So far we have described culture contact in terms of learning and coping processes; that is, people exposed to unfamiliar cultural settings must learn culturally relevant social skills in order to survive and thrive in their new milieux.
More recent formulations on the culture learning approach have recognised that culture contact is stressful and that the acquisition of intercultural skills depends to some extent on culture travellers developing coping strategies to deal with stress. The terms adjustment and adaptation have been used in connection with this approach which emphasises the psychological and emotional outcomes of intercultural interactions. As described in Chapter 2, both the culture learning and stress and coping perspectives can be incorporated into the broader acculturation literature which provides a major theoretical framework for contemporary research on tourists, sojourners, immigrants and refugees.
The main thrust of the acculturation literature has been to describe and account for the process of change. In this chapter we look at specific dimensions of acculturative changes, in particular issues pertaining to cultural identity and intergroup relations. Here the emergent literature from contemporary social, ethnic and cross-cultural psychology is applied to the study of sojourners, immigrants and refugees. Its conceptual base is largely drawn from theories of social cognition which deal with the ways in which people perceive and think about themselves and others, including how they process information about their own group (in-groups) and about other groups (out-groups). Ethnic and cultural identity forms the core of the conceptual frameworks, directly linking self- definition to group membership; however, intergroup processes and dynamics are also considered. Broadly speaking, these conceptual approaches may be referred to as social identification theories (Abrams and Hogg, 1990; Deaux, 1996).
Social identification theories have been shaped and guided by the strong cognitive influence in contemporary psychology. Consequently, the theories are largely concerned with internal mental processes rather than external, observable behaviours. They focus on how groups see each other; how prejudice arises; why some people choose to leave certain groups and not others; and most importantly, how group membership affects self-esteem. Both identification and intergroup relations feature prominently in social identification theories, and
special attention is given to perceptions, attributions, expectations, attitudes and values held and expressed at the group level.
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
Immigrants, refugees and sojourners must consider two salient questions in connection with culture contact and change: ‘Who am I?’ which includes reference to shifting ethnic, cultural and/or national identities, and ‘How do members of my group relate to other groups?’ which concerns emergent intergroup attitudes and perceptions. Two major conceptual and empirical approaches have been used to examine these questions and to explore the complex issues associated with social identification. These are: (1) acculturation models and measurements and (2) Social Identity Theory (Phinney, 1990). The first approach, arising from empirical studies about social identity and intercultural contact, has been strongly influenced by personality theory and research and emphasises the structure and content of cognitions about self (Deaux, 1996). Basic research has been concerned with the measurement of acculturation and the correlates of home and host culture identification (Ward, 1996). While this approach has been frequently adopted by ethnic and cross- cultural psychologists, some aspects of the work are also popular with anthropologists and sociologists (Phinney, 1990). The second conceptual framework, Social Identity Theory (SIT), proposed by Tajfel (1978, 1981) and elaborated by Tajfel and Turner (1979, 1986), has emerged from contemporary social psychology. Social Identity Theory highlights the significance of group membership for individual identity and discusses the role of social categorisation and social comparison in relation to self-esteem. SIT has been applied to both naturally occurring groups, such as racial and religious communities, as well as minimal groups artificially created in laboratory conditions.
Acculturation and identity
As previously discussed, acculturation refers to changes that take place as a result of continuous first-hand contact between individuals of different cultural origins (Redfield, Linton and Herskovits, 1936). While such contact may produce changes in attitudes, values, and behaviours, one important component of acculturation relates to changes in cultural identity. On the most basic level, ethnic or cultural identification involves the recognition, categorisation or self- identification of oneself as a member of an ethnocultural group.1 Identification, however, is also seen as including a sense of affirmation, pride and a positive evaluation of one’s group, as well as an involvement dimension, relating to ethnocultural behaviours, values and traditions (Phinney, 1992). For example, ethnic and cultural identity scales frequently incorporate items pertaining to belongingness (how much one feels part of a particular group), centrality (how important one’s group membership is for personal identity), evaluation (positive
and negative perceptions of one’s group), and tradition (the practice of cultural customs and the acceptance of the group’s long-standing traditional norms and values). The acculturation literature has employed a broad concept of identification, encompassing the study of attitudes, values and even behaviours.
Sometimes the terms identity and acculturation have been used interchangeably as if they were synonymous. At other times identity has been used to describe attachment to various groups and employed in reference to ethnic orientation, cultural familiarity and group commitment. In still other circumstances identity has been viewed at a general level in relation to subjective culture, the characteristic way in which members of a cultural group experience their surrounding environment, including beliefs, evaluations, expectations, norms, roles, self-definitions, stereotypes, and values (Triandis, 1994a).
