Integration And Adaptation As A Challenge Forward Migrants

Currently, immigration is an important issue countering host countries as well as immigrants themselves with different problems. In a world which is becoming more and more interconnected, international migration become a fact that more or less every part of the world is experiencing it. This fact can be proved by the quantity of international migrants across nations which increases significantly during recent years. United Nations’ report of 2017 showed that, “reaching 258 million in 2017, up from 220 million in 2010 and 173 million in 2000”.

Migrants are searching for jobs, opportunities, education and quality of life, but the problem arises from the conflicts between the origin of the migrants and the destination. Therefore, this issue is trying to focus on the immigrant’s point of view and go deep into the challenge they would probably have in forward. Regarding, I would like to explain it by applying two sociological concepts as integration and adaptation. This crucial challenge for immigrants could be adaptation or integration in the new milieu. The migrants group whom are targeted in this argument are whom migrate across the countries. Migration across countries would face immigrants with wide variety of issues concerning they are in a new context where they need to become more integrated or adapted. This dilemma shaped in my mind when I reviewed these two concepts in social sciences and I want to describe them to enlighten the differences and similarities between these two concepts.

It should be noticed that Living in a new culture and society is not a simple process, particularly when it is crucially different from your area of origin. Migrants need to be accepted in the destination land and this problem mentioned here by focusing on sociological terms of Integration vs Adaptation, Which reviewed briefly. Further reading on these two concepts in the literature of social sciences leads to more specification of describing them in a more precise way and clarified these concepts are complicated terms with different aspects. So, I choose the terms of social integration and cultural adaptation instead of their general form which has been described and applied here.

There are different definitions on “social integration” available, but most of them focused on this concept as being bonded into the society and exist as an active participant or actor. Durkheim’s (1897) theory explains about the social integration that mentioned; “individuals are bonded to society by two forms of integration: attachment and regulation. Attachment is the extent to which an individual maintains ties with members of the society. Regulation involves the extent to which an individual is held in the fabric of society by its values, beliefs and norms”. Durkheim’s debate on social integration basically focused on the quantitative study of suicide therefore, despite that his theory is one of the prominent in this area of research but apply it for a phenomenon like immigration could not be of advantage.

Also, Ferguson 2008, defined social integration as “the process of promoting the values, relations and institutions that enable all people to participate in social, economic and political life on the basis of equality of rights, equity and dignity”. Social integration is the duration of the process which immigrants or persons who are in the minority, combining into the social structure of the host society.

As Katz and Kahn (1978) described “Social integration, can best be thought of as a multifaceted phenomenon that reflects attraction to the group, satisfaction with other members of the group, and social interaction among the group members”. “Cultural Adaptation” as argyle’s (1969, 1982) described, is an analyses between social skills and interactions. This concept is related with behavioral aspects of the experiences and is drastically related with behavioral sight of the attainment of cumulative experience. Importantly, cultural adaptation is related with the attainment of culturally convenient skills which are essential to operate effectively in a social or cultural environment.

It can be better understood as Ward explained; cultural learning is the foundation of cultural adaptation. Sam et. al. (2008) use the terms of “socio-cultural” adaptation which mainly connected with the inception of the culturally convenient and necessary skills to act effectively in a specific social or cultural environment. Here Definitions of these terms were briefly described. It shows that even though each concept focuses on a different side of the migration problem as a social fact but also these concepts embedded with each other, so they could be complementary factors to make the possibility of social life in a society where embedded with culture. Holding the bonds and ties for binding and interacting in a social context which explained in the definition of social integration concept needs to know the skills and appropriate behavior in the destination context that has been mentioned in the concept of cultural adaptation. Hence, these concepts have meaningfully interrelated and are not separable. If we suppose this challenge as a cultural adaptation, then we would lose part of the fact as well as if we recognized it as social integration alone. We can presuppose that these two concepts are integrated and newcomers as migrants need to become culturally adapted and socially integrated at the same time.

So this would be an open question which needs more empirical studies. This argument tried to highlight this issue to may cause more attention and more studies which would result on useful data and acknowledgment which can bring up insights about a crucial challenge among migrants according to sociological concepts. At this stage, concluding the argument by a brief review would not enable us to have a concrete conclusion. It should be noted that each concept has different aspects and effects. So, this argument not only needs more documentary and empirical studies to enrich the findings but also to make referable results.

References

1. Alba, R. , & Nee, V. (1997). Assimilation theory for a new era of immigration. Int Migration Rev, 31, 826-874.
2. Ferguson, C. (2008, July). Promoting social integration. In Report Commissioned by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) for the Expert Group Meeting on Promoting Social Integration, Helsinki, Finland (pp. 8-10).
3. Katz, D. , & Kahn, R. L. (1978). The social psychology of organizations (Vol. 2, p. 528). New York: Wiley.
4. Sam, D. L. , Vedder, P. , Liebkind, K. , Neto, F. , & Virta, E. (2008). Immigration, acculturation and the paradox of adaptation in Europe. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 5(2), 138-158.
5. Turner JH, Beeghly L, Powers CH (1989). The Emergence of Sociological Theory. Chicago, IL: The Dorsey Press.
6. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. (2016). International Migration Report 2015: Highlights.
7. Ward, C. (2001). The A, B, Cs of acculturation. The handbook of culture and psychology, 411-445.