Encouraging immigrants to learn the national language and take on the social and cultural practices of their community is assimilation. It is largely being understood to have a utopian end result, or in other words, it’s a desired society where members would be culturally indistinguishable. To an individual it is the process of becoming completely adopted to another country, or becoming the ‘same,’ after coming from a, typically minority, immigrant group. Happening spontaneously, sometimes even unintentionally, those individuals tend to , inevitably, no longer want to relate to their country of origin, except for family history.
Whereas multiculturalism is a widely used term with many different meanings. Our understanding of multiculturalism tends to point to imbalances, discriminations or communities underlying the connection between individual freedom and cultural membership that come from diverse ethnic, cultural or national backgrounds. Promoting public recognition of differences, multiculturalism illustrates the crossing of culture and equality.
However thanks to media and United States immigration research, that showed that adolescents may be more receptive to new and foreign cultural values and beliefs than adults, globalization as well as individual autonomy and family obligation may influence adolescents with their cultural identity formation. Television and the internet, providing exposures to new ideas, events and people, influence their development of both their local and global identities.
Nonetheless multiculturalism and assimilation both represent general models at the two extremes and “contemporary adolescents are coming of age in multicultural world where creating a cultural identity has become complex. Often, they face the task of integrating diverse cultural beliefs and behaviors conveyed to them by multiple agents of socialization--socialization agents that, at times, are at odds with one another (i.e. parents and TV). The task of forming a coherent cultural identity that allows adolescents to become contributing members of society presents challenges that may be stressful or even considerably more problematic. However, adolescent cultural identity formation also presents challenges that may be met by developing new skills, the kinds of skills necessary for a multicultural world, that allows adolescents to function well psychologically and to contribute to society.” (Jensen)
Jensen, Lene Arnett. "Coming of Age in a Multicultural World: Globalization and
Adolescent Cultural Identity Formation." Applied Developmental Sciences 7.3
(2003): 189-96. PDF file.
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