Cultural assimilation

Cultural assimilation, or absorption (but that word also has other meanings), is an intense process of consistent integration in which members of an ethno-cultural group, typically immigrants or other minority groups, are "absorbed" into an established, generally larger community, with the intent to change one culture to make them similar to another. That causes a loss of all or many of the characteristics that make the newcomers different. A region or society where assimilation is occurring sometimes referred to as a "melting pot." In essence, cultural assimilation is many different cultural groups working towards one unified goal.

From a historical perspective, assimilation is how an individual or minority group loses its original culture when absorbed into another culture. In the context of colonialism, it is a policy of total integration of colonies into the colonizing country. Assimilation is often remembered as painful or coercive.

Related pages

• Naturalization
• Syncretism
• Multiculturalism

Other websites

• Asian-Nation: Asian American Assimilation & Ethnic Identity
• From Paris to Cairo: Resistance of the Unacculturated Archived 2010-12-09 at the Wayback Machine