Immigration and Assimilation - Coursework Example

Abstract

Immigration and assimilation are crucial concepts in the field of sociology. People migrate into different nations every day either permanently or temporary. A most common phenomenon is that of immigration that refers to the action of moving from one country to another and living permanently in the host country. Currently, the US is faced with the challenge of controlling the illegal immigration by building a wall along the US/Mexico border. This paper discusses various terms related to immigration and assimilation. The terms include culture, values, norms, deviance, diversity, prejudice, discrimination, ethnicity, minority group, and social class.

Immigration and Assimilation

In sociology, the concepts of immigration and assimilation are critical. In every year, hundreds of thousands of legal and illegal immigrants from all over the world enter the United States. The immigrants have different motivations, but most of the people come into the US with the hope of bettering their lives. At times, people move to the US to escape prosecution or even as refugees. Immigration refers to the action of moving from one country to another and living permanently in the host country. That is, it is moving into a nation to live there permanently. The idea of immigration further brings the concept of assimilation. When new people move into the US, they may obtain the social and psychological characteristics of the American people. Numerous immigrants in the US are assimilated into the American culture. Therefore, assimilation can be termed as the process of obtaining the social and psychological characteristics of a group. Ideally, it can refer to being in conformity with certain people’s attitudes, customs, and beliefs. In this essay, I define various words related to assimilation and immigration and discuss them in details.

American people have a culture that was maintained from the time of their ancestors. That is, they have a defined way of life specifically based on their general customs and beliefs. Normally, it is the culture of the American people that can make them be considered excellent in various dimensions of life such as in arts or even scholarly pursuits. Culture is a phenomenon that is passed from one generation to another through communication or imitation. Culture encompasses numerous things such as religion, foods, marriage, and music among various other things. The US is the most culturally diverse nation in the world and almost every region in the world has predisposed the American culture since it is a nation of immigrants (Belfield, 2016). Some of the most notable cultures in the US include that of the Native and Latin Americans, Africans, and the Asians. A good example of the American culture on the aspect of food can be the consumption of hamburgers, hot dogs, and potato chips. The foods are commonly identified with the American culture. It is in the process of assimilation that immigrants adopt the cultures of a nation or a given group of people.

Almost every group of individuals in different societies across the world has their set of values. Culture and value are closely related because values determine an organization’s culture. Values are principles or standards of behavior that a particular group of people upholds. People live by different values and Americans have their various values. However, it is important to note that though things such as family, church, or school influence a majority of individuals such as the Americans, most of the people may choose their values that they intend to live by (Kohls, 2016). However, there can be a list of American values that can be identified and picked out that are different from any other nation. Determining the values that a particular group holds is important because it helps an individual to understand the actions of the concerned people. For example, an immigrant may need to know what values a majority of the Americans lives by to ensure that he or she understands the American actions. One value that seems to be dominant among most of the American citizens is that of upholding personal control over the environment. Usually, in the US people consider it reasonable and right for a man to control nature rather than man being controlled by nature.

A norm can be considered as a usual, typical, or standard way of life that is hugely adopted by a majority of people in a nation. Norms can be classified in different ways, and the most appropriate classification in this essay is that of social norms. Social norms can be defined as the conventions or rules on how to behave. Normally, they provide people with the predictable idea of how to act in a specific group or culture. Norms define the appropriate behavior for every social group such as students or people from different nations. As an individual moves from one group to another or from one nation to another, their behavior changes accordingly. When people immigrate to a nation, they are expected to adapt to the social norms of that country. Adopting the social norms of that country and embracing them wholly amounts to a form of assimilation. Norms can be formal or informal, and a good example of an informal American norm is belching loudly after a meal. As a norm, there is how an American should behave after a meal and belching is a break from the expected social norm.

In any society, there are people that go against the stipulated or expected way of life. An individual may go against people’s culture, norms, or values. The term that defines the act of going against people’s way of life is deviance. Immigration, as mentioned earlier, can be either legal or illegal. For instance, the people that enter into the US illegally defy the dictated laws of the land. According to Pew, the number of illegal immigrants in the US in 2014 stood at 11.1 million (Krogstad, Passel, & Cohn, 2016). However, the number has with time gradually stabilized. The number of illegal immigrants in the US portrays a high rate of deviance among immigrants. Mexican immigrants are the most affected individuals. In 2014, they accounted for at least 52% of all the unauthorized immigrants (Krogstad, Passel, & Cohn, 2016).

According to Weaver, (1997) America is the most culturally diverse nation in the world. That is, it has a huge number of different cultures as a result of enormous immigration (Weaver, 1997). The population of the US, for example, is composed of different cultures such as whites, Hispanics, Asians, Indians, and Native Hawaiians. Diversity is a good thing because through it people evaluate everything around them. Also, it helps people evaluate what is proper or improper or what is normal or abnormal. For example, the American cultural diversity helps people recognize and respect the ways of others that help them build, respect, and understand other cultures. Immigrants from all over the world make the US culturally diverse.

Prejudice can be termed as the unjustified or incorrect attitude often negative towards a person or a group founded by their community group (Clair, 2015). Prejudice may be expressed in different forms such as through discrimination of various behaviors or actions. Usually, the attitude offered to an individual through prejudice is negative and can be based on race, sex, race, gender, class among numerous others. More often, a discriminated person may not turn on his/her brashness. That is, an individual may be prejudiced towards a particular group of individuals, but he or she might not discriminate against them. An example of prejudice that exists in the US is that African Americans have an exceptional inborn rhythmic ability and a greater skull compared to the whites. The types of bias may be related to race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, and class.

There exist a difference between discrimination and prejudice though the two terms may be confused with each other. While prejudice is a baseless or improper attitude towards a particular group or individual, discrimination is the behavior or activities that are typically undesirable towards a discrete or a group. In the US, there is a problem of discrimination where the whites discriminate against the blacks by superiority. In South Arica, there was the issue of apartheid or racial segregation from 1948-1994 (Clair, 2015). During those times, the non-whites were prohibited from polling and lived in distinct groups. In the US, the dominant group is that of whites that are often the majority. The whites are mostly associated with discriminating against the immigrants such as the African-American or the Hispanics.

People are often discriminated against or face prejudice due to different factors, and one of them is ethnicity. Ethnicity can be explained as the circumstance or state of belonging to a particular social group that has a shared domestic or cultural practice. As mentioned earlier, America is a home of numerous ethnic groups. The White Americans are the majority, and the minorities are the African Americans.

In almost every country, there is a minority group. A minority group can be defined as a category of people that are differentiated from the dominant group. Normally, such people have less control and power over their lives compared to those that belong to the majority group. African Americans are the majority minority group in the US, and they are the group that is often subjected to discrimination and prejudice.

People within a given society have different social classes. A social class can be defined as the group of individuals that have a common level of wealth, status, and influence. Social classes have been used as a basis for discrimination and prejudice. Most immigrants belong to a certain social class soon as they enter a particular country. For instance, immigrants who are refugees belong to the lowest social class because they mostly do not possess any material possessions. Ideally, various cultures within a nation are categorized based on different social levels.

Immigration and assimilation have brought a new set of challenges in the US and other countries. The issue of discrimination, prejudice among minority group has led immigrants to establish a new set of norms and values that are a detriment to their well-being. For instance, most immigrants are a deviant of most of the newly embraced culture as a result of assimilation. Moreover, the issue of ethnicity arises when a minority group is discriminated against in the resource allocation. Nonetheless, when immigrants are fully assimilated into other culture, they abandon their identity and conform to social classes rather than as an ethnic group.