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Cultural assimilation is the process by which a person's or group's culture come to resemble those of another group. The term is used to refer to both in the latter case can refer to either foreign
or native residents that come to be culturally dominated by another society.
Cultural assimilation may involve either a quick or gradual change depending on circumstances of the group. Full assimilation occurs when new members of a society become indistinguishable from members of the other group. Whether it is desirable for an immigrant group to assimilate is often disputed by both members of the group and those of the dominant society. Cultural assimilation does not guarantee social homophily though as this article states, geographical and other natural barriers between cultures even if started by the same dominant culture will be culturally different.
A place (a state or an ethnicity) can spontaneously adopt a different culture due to its political relevance, or to its perceived superiority. The first is the case of the
and culture, that were gradually adopted by most of the subjugated people.
Cultural assimilation can happen either spontaneously or forcibly. A culture can spontaneously adopt a different culture or older and richer cultures forcibly integrate other weak cultures. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. A new culture and new attitudes toward the origin culture are obtained through contact and communication.
is not simply a one-way process. Assimilation assumes that relatively tenuous culture gets to be united to one unified culture. This process happens through contact and accommodation between each culture. The current definition of assimilation is usually used to refer to immigrants, but in , cultural assimilation can happen all over the world, not just be limited to specific areas. For example, a shared language gives people the chance to study and work internationally, not just being limited to the same cultural group. People from different countries contribute to diversity and form the "global culture" which means the culture combined by the elements from different countries. This "global culture" can be seen as a part of assimilation that causes cultures from different areas to affect each other.
Immigrant assimilation is a complex process in which immigrants not only fully integrate themselves into a new country, but also lose aspects, perhaps all of their heritage too. Social scientists rely on four primary benchmarks to assess immigrant assimilation: , geographic distribution,
attainment, and . William A.V. Clark defines immigrant assimilation as "a way of understanding the social dynamics of American society and that it is the process that occurs spontaneously and often unintended in the course of interaction between majority and ".
Between 1880 and 1920, the United States took in roughly 24 million immigrants. This increase in immigration can be attributed to many historical changes. The beginning of the twenty-first century has also marked a massive era of immigration, and sociologists are once again trying to make sense of the impact that immigration has on society and the impact it has on immigrants themselves.
Assimilation had various meanings in American sociology,
associates American assimilation with Americanization or the melting pot theory. Some scholars also believed assimilation and acculturation were synonymous. According to a many's point of view, assimilation is a "process of interpretation and fusion" from another group or person. This may include memories, behaviors and sentiments. By sharing their experiences and histories, they blend into the common cultural life.
The long history of immigration in these established gateways means that the place of immigrants in terms of , , and
hierarchies in these traditional gateways are more structured or established on the other hand these new gateways do not have much immigration
therefore the place of immigrants in terms of class, racial, and ethnic hierarchies is less defined and immigrants may have more influence to define their position. Secondly, the size of new gateways may influence immigrant assimilation. Having a smaller gateway may influence the level of
among immigrants and native-born people. Thirdly, the difference in institutional arrangements may influence immigrant assimilation. Traditional gateways, unlike new gateways, have many institutions set up to help immigrants such as legal aid, bureaus, social organizations. Finally, Waters and Jimenez have only speculated that these differences may influence immigrant assimilation and the way researchers should assess immigrant assimilation.
Culture-specific:
(Assimilation of Australian Aborigines)
Parisi, Domenico, Federico Cecconi, and Francesco Natale. "Cultural change in spatial environments: the role of cultural assimilation and internal changes in cultures." Journal of Conflict Resolution 47.2 (2003): 163–179.
Waters, Mary C.; Jiménez, Tomás R. (2005). "Assessing Immigrant Assimilation: New Empirical and Theoretical Challenges". . 31 (1): 105–125. :.
Clark, W. (2003). Immigrants and the American Dream: Remaking the Middle Class. New York: Guilford Press.  .
Alba, Richard D.; Nee, Victor (2003). Remaking the American Mainstream. Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. Harvard University Press.  .
Armitage, Andrew (1995). . UBC Press.  .
Crispino, James A. (1980). The Assimilation of Ethnic Groups: The Italian Case. Center for Migration Studies.  .
Drachsler, Julius (1920). Democracy and Assimilation: The Blending of Immigrant Heritages in America. Macmillan.
