences/semi-structures

F: 70% reported feelings of acculturation stress/participants who were fully bilingual had the lowest rates of acculturation stress/helped maintain strong ties to Asian culture while also being able to integrate in American society/experiences of discrimination, prejudice or stereotyping significantly increased acculturation stress/participants who shared similar values with family had lower acculturation stress/participants who were satisfied with economic opportunities in America had lower acculturation stress

C: acculturation stress is common amongst immigrants/language proficiency, family cohesion, economic opportunities and prejudice are all factors that affect acculturation stress

Evaluate Luek and Wilson

• Large sample size + diverse sample with different cultures

• Difficult + time consuming: risk of researcher bias/look for patterns that confirm hypothesis

• May be difficult to translate questions reliably from one language to another and people from different cultures may interpret questions differently: low validity