1.1 Strategies and processes of adaptation in immigration  (Page 5/11)

For those in favor of cultural pluralism, assimilation is not something inevitable, as supposed by Park and Burgess, nor are there reasons to suppose that ethnic groups want to assimilate. Jews, for example, seem to bet on continuing being Jewish simultaneously as they triumph and are “structurally” assimilated at the highest professional levels. Black Americans, since the times of slavery, have not assimilated as had been predicted. It will be necessary to conceive the American nation as a "cultural mosaic,” where a “common culture” is being developed into a new denominated ethnicity, very different from the original culture of the host society and of the cultural legacies of immigrants (Greeley, 1974; Yancey, Ericksen,&Juliani, 1976, pp. 391-403).

Gordon (1978) tried to establish some relation between the two currents of thought, while distinguishing several stages, dimensions, and degrees in the assimilation process, as it is reflected in this table:

Table 1. the assimilation variables

Gordon, M. (19780. Human Nature, Class and Ethnicity, New York, Oxford University Press, 1978, pg. 169.

In this way Gordon (1978) tried to define the real situation of Blacks, Jews, Catholics (excluding Blacks and Hispanic-Catholics), and Puerto Ricans by considering these seven variables and their sub-processes, clarifying the type and degree of assimilation relative to each. Based upon this information, he concludes that a plurality of types and degrees of assimilation exist. The United States, therefore, reflects an “incomplete assimilation” of the original nuclear culture and, altogether, more acculturation than “structural assimilation”. By using the term “structural assimilation,” Gordon means “the entrance of the immigrants and their descendants into the social cliques, organizations, institutional activities, and general civic life of the receiving society” (p. 203). Considered by some to be an assimilationalist theoretician; and by others as an enforcer of pluralism, Gordon has without a doubt committed himself to the debate about the interethnic or multicultural relations.

Extensions, modifications, and critics of classic theories

At the beginning of the 1960s, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan (1963) reformulated the central question: Have the ethnic minorities, in fact, been assimilated? Their study concluded that for several generations most ethnic groups have maintained their identity to an unexpected degree. Twenty years later, they received affirmation of their position, since no basic changes occurred between 1963 and 1983 regarding the immigrants’ tendency to maintain their ethnic identities in the United States (Perlez, 1983). These two authors, along with the already mentioned A. Greeley and Michael Novak (1971), are considered responsible for the ethnic revival of the 1960s and 1970s. However, Herbert H. Gans (1982) questioned the reality of this supposed revival. See also: “Symbolic ethnicity: The future of ethnic groups and cultures in America”, Ethnic and Racial Studies 2 (1979) 1-20. What happened, in his opinion, was that ethnic groups were becoming more visible as a result of their ascending mobility or as a result of becoming a marginalized social “subclass” of the main current. In both cases, ethnic groups tended to adopt a “symbolic ethnicity,” a type of nostalgic regeneration of the love and pride for their country of origin and its traditions; something they experience sentimentally but do not include in their daily lives. For that reason, he thought the tendency of assimilation was still powerful and dominant, and that only those aspects of the ethnicity that were transformable into symbols and easily practicable (to eat at an ethnic restaurant, to feel proud for the success of an artist or politician of the same ethnic origin, and things of that sort) would persist.