The Problems of Immigration and Assimilation in a Multicultural Society PDF Download

Author: Tamara Schaub
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3638886301
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 33

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Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,0, University of Mannheim (Amerikanistik), course: A survey of contemporary America, 7 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The USA is sometimes called "land of the immigrants" or "the promised land". In early times immagrants from different origins and nationalities immigrated to the USA. That's why the USA developed to a multicultural society. There is the great idea of all people from different nations living together. America is designates as a "melting pot". This term tries to discribe the assimilation of immigrants into American life. Its literal meaning is a chemical one: several different elements melted together to form a new product. The idea was that immigrants would fuse together with the "old" Americans, giving up their old lifestyles and cultures to form one American nation. The motto " e pluribus unum" which still appears on American coins today, has been used since 1782, reflecting how even the early Americans saw their conuntry. But does a mutlicultural society system like this really work? That's the main point I will try to work out in my research paper. To get through this topic it needs to be defined very clearly what immigrations means in general and to describe briefly the immigration process from the early times till nowadays. This should be explained with some facts and figures to build the foundation of the following analysis. I will also show the reasons and problems of illegal immigration which is an important topic in the American society. That brings us to the next point the Hispanic Americans, which representativ for American immigrants. I will use The Hispanic Americans as an example to mark the assimilation problem of immigrants in the USA. Furthermore you can use this group of immigrants to explain the multicultural situation in the USA today. I will round off my work with the part of the conclusion and I

Author: C. Joppke
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230554792
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
This book surveys a new trend in immigration studies, which one could characterize as a turn away from multicultural and postnational perspectives, toward a renewed emphasis on assimilation and citizenship. Looking both at state policies and migrant practices, the contributions to this volume argue that (1) citizenship has remained the dominant membership principle in liberal nation-states, (2) multiculturalism policies are everywhere in retreat, and (3) contemporary migrants are simultaneously assimilating and transnationalizing.

Author: Peter Kivisto
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317257634
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
As the best single-source collection of classic and contemporary readings on the subject, this anthology will be a valuable reference to scholars of immigration, race and ethnicity, national identity, and the history of ideas, and indispensable for courses in history and the social sciences dealing with these topics.' Ruben G. Rumbaut, co-author of Immigrant America: A Portrait and Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation Societies today are increasingly characterized by their ethnic, racial, and religious diversity. One key question raised by the global migration of people is how they do or do not come to be incorporated into their new social environments. For over a century, assimilation has been the concept used in explaining the processes of immigrant incorporation into a new society. It has also been applied to indigenous peoples, to refugees, and to involuntary migrants caught up in the slave trade. Assimilation has confronted many scholarly challenges which were often intermeshed with particular political agendas. This book allows readers to obtain a clearer sense of the canonical formulation of assimilation theory and an understanding of the key themes and issues contained in current efforts to rethink and revise the classical perspective for today's changing world.

Author: Richard D. Alba
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674020115
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
In this age of multicultural democracy, the idea of assimilation--that the social distance separating immigrants and their children from the mainstream of American society closes over time--seems outdated and, in some forms, even offensive. But as Richard Alba and Victor Nee show in the first systematic treatment of assimilation since the mid-1960s, it continues to shape the immigrant experience, even though the geography of immigration has shifted from Europe to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Institutional changes, from civil rights legislation to immigration law, have provided a more favorable environment for nonwhite immigrants and their children than in the past. Assimilation is still driven, in claim, by the decisions of immigrants and the second generation to improve their social and material circumstances in America. But they also show that immigrants, historically and today, have profoundly changed our mainstream society and culture in the process of becoming Americans. Surveying a variety of domains--language, socioeconomic attachments, residential patterns, and intermarriage--they demonstrate the continuing importance of assimilation in American life. And they predict that it will blur the boundaries among the major, racially defined populations, as nonwhites and Hispanics are increasingly incorporated into the mainstream.

Author: John J. Miller
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 068483622X
Category : Acculturation
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Immigrants have always adopted America's ideological principles and striven to become "American". But now there is a war against the whole notion of assimilation; newcomers are encouraged to maintain their own separate cultural identity. In the tradition of Arthur Schlesinger's "The Disuniting of America", this commonsense manifesto promotes renewing the assimilation ethic in America.

Author: Andrea M. Voyer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107657741
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
In Strangers and Neighbors, Andrea M. Voyer shares five years of observations in the city of Lewiston. She shows how long-time city residents and immigrant newcomers worked to develop an understanding of the inclusive and caring community in which they could all take part. Yet the sense of community developed in Lewiston was built on the appreciation of diversity in the abstract rather than by fostering close and caring relationships across the boundaries of class, race, culture, and religion. Through her sensitive depictions of the experiences of Somalis, Lewiston city leadership, anti-racism activists, and even racists, Voyer reveals both the promise of and the obstacles to achieving community in the face of diversity.

Author: Leonie Kramer
Publisher: Spotlight Poets
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
The global movement of millions of people seeking better lives or refuge from persecution has given debate in Australia over immigration and multiculturalism a new urgency. What once seemed a settled policy framework accepted by most political shades of opinion is now being widely questioned again. Does Australia need more immigrants or have we reached the limits of social, political and environmental tolerance? Should immigrants and refugees adopt the customs and traditions of the host country or create cultural enclaves within it? Does multiculturalism threaten national identity and is this desirable or not? Has our experiment with multiculturalism been a success and should it continue? In this book, some leading Australians debate these issues with British and American experts in the field. Essays by: Geoffrey Blainey, John OSullivan, Owen Harries, Philip Ruddock, John Menadue, Lance Morrow, Bob Birrell, Marilyn Halter, Andrew Roberts, Robert Rowthorn and Melanie Phillips.

