The Theoretical Conceptions of the Integration of the Ethnic Groups

Abstract

In the practical activity and the theoretical reflection on ethnic groups there appear difficulties connected with the analysis and explanation of the changes they undergo.

In order to explain the changes, a synopsis of the research on emigration and Polish colony societies presents the use of three conceptions — theoretical frames (containing o plan-outline of the analysis, on introductory definition of the examined phenomenon) and the basic conceptual categories which help to explain and describe the mutual influences and interaction between the minority and majority groups and among other ethnic groups. There are distinguished here: the theory of assimilation, the theory of adjustment and the theory of integration.

The investigators of the Polish immigration to the USA (Wytrwal, Polzin and others) agree that those analytical theories originated in the corresponding periods of American history and ideology, politics in relation to immigrants. But they are still living.

The theory of assimilation took the lead in the USA up to the 1980’s, that is, in the time of anglo-conformity. It defines the changes undergoing among immigrants as taking over the values and models of living of the majority group (or so-called native society), and its own, home culture brought away from the mother country. It also implies the loss of identification with the nation of the country of docent (Berry).

The theory of assimilation does not fulfill the demands placed by the methodology of every scientific theory. Every analytical theory should be formulated in the way it can exclude ambiguity in describing both the kind of phenomenon in which take place, and the character, limits, the essence and the direction of the changes. Meanwhile in the theory of assimilation, the changes are defined once in the realm of a part, once as a totality of culture, once as the partial, once as the temporal, once as the irreversible, once as the loss of ethnic culture and the acceptance of the majority group culture, once as the creation of modified subculture.

The theory of assimilation has not proved to explain the processes of cultural collision an a big scale.

The theory of adjustment is also widespread. The concept of the adjustment has been formulated by I. W. Thomas and F. Znaniecki and more closely described by J. Zubrzycki in his research and the book: Polish Immigrants in Britain. The adjustment defines all the interactions occurring among immigrants and „the native society”. The point of it is, that the immigrants make up and agree on their system of values and models of behaviour dominating in the native society. The process finishes either in assimilation, or accommodation or conflict. Another version of the theory of adjustment is the concept of acculturation; it has been formulated by representatives of the cultural anthropology (Capentner and Katz).

The concept of integration (Durkheim, Sorokin, Parsons, Landecker), describe the situation of the present culture of the multiethnical society as the mutual infiltration and integration of some cultures of ethnic groups (or their elements) with the culture of a majority group into one complex but more or less coordinated unity. „Integration” is also defined as „a mutual exchange of cultural values” or a mutual infiltration of cultures leading to new cultural values.

Integration may occur in various spheres of the structure and culture of a given society. It is not only the process of synchronizing and accordinating ethnic cultures and a majority group, but also that of passive or active participating in the culture of the ethnic group and the culture of the majority group.

Not all points are clear in this conception. Anyway, it underlines the presence of the two-sided processes of influencing the minority group on the majority group and vice versa. According to this conception, one may presuppose that assimilation on a big scale has no chance of being, since a majority group takes various elements over from the culture of a minority group, even when the latter dies out. And the assimilation in the strict, and not colloquial meaning of the word, may occur only in the separate measure of an individual.

Attempting at systematizing the discussion and the criticism of these conceptions, it must be stated that from the individuals point of view the process of interaction, or cultural collision runs between two extreme states, that is, the ethnocentric monism trough the cultural pluralism (or dualism) up to the other pole, that is assimilation. The socio- psychological situation of the ethnocentric moinsm means that a given individual is unwilling to accept a new system of values and pattern of behaviour, and strictly maintains his ethnic subculture when living in another country. Pluralism denotes a state in which immigrants or their descendants accept both the culture of the native society and the culture of their ethnic group. Assimilation meant a complete loss of one’s ethnic culture and identifying himself with it in favour of accepting the culture of the country of settlement. Certainly it is possible to draw a line at any point on the scale of all these states. One can distinguish at least three levels: high, medium, and low.

On a big scale, or in inter — group cources of the processes of mutual culture infiltration, these changes lead to the following states of the ethnic groups: the isolation — in ghettos and on the opposite pole — the dispersal of the ethnic group, but in the middle: the accomodation or adjustment, whether the integration.