Gordon, Milton M. Daedalus Yetman, ed. "Assimilation in America: Theory and Reality". Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Boston, Mass. 90 (2): 245–258.
Gordon, Milton M. (1964). Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins. New York: Oxford University Press.
Grauman, Robert A. (1951). Methods of studying the cultural assimilation of immigrants. University of London.
Kazal, R. A. (April 1995). "Revisiting Assimilation". American Historical Society. 100.
Murguía, Edward (1975). Assimilation, Colonialism, and the Mexican American People. Center for Mexican American Studies. University of Texas at Austin.  .
Zhou, Min (Winter 1997). "Segmented Assimilation: Issues, Controversies, and Recent Research on the New Second Generation". International Migration Review. 31 (4, Special Issue: Immigrant Adaptation and Native–Born Responses in the Making of Americans).
(1998). : How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States. vol. III. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.  .
: Hidden categories:Earlier versions of this paper have been presented at the Annual Meeting of the Flemish and Dutch Political Science Associations, Berg en Dal 2008, and the Summer University course 2008 "Complex Systems and Social Simulations", Central European University, Budapest. I would like to thank Sarah de Lange, David Hollanders, Niklas Lampenius, Erik Johnston, Ruud Koopmans, Susanne Rebers, Fleur Thom&se, Ralf Kaptijn and Jan Kleinnijenhuis for helpful comments and suggestions. Gaby Vullings (Interview/NSS) kindly provided data on public opinion support and Michael Laver was helpful by sending me his programming code.
The trade-off of ABMs is the cost of having less exacting analytics. Formal models are more precise. As McElreath and Boyd () put it: "There is comfort in vagueness, and formal theory allows for little comfort". But a hypothesis should not only be as precise as possible, but also give a best possible answer on a relevant question. Thus, I agree Miller and Page (: 71) that "analytic methods provide exact answers" but "good answers only make sense when we are asking good questions".
This critique on a solely theoretical application of recent agent-based models is similar to the criticism on sharp-end rational-choice theorists, that despite its theoretical sophistication, rational choice theory has been of little empirical use and empirical applications in the field have been rather unimpressive ().
I used Netlogo version 4.0.2. The programming code for the entire model is available on the author's .
Voters in a directional model have preferences for one side or the other with regard to an issue. A middle position reflects neutrality, not a certain position (). In practice, this implies the possibility that actor X is located at exactly the same place as party A, but would still prefer party B as it is located further away from the centre. Moreover, it is necessary to add a parameter (the 'region of acceptability') to penalize extremism, otherwise a right-wing moderate, for example, would prefer to vote for an extreme right, rather than for a right-wing moderate party. Aarts et al. () showed that the directional model slightly outperforms the proximity model in predicting party evaluations in the N however, their analysis is restricted to a selection of the four largest parties. In general, empirical support on which model best represents voting is ambiguous (see e.g. ).
The mean position of the parties is weighted by the share of vote won by the party in the 1998 election.
The formula for media distortion is as follows: Distortion = 3 - ln (1 + &Media attention)
In this case, the role of the media referred to effects of a party suffering from negative news, not from a shortage of attention.
Minor differences are due the fact that the election results and first opinion poll after the elections slightly differ.
Less risky steps of 0.5 instead 1.0 make the results somewhat better (MAD = 4.1 and MAD2 =
4.8) but are still worse than the basic ideological model.
In model A, the 'real' party size of the LPF is used for the calculating of the fit after the split- LN is 'missing' so not affecting the MAD.
An alternative model in which it is assumed that the CDA becomes an Aggregator or Hunter, in line with the idea that the reason for electoral success was the replacement of the party leader by the more adaptive Jan-Peter Balkenende who more strongly mobilized dissatisfaction with the multicultural society (), the party indeed slightly shifts on the y-axis. This model does not fare better as the move out of the centre supports the PvdA and D66 and severely harms Fortuyn.
Adjusting the simulation because of the fact that political campaigning was put aside after the assassination (by turning all media distortion off after that moment) is only significantly better when Liveable Netherlands is excluded (otherwise they become very large). The model fit for the election outcome is 4.40 and 5.34 (MAD and MAD2) and it is correctly estimated that the CDA is the winner (with about 22%).
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