Author: Samuel Skipper
Publisher: Anchor Academic Publishing
ISBN: 3960676026
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 47

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Book Description
The topic of immigration is never simple. Questions such as ‘who belongs to society?’ and ‘how do you define national identity?’, or ‘what values are needed to maintain a coexisting society?’ are extremely difficult to answer. Global migration introduces unprecedented challenges for conceptualising the integration of immigrants. On a European scale, Germany can be said to represent the first destination for immigrants since its unification in 1989. On a global level, Germany is the second largest immigrant receiving country after the United States. Nevertheless, only recently has Germany recognised and admitted that it is an ethnically and culturally diverse society. Before the 1998 elections, successive governments have always stuck to the maxim that Germany is ‘not a country of immigration’. The infamous phrase came under increased pressure with the electoral victory of the Red-Green coalition in 1998. New laws regarding immigration, integration and citizenship were on the agenda with the aim of replacing the traditional ethnocultural model of German nationhood with a more liberal and modern model by moving away from the concepts of Volk and ius sanguinis. The conservative CDU, however, accused the Schroder government of trying to jeopardize German cultural identity, causing a fierce debate known as the Leitkultur (Guiding culture) debate. On the one side of this debate there were the conservative CDU politicians who viewed Germany in ethno-nationalist terms, while on the other members of the Green Party and the SPD, who attempted substituting the ‘volkish’ tradition with a multicultural model of citizenship that guaranteed universal human rights. The aim of this study is to assess which of these two models are currently prevailing in moulding immigration and integration policy. Has the progressive left achieved its objective of moving away from the traditional ethnocultural and assimilationalist model defining citizenship towards a more inclusive multicultural model?

Author: Isabelle Rorive
Publisher: Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles
ISBN: 2800416890
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
During the 2000s, the European Union has witnessed a significant change in terms of integration policies for immigrants. This book intends to address the relationship between, on the one hand, cultural diversity resulting from migration, and, on the other hand, social cohesion and social justice within Western societies. In order to do this, the authors examine what can be described as two contradictory trends in recent public policies towards foreign people or people with a foreign origin. A book that aims to provide a trans-disciplinary analysis of the construction of “otherness” in North America and Europe. EXTRAIT In October 2010, in a very polemic context on immigration and immigrant integration, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, announced that Germany was to be considered a multicultural failure, words that were soon echoed by the Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme. A few months later, the British Prime Minister David Cameron and the French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the failure of multiculturalism in almost identical terms. These sensational statements, which by and large avoid defining the concept of multiculturalism, are based on a reaffirmation of “Western values” and strengthening of national identity. These statements express the need to review the policies on integration of immigrants, in the sense that they should be more active and voluntarist, more organized by the state and more supported by the EU. In the background, one can see fear for Islamic extremism, but also the idea that the nation states can put some obligations on immigrants, and that for a too long time we have been focusing on “those who arrive”, rather than on “the society that welcomes them”. These speeches are situated in a politico-legal context that in recent years was characterized by an ambivalent attitude towards diversity in Europe. On the one hand, we have seen accusations of racial, ethnic and religious discrimination, based on antidiscrimination legislation boosted by a strong European equality legal framework. On the other hand, we have seen denouncements of the perceived risk posed by Islam in Europe. These policy statements are also a result of numerous publications, often widely discussed in the media that outline the dangers of Islam in Europe (especially in the Netherlands). These political positions have also led to political decisions demonstrating the lack of legitimacy of Islam in Europe, such as the ban on building minarets in Switzerland or the Burqa bans adopted in the name of protecting national values and the “living together”, notably in France and Belgium (2011).

Author: Carlton Howson
Publisher: Trentham Books
ISBN: 9781858565668
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
Europe is not what it used to be, and not yet what it will be. The assassination of Theo van Gogh in November 2004, the 2001 riots in the Northern cities of England, the riots in France in November 2005 and the incident of the Danish Cartoons in 2005 are all manifestations of mainstream Europe s struggle to reconfigure itself. The rapidly changing demographics, especially after post World War Two immigration, have led to what has been called a "European identity crisis." This has raised significant social, political, economic, security and cultural questions over how "established" and emerging immigrant communities are managed even though some in these communities hold citizenship in European countries. This book brings leading writers in their fields to explore a range of issues concerning Europe s established and emerging immigrant communities: religion, health, housing, refugees and asylum seekers, working in post-conflict ethnic zones, community cohesion in rural areas, security, Gypsies and Travellers. The first part of the book looks at such topics across Europe while the second explores specific issues using the UK as a microcosm. Readers will find a wide range of perspectives based on empirical research and grounded in critical analyses, as well as responses to the new challenges confronting Europe. The strength of the book lies in its timeliness and wide appeal: it is essential reading for social science courses including community development, sociology, politics, social policy, diversity, health, education and international development at both undergraduate and post graduate level. And policy makers and practitioners will treasure the book s historical and contemporary insights into how the geography of Europe has been shaped and how policies continue to be largely focused on the racialization of people."