Essay Paper Sample: Adapting to New Culture

What influences how one adapts to, assimilates to, or reacts to a culture that is different than one’s culture?

The interrelationship of national identity and ethnicity plays a great role in the adoption, assimilation, and reaction of immigrants to a culture that is different from their own. These influence the interaction and well-being of immigrants in response to their receiving society. The interaction is highly modified by strength of national identity and ethnic variation. Therefore, studies shows that a combination of strong national and ethnic identities promote the adotion of another culture. This paper focuses on how immigrants from all over the world choose the United States to be their new home, and how they will have to find a balance between cultural influences but, on the other hand, fight with many stereotypes.

1. Cultural influences

Age factor

Age factor is one of the factors that determine the influence of how one adapts, assimilates, and react to culture that is different from their own. The relationship between an immigrant’s adaptation and identity is moderated by other additional factors such as age, gender, and time of immigration. The young generation will highly adapt and reacts to a culture that is different from their own, because they will arrive to the new society with a strong sense of cultural and national origin. An example of this is how a young child from China was able to adapt to American culture more than her parents. She was able to speak English while both of her parents could not. In addition, youth also have a high degree of willingness to react and adapt to identities of the new environment. However, they face higher identity issues related to their sense of belonging from their ancestral culture and their new area of settlement.

One’s assimilation, reaction, and adaption to a culture that is different from their original culture can also be facilitated by school adjustments. Children from immigrant families tend to adapt culture of their new society through schools. This is best explained by the interaction approach in which immigrant students interact with students from the host society, thus adapting their culture. This reflects that schools are the greatest assimilationist institutions in the society. This is because they hold a stronger national identity that affects the cultural diversity between two societies.

Living in “cultural schizophrenia”

Another factor that contributes to cultural assimilation, adaption, and reaction is living in “cultural schizophrenia.” This is because it facilitates identification, and ethnic identity of immigrants in the new society is much related to each other. The identities are related with the adoption of immigrants to their new cultural group. The role of national identities and ethnicities can be well understood in terms of interaction between characteristics and attitudes of immigrants and the receiving society. This is due to moderation of the various circumstances facing immigrants in their new social setup. Individual and group immigrants arrive in their new society worth different attitudes. This is mainly to become part of the new society and retain their original culture. However, in their new environment, these attitudes interact with the perceived and actual acceptance level of immigrants. Strong desires of immigrants to maintain their culture and identity boost their ethnic identity. In addition, the immigrating group feels accepted in the new environment if there is much pressure on assimilation. This will also increase the strength of national identity…