Cultural assimilation

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Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a society's majority group or fully adopts the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group.^[1] The melting pot model is based on this concept. A related term is cultural integration, which describes the process of becoming economically and socially integrated into another society while retaining elements of one’s original culture. This approach is also known as cultural pluralism,^[2] and it forms the basis of the cultural mosaic model that upholds the preservation of cultural rights. Another closely related concept is acculturation, which occurs through cultural diffusion and involves changes in the cultural patterns of one or both groups, while still maintaining distinct characteristics.^[3]

There are two types of cultural assimilation, which are full assimilation and forced assimilation. Full assimilation is the more prevalent of the two, as it occurs spontaneously.^[4] Assimilation can also involve what is called additive assimilation,^[5] in which individuals or groups expand their existing cultural repertoire rather than replacing their ancestral culture. This is an aspect it shares with acculturation as well.^[2] When used as a political ideology, assimilationism refers to governmental policies of deliberately assimilating ethnic groups into the national culture.^[6] It encompasses both voluntary and involuntary assimilation.^[7]

In both cultural assimilation and integration, minority groups are expected to outright adopt the everyday practices of the dominant culture by using the common language in conversations, following social norms, integrating economically and engaging in sociopolitical activities such as cultural absorption, active advocacy and electoral and community participation. Various forms of exclusion, social isolation, and discrimination can hinder the progress of this process.^[8][9][10]

Cultural integration, which is mostly found in multicultural communities, resembles a type of sociocultural assimilation because, over time, the minority group or culture may assimilate into the dominant culture, and the defining characteristics of the minority culture may become less obverse or disappear for practical reasons. Hence, in certain sociopolitical climates, cultural integration could be conceptualized as similar to cultural assimilation, with the former considered merely as one of the latter's phases.^[11]