Although influenced by personality, developmental and social psychological studies of identity in ethnic minority groups within culturally plural societies, acculturation research focuses more specifically on identity changes that occur as a result of intercultural contact between individuals from different societies.
Consequently, those who have engaged in cross-cultural transition and relocation, e.g. sojourners, recent immigrants and refugees, receive special attention.
Intercultural contact is likely to be experienced by these groups in a different way than it is experienced by members of established ethnic minorities.
Immigrants, refugees and sojourners enter a new society embedded with long- standing, distinctive cultural norms and values. The newcomers may have originated from relatively homogeneous countries where cultural identity is rarely, if ever, challenged, and in many cases they may have had no previous exposure to the new host culture. Under these conditions the pressures for cultural change are often perceived as intense, immediate and enduring. It is likely, however, that these intercultural demands become more familiar and less acute for successive generations of immigrants as their groups evolve into established ethnocultural communities within plural societies.
While it is widely agreed that identification with both culture of origin and culture of contact is an important component of identity in immigrant groups, there is little agreement about the nature of the relationship between these two referent identifications. Most of the early studies of immigrants relied upon a rather simplistic, unidimensional and unidirectional model of acculturation and identity (Figure 5.1). Immigrants were seen as relinquishing identification with the culture of origin and ‘progressing’ towards identification with the culture of Figure 5.1 A unidirectional model of acculturation
contact by adopting the cultural traits, values, attitudes and behaviours of the host society (Olmeda, 1979); in short, acculturation was equated with assimilation. The assimilation model, still popular with a number of contemporary researchers, is embodied in a range of self-report measurements designed for the assessment of acculturation. These include the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans-I (ARMSA; Cuéllar, Harris and Jasso, 1980), the Greek Immigrant Acculturation Scale (Madianos, cited in Mavreas, Bebbington and Der, 1989), and the acculturation scale devised by Ghuman (1994) for Asian adolescents in Canada and the United Kingdom.
The unidimensional, bipolar conceptualisation of acculturation, where members of immigrant and refugee groups are regarded as having to choose between identification with either heritage or contact cultures, came under increasing scrutiny as theory and research on bicultural identity developed throughout the 1980s (Mendoza, 1984; Ramirez, 1984; Szapocznik and Kurtines, 1980). Identification with home and host culture came to be seen as counterbalancing, rather than opposing, forces in shaping the social identification of members of immigrant groups. The first wave of bicultural theory and research reflected a balance model of acculturation and identity. Biculturalism was viewed as the middle ground between assimilation and separatism; however, because measurement scales situated biculturalism at the midpoint between identification with heritage and contact cultures, the two referent identities were still viewed as interdependent, rather than orthogonal, domains (Figure 5.2).
Although an improvement on the assimilation model, the balance model posed obvious measurement problems. The assessment instruments largely failed to distinguish between bicultural individuals who weakly identify with two cultures and those who strongly identify with two reference groups. Despite this limitation, the model still underpins the most popular psychometric approach to the assessment of acculturation. Measurements that rely upon this approach include: the Multicultural Acculturation Scale (Wong-Rieger and Quintana, 1987), the ARMSA-II (Cuéllar, Arnold and Maldonado, 1995), the adult and youth versions of the Short Acculturation Scale for Hispanics (Barona and Miller, 1994;
Marín et al., 1987); the Behavioural Acculturation Scale for Hispanics (Szapocznik et al., 1978), the Suinn-Lew Asian Self-Identity Acculturation Scale (Suinn et al., 1987), the Acculturation Scale for Southeast Asians (Anderson et al., 1993), the Acculturation Scale for Asian Americans (Lai and Linden, 1993), and the International Relations Scale for International Students (Sodowsky and Plake 1991).
Figure 5.2 A balance model of acculturation
More sophisticated models have conceptualised home and host culture identity as independent or orthogonal domains (e.g. Cortés, Rogler and Malgady, 1994;
Szapocznik, Kurtines and Fernandez, 1980), and some have also considered these referent identities in conjunction with the categorisation of acculturation strategies. Although the latter approach has been adopted by a number of researchers (Bochner, 1982; Hutnik, 1986; Lasry and Sayegh, 1992), Berry (1974, 1984a, 1994b) is perhaps the best known proponent of the categorical approach. His model, guided by questions concerning the maintenance of heritage culture (‘Is it of value to maintain my cultural heritage?’) and relations with other ethnocultural groups (‘Is it of value to maintain relations with other groups?’), was introduced in Chapter 2. Four acculturation attitudes or strategies
—integration, separation, assimilation and marginalisation—arise in connection with these questions, and these are graphically presented in Figure 5.3.
Categorical models are not without their critics (Boski, 1998; Weinreich, 1998).
