Читать книгу Asian America - Pawan Dhingra - Страница 21

Within sociology, a prominent perspective on immigrants’ adaptation to a new environment has been assimilation theory. Assimilation occurs when an immigrant group’s differences with the mainstream dissipate. This can happen as ethnic items become popular in the nation (e.g. “Chinese food”), so that consuming them does not appear foreign to most residents. More often, assimilation occurs as immigrant communities lose their distinctiveness and become more like the majority as they adopt dominant culture and social structure, akin to Anglo-conformity (Gordon 1964). They become socialized (or re-socialized as adults) within mainstream institutions, such as schools, popular media, civil society, and religion. As immigrant groups learn English, shop at popular clothing and grocery stores, befriend people outside their group, and so on, they gradually assimilate. Descendants of immigrants start to see mainstream culture as “normal” and may conceive of their ethnic background as strange or inferior. This assimilation need not be intentional. Instead, it occurs as immigrant groups seek better opportunities for themselves and their children, which are believed to be outside of one’s ethnic group and within the mainstream (Alba and Nee 2003; Salins 1997).

According to assimilation theorists, this integration is possible because race matters less today than in the past, as evidenced by the numerous legal protections against discrimination and the general improvement in racial attitudes (Alba and Nee 2003). So, according to assimilation theory, the labor market, schools, restaurants, and other spaces do not treat immigrants differently because of their ethnic origin, which enables Asian Americans to become a full part of the nation. Under these conditions, the main (not only) obstacle preventing assimilation, according to those who adopt the assimilation framework, is groups’ own lack of effort or interest to culturally and structurally assimilate.

Assimilation into the host society originally was framed as not only inevitable but also prescriptive (Kivisto 2005). In other words, those who adopted an assimilation standpoint believed that immigrants should gradually abandon parochial interests, like their ethnicity, and embrace the modern American lifestyle in which people supposedly are judged based on their accomplished categories, such as education level, occupational status, marital status, and so on. Assimilation theory assumes a mostly meritocratic United States. Such an adaptation was seen as in the best interests of the immigrant group in the nation. Today, assimilation theorists have dropped the moralistic tone. Still, there is an implied belief in the benefits of assimilation for immigrants.