Original scientific paper
By Adaptive Acculturation to the Integration of Second Generation Migrants in Contemporary Post-industrial Societies
Peter Klinar
; Faculty of Sociology, Political Science and Journalism, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Abstract
The author claims that assimilation theories in societies developing in the post-industrial direction are losing significance, whereas this does not hold true for assimilation in practice. Second generation migrants are engulfed by processes of quiet, behavioural assimilation, apparent in the phenomena of their marginalization. Post-industrial societies are developing towards structural pluralism, a part of which is also ethnic pluralism, and the cultural difference between them is decreasing. Immigrants attain incomplete, partial system integration in the public sphere; in the particular sphere and on the local level they attain social integration in regard to their primary relations. Interactions and incongruities appear between these two forms of integration. Such incongruities, taking into consideration processes of dual national identity and processes of particular ethnization, cause the second generation to achieve only an underdeveloped level of acculturation. The author upholds the need to evaluate processes of adaptive acculturation as being perspective for second generation immigrants – they combine adaptation both with ethnic pluralism (preservation of ethnic identities), and with acculturation, which does not lead to higher levels of assimilation. Without a degree of acculturation immigrants cannot enter into intercultural communication and promotional processes. The process of adaptive acculturation presents a dual fluctuance, simultaneous independence, complementarity of differences, reduction of cultural distances due to the comparability of system- and social integration. It limits fear and insecurity of second generation immigrants, as well as the disjunctive processes that effect them. The paths to adaptive acculturation will still be difficult and long – present structural and mobility phenomena among second generation migrants show the undeveloped level of these processes.
Keywords
acculturation; assimilation; second generation migrants; post-industrial society
Hrčak ID:
128080
URI
Publication date:
29.12.1989.
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