Some have argued, for example, that the categorical approach is too simplistic as the acculturation strategies used by immigrants, sojourners and refugees change depending upon the specific issues in question. Others have suggested Figure 5.3 A categorical model of acculturation
that the two dimensions of cultural identity—culture of origin and culture of contact—are more effective in predicting cross-cultural outcomes than the four acculturation modes (Ward, 1999). Still, the use of categorical approaches, particularly Berry’s framework, has increased over the last decade, and a variety of measurement techniques have been developed in connection with these models of acculturation. Some instruments allow the independent assessment of both home and host culture identity and the combination of the two scales for categorical assignment. Ward and Kennedy’s (1994) Acculturation Index, Felix- Ortiz, Newcomb and Meyers’ (1994) Cultural Identity Scale, and Nguyen, Messé and Stollak’s (1999) Acculturation Scale for Vietnamese Adolescents are structured along those lines. Berry and colleagues, however, have generally preferred the independent assessment of marginalisation, assimilation, separation and integration with parallel scales as found in their work with Portuguese, Hungarian, and Korean immigrants to Canada (Berry et al., 1989).
As will be further discussed in this chapter, the core of research on identity and acculturation relates to the components of identity, how identity is modified over time, and the conditions associated with identity and identity change.
Investigators have considered characteristics of the individual such as age, gender, and education; characteristics of the migrant group, such as cultural similarity and ‘push’ versus ‘pull’ motivations; and characteristics of the receiving society, such as monoculturalism versus multiculturalism and loose versus tight systems of sociocultural organisation. Generally speaking, these variables are viewed as antecedents or correlates of acculturation and identity change. Identity and acculturation, in turn, have also been conceptualised as predictors of migrant adaptation to new environments. While psychological and sociocultural dimensions of adjustment have been most frequently examined, identity and acculturation have been related to a wide range of cognitive and behavioural outcomes, including achievement styles (Gomez and Fassinger, 1994), compliance with medical therapy (Lai and Linden, 1993) and even responses to advertising (Lee, 1993).
Social identity theory
Social psychological theories of identity provide a somewhat different perspective on changing perceptions of self and others during cross-cultural transition and intercultural contact. Among the social psychological theories identity is most frequently discussed and analysed within the context of Tajfel’s (1978, 1981) Social Identity Theory. Tajfel pointed to three major defining features of social identity: (1) it is part of the self concept; (2) it requires awareness of membership in a group; and (3) it has evaluative and emotional significance. On the process level, social identification rests on social categorisation and social comparison; that is, the recognition that various in- groups and out-groups exist, that they may be compared, and that favourable and unfavourable comparisons have consequences for self-esteem.
Although Tajfel imbued self-esteem with motivational properties and discussed its enhancement through favourable social comparisons of positive distinctiveness and status, some researchers have argued that a sense of belongingness may be sufficient to enhance self-esteem in members of naturally occurring groups. Bat-Chava and Steen (cited in Deaux, 1996), for example, found moderately strong correlations between ethnic identification and self- esteem across a range of age, gender and ethnic groups in their metaanalytic review. It has been pointed out, however, that any relationship between the components of ethnic identity and self-esteem is likely to be moderated by the overall contribution of ethnicity to self-identity (Phinney, 1991). That is, a relationship between ethnic or cultural identity and self-esteem only occurs in cases when an individual consciously perceives ethnicity or culture as a central, salient feature of identity. Such a relationship would not be likely to emerge, for example, in the case of a third generation Polish-New Zealander who has largely or completely assimilated and does not refer to him—or herself as Polish.
Tajfel has also argued that intergroup bias is an inevitable consequence of social identification, and, indeed, social psychological research has routinely demonstrated that in-group favouritism is common, even in those groups artificially created under laboratory conditions (Tajfel and Turner, 1986). In minimal group experiments in-group favouritism has been frequently investigated in terms of reward allocations. In natural groups, where this line of research has been more commonly pursued in connection with stereotypes and attributions, the results are much the same. For example, individuals are more likely to make internal attributions for positive behaviours displayed by members of their ethnic, cultural or religious in-groups while they are inclined to make external attributions for the same behaviours displayed by out-group members (Hewstone and Ward, 1985; Lynskey, Ward and Fletcher, 1991; Taylor and Jaggi, 1974). That is, they explain their own group’s positive behaviours as due to personality characteristics (e.g. kindness, honesty, and intelligence) whereas the out-group’s behaviours are attributed to circumstances. It has also been recognised that out-group derogation increases when identity is under threat.
Branscombe and Wann (1994) found that American students, particularly those with strong social identities, were more likely to disparage national groups, including Soviets, South Africans, French and Chinese, when their own identities were threatened. Out-group derogation during intercultural contact is likely to occur in members of both the migrant and the host communities, and this will be explored further in later sections of this chapter.
