Acculturation

Acculturation refers to the process by which people adopt a new culture. Usually, this process is accompanied by people's distancing themselves from their original culture. Acculturation can be seen as occurring along a continuum starting with modest acceptance of the new culture through acquiring some knowledge of the language and customs. With more complete acculturation, people speak the language flawlessly without accent, participate in the accepted religious practices, and carry out other traditions—from sports to food to the holidays—of the new society.

It is important to understand that acculturation is generally a one-way process. Individuals or ethnic groups alter their lifestyle, but the dominant or new host society remains unchanged. It is not a social process between equals. Typically, those undergoing acculturation are immigrants, but it can also include indigenous people such as the American Indians, the First Nations of Canada, and the Aboriginal people of Australia. It is a process also experienced by those populations forcibly transferred such as slaves.

[Page 9]Acculturation is regarded a part of the larger process of assimilation, where one takes on the total identity of the new society. In this context, acculturation is referred to as cultural assimilation, with other components of assimilation involved in entering the everyday social life of society (structural assimilation) and marrying freely with other societal members (marital assimilation).

Issues of social identity arise as acculturation continues. Do the people taking on the cultural characteristics of the dominant culture begin to view themselves even marginally as members of the new society? Being of two worlds but being comfortable in neither is a typical experience of the children of immigrants.

Although acculturation may reduce hostility from the host society, which sees newcomers as different, it is not without negative social consequences. For example, research shows that immigrants often encounter health problems as they acculturate, leaving behind old health networks and confronting the private pay system of medical care in the United States. The outcome is that the health of immigrants often deteriorates. Interestingly, this also occurs with Puerto Ricans, who are citizens when they arrive and obviously do not experience as much culture shock as do other immigrants. Scholars have looked at the implications for infant mortality of migration from Puerto Rico to the United States. Their analysis showed that children of migrants have lower rates of infant mortality than do children of mainland-born Puerto Rican women. This means that babies of Puerto Rican mothers who are born in the United States are more likely to die than are babies of mothers who migrated from Puerto Rico.

Why does this happen? Immigrants generally are still under the protection of their fellow travelers. They are still networked with other immigrants and the culture in which they were raised, and these other immigrants assist them in adapting to life in the United States. However, as life in a new country continues and the acculturation process persists, these important social networks break down; people learn to navigate the new social system—the health care system in this example. Research indicates that Puerto Ricans in the United States, regardless of how recently they arrived, still experience better health than do those in Puerto Rico. The health care problems of second-generation immigrants are widely recognized. Indeed, in 2007, the Mexican government initiated health care outreach from its consulate offices for its countrymen and -women in the United States who found it difficult to navigate health care in their new country.

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