Assimilating a New Culture.

Assimilating a New Culture

        Probably, one of the most difficult things of changing address would be adapting to a whole new lifestyle. It implies new neighbors, new places, and even sometimes, new rules. It would be hardest to change the region you live, but nothing compared to the process of changing your country of residency, what forces the immigrant to get used to a very different culture. More than the new neighbors or new rules accepted by the new resident, the very important difficulty consists on assimilate into this new culture in order to fit in the new society. Although most of the responsibility of this lies on the newly-arrived immigrant, there are some facts external to them and that would take an impact in the process of assimilation that corresponds to those that are receiving the new ones.

        Some people affirms that only by the efforts of the immigrant, the process of assimilation can be undertaken. It is important to accept the fact that the person must work on his adaptation to the new country other way they will never be able to be part of the new society. It is also important the group of individual features the person has when they try to join the members of this new group, where the most influential feature would be the resilience. “Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress”(American Psycological Assosiation, 2016) where the change of residence seems like a threat to the person. But these are not the only facts that take part on a process where a person has to adapt to the customs of a group they are not part of, where there are different characters besides of the immigrant itself. It means that the hosts take part on the process and are as responsible of the road of the process as the new-arrived is.

        In fact, the way the immigrants are received by the eldest habitants may influence the process itself. For example, arriving to a place where there are hostile hosts might turn the process into something even harder. It is known through American history; almost all of the immigration periods have been affected by violence from both parts: natives and foreigners.

http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resilience.aspx

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