Social Identity Theory considers not only the tendency for groups to exhibit in- group favouritism and out-group derogation, it also explores the responses to out- group devaluation. The theory is particularly concerned with the strategies that individuals use to maintain self-esteem in the face of an unfavourable group identity. Migrant groups, like other minorities, are often subjected to negative stereotyping and prejudicial attitudes by members of the majority. If this is perceived as threatening, individuals may adopt a variety of responses to change
their social identities and to restore self-esteem (see Table 5.1). According to Tajfel, these strategies may include ‘passing’ or changing in-groups, a range of cognitive processes to redefine or enhance social comparisons, and collective social action for the betterment of the group (Tajfel and Turner, 1986).
Much of Tajfel’s social identity theorising has been based on groups that experience perceived threats to identity (also see Breakwell, 1986). This aspect of his work makes the theory particularly relevant to immigrants and refugees.
Research has suggested that both cognitive and affective components of identity are more strongly aroused in minority groups and that members of these groups may experience a stronger need for in-group identification than members of a privileged majority. It has also been suggested that transition points in the life cycle, which could include significant life events such as cross-cultural relocation, evoke more emotional aspects of the identity process (Deaux, 1996).
Given the generally less privileged status endured by migrant groups and the magnitude of change involved in cross-cultural transition, it is not surprising that Tajfel’s Social Identity Theory has been one of the most frequently used conceptual frameworks for exploring identity and intergroup relations in immigrants, refugees and sojourners (see Moghaddam, 1998; Phinney, 1990).
While the proponents of Social Identity Theory have emphasised the Table 5.1 Reactions to threatened social identity (adapted from Tajfel and Turner, 1986)
Reaction Description Example
1. Individual mobility Individual tries to leave low status group; attempt at upward social mobility;
group boundaries must be permeable
‘Passing’
2. Social creativity In-group members seek positive distinctiveness by redefining elements of comparison
Comparing in-group and out- group on new dimensions;
reevaluating attributes assigned to the group;
changing target group for comparison
3. Social competition Group members seek positive distinctiveness through direct competition with out-groups
Reversing the relative positions of in-groups and out-groups on salient dimensions; social change results
relationship between group identity and self-esteem, the theory is more frequently used in the investigation of intergroup perceptions and relations.
Ethnocentric attributions and intergroup stereotyping are primarily interpreted within this theoretical framework. Social Identity Theory is also commonly evoked in studies of perceived discrimination, including the strategic responses
used by immigrants, sojourners and refugees in pursuit of favourable social comparisons and the achievement of higher status within their new societies.
IDENTITY, ACCULTURATION AND INTERCULTURAL CONTACT
Social identification theories acknowledge that identity entails a set of dynamic, complex processes by which individuals define, redefine and construct their own and others’ ethnicity. As identity changes in response to temporal, cultural and situational contexts, the predictors, antecedents and correlates of cultural identity have attracted considerable attention. Empirical research on acculturation has examined a range of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intergroup variables that affect the patterns of and changes in social identities in immigrant and refugee groups.
Although few have explored these changes from an explicitly developmental perspective (for exceptions see work by Aboud, 1987; Phinney, 1989;
Schönpflug, 1997), many have investigated identity issues cross-sectionally to explore age and generational differences. In general, younger migrants appear to be more malleable than older ones, and they tend to take on more readily host culture norms and values (Marín et al., 1987; Mavreas et al., 1989). When acculturation starts early, particularly before admission to primary school, it appears to proceed more smoothly (Beiser et al., 1988). One possible reason is that younger migrants tend to have better language skills and are more easily accepted into the receiving country (Liebkind, 1996). Despite this advantage, adolescent migrants are known to be at risk (Ghuman, 1994; Sam and Berry, 1995). As they reach a stage in which they experiment with their identities, they may be simultaneously influenced by peer pressure and familial conflict over changing attitudes and behaviours. Cross-cultural transitions made in later life present different challenges. A strong sense of identity with heritage culture may be well established, and attachments to both home and host cultures are often more resistant to change.
Although the results of research on gender differences in identification and acculturation have not been completely consistent, there is moderately strong evidence that assimilation proceeds more rapidly in boys than girls and that men assimilate more quickly than women (Ghaffarian, 1987). There is also evidence that women have more negative attitudes toward assimilation and are more likely to retain a stronger sense of identity with culture of origin (Harris and Verven, 1996; Liebkind, 1996; Ting-Toomey, 1981). The traditional roles that women play have been cited as a reason for this difference. In many cases women are more isolated from members of the receiving culture, particularly if they are unemployed or lack requisite language skills. In addition, women are often perceived as cultural gatekeepers, teaching their children about ethnic customs and traditions and nurturing identification with heritage culture norms and values (Yee, 1990, 1992).