Assimilation

In one line

Assimilation is the slow process by which two different groups become culturally one, so that the difference between them stops existing.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: assimilation is the associative social process by which persons or groups of differing cultures acquire the memories, sentiments and attitudes of other persons or groups and, by sharing their experience and history, are incorporated with them in a common cultural life. Park and Burgess's definition in those terms is the standard one. It is slow, gradual, unconscious and mutual to some degree, and it is complete when the groups can no longer be distinguished culturally.

Its characteristics

1. It is slow, typically taking generations. Nothing about it can be done quickly.
2. It is gradual and unconscious. No one decides to be assimilated; it happens through daily contact.
3. It is not one-way. The absorbing group is also changed, though usually much less. A pure one-way absorption is rare, and the language of a minority "being assimilated" conceals this.
4. It affects the whole culture: language, dress, food, custom, belief and identity.
5. It requires sustained contact, which is its precondition.
6. It is universal, occurring wherever different groups live together over long periods.
7. Its result is the disappearance of the difference, which is what distinguishes it from every other process in this module.

The factors that help it

Toleration, on both sides, which permits the contact through which assimilation happens.

Close and sustained contact. Nothing substitutes for it, and this is why residential segregation is the most effective single obstacle.

Intermarriage. The most powerful accelerator there is, because it makes the next generation members of both groups and of neither.

Cultural similarity. Groups whose languages, religions or practices are already close assimilate faster.

A common language, which is both a cause and an effect.

Education, especially where children of the groups are taught together.

Economic interdependence, which forces contact.

Equal status. Assimilation proceeds far faster where the groups meet as equals; where one is subordinate, contact produces resentment rather than fusion.

Amalgamation, that is, biological mixing through intermarriage, which is distinguished from assimilation, the cultural fusion, and usually accompanies it.

The factors that hinder it

Isolation, whether geographical or residential. A group living apart does not assimilate.

Cultural difference too great to bridge, particularly in religion.

Prejudice and discrimination, which prevent contact and produce a reaction that strengthens the minority's identity.

Physical difference, which keeps the boundary visible whatever happens to the culture. This is exactly the point in [Race and Ethnicity]: Barth's insight that content can change completely while the boundary persists.

A strong sense of group identity and a desire to preserve it, which may be a deliberate choice rather than a failure.