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Introduction to culture shock
Strengths and weaknesses of cultural behaviour
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Introduction to culture shock
Strengths and weaknesses of cultural behaviour
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
It can be overwhelming to immigrate to a new nation since everything is unfamiliar—new
So when they return to their homelands, they have hard time getting along with the native people, cultures and traditions. Often, these ‘non-residents’ marry someone from other countries, and both the spouses experience troubles getting acquainted with their partners’ cultures and ways of living. Things get even more difficult for the non-residents’ children. Many of them are born and brought up in the foreign culture. These children actually live in two different environments - one at home that resemble the original cultures of their home country or their root, and one outside their homes (the culture and traditions of the country they are living in).
America is the “melting pot” country where immigrants from various countries around the world come here and settle. They come here either for economy, political, education or medical reason. When they migrate here they bring with them their culture, religious, value and belief which makes America more diverse and interest. Yet, at the same time it often leads to two cultures collision. Cultural shock is unavoidable for almost newcomer refugee people.
First euphoria, when moving to a new culture it is that new and exciting feeling, one might not understand the shock soon to come with this new change. They just feel that overwhelming sense of excitement, they are ready experience this place and all it has to offer. I can imagine for many that euphoria never really lasts long before the overwhelming sense of judgment and lost come through. No two places are ever the same and with moving across cultures comes the change in cultural and social norms.
Intimate Colonialism is when the government tried to set up a policy that would encourage Indian Service staff members to intermarry with Native Americans. During the late 19th century, immigration was rising and the big thing in this era was assimilation. Assimilation is integrating people to be accustomed to the United States culture, behavior, value and norms. Though Native Americans have lived in America longer than anyone, the federal government thought that instead of ostracizing them for wanting to value their traditional culture, they created an assimilation policy for Native Americans. “The government’s assimilation policy sought to destroy Native nations’ cultural and political identities by replacing them with Anglo – American norms of behavior (108).”
Therefore, there is an apparent dynamic system of constraints and barriers and an immigrant or refugee’s level of assimilation or acculturation in which suggests that as one becomes more familiar and integrated into their new environment, the constraints and barriers they face will not be as significant (Stodolska, 1998).
Immigrants usually go through phases when it comes to migrating to a new country and this essay was an attempt to outline those phases with an emphasis on the negative effects of assimilation. Firstly, isolation. Nearly every immigrant finds themselves isolated at first, but this tends to go away as they become assimilated with the new culture. As this happens, they start to lose touch with their cultural identity and start to change in order to fit in with the new culture. Sometimes this is forced, other times the immigrant knowingly assimilates.
Acculturation is the method of attaining the lifestyle of one’s host country which encompasses the concurrent detachment from their native culture. Immigrant acculturation is a continuous process that can take years to decades to complete (Ajayi & Ajayi, 2008). Unidimensional acculturation occurs along a linear scale from not being completely absorbed in one’s original culture to being utterly engrossed in the new dominant culture (LaVeist & Isaac, 2013). An example of a unidimensional transition can be seen when teens become heavily involved with new friends or a new group at school and follow the crowd in order to fit in. Bi-dimensional acculturation emphasizes the integration among both the dominant culture and the original culture (LaVeist & Isaac, 2013).
Nevertheless, when immigrating to the U.S. many newcomers find themselves lost the vastness of the contemporary culture this is known as culture shock. Since most people move to the U.S. from developing countries they are not used to the freedoms that America offers. An instance of this is when the speaker of the presentation came emigrated from Israel. At first inclination he found himself enthralled by the independence of Americans. Ironically, he soon became astray when traversing through the subway system.
The traumatic effects caused by immigration Did you know that 29% of foreign-born children and 34% foreign born parents experienced trauma during the immigration process? Thousands of people from all over the world leave their homes in search of a better life for themselves and their families. But, along the way they may experience traumatic events related to the immigration process which can have lasting effects. Separation or loss of a family member, leaving behind a well loved home and community, re-adjusting to new and different culture, food, customs and lifestyle are things many immigrants face, which add to the difficulty of being an immigrant. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder One traumatic effect that is often caused by immigration is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (P.T.S.D).
Today marks my four-month anniversary in Buenos Aires, and I am a little blown away by how quickly time has flown by. It feels simultaneously like I have just arrived, and like I have been here forever. One thing that is certain, I am far from ready to go back to the Netherlands within two months to start writing my thesis. When I travel to new cities and new countries, I tend to fall head-over-heels in love very quickly. Exploring new places is one of the simplest pleasures in life for me, as it enables me to experience the good feeling of freedom and to learn new things.
Life or death situations are daunting and disheartening. Not everyone has to go through a circumstance like that, but some do. A man once composed a fictional short story about a life or death situation, his name was Richard Connell. In Richard Connell's short story "The Most Dangerous Game," humongous game hunter Sanger Rainsford is tested in the following ways: strong versus the weak, the value of life, and becoming what he fears. Rainsford went through many challenges, and each one influenced the other.
Many people who take trips to other countries use it to escape the boredom of their own life and to have fun in another country. Taking vacations can provide excitement when heading to different locales, give a person the tastes and sights of a new place, and overall provide a sense of pleasure to a tourist. However, there is an aspect of this that many tourists do not get to see. In her essay A Small Place, author Jamaica Kincaid makes this aspect very clear. Kincaid, along with many other natives of foreign islands, believes that tourists are “ugly human being[s]” who seemingly feed off the boredom and desperation of the natives of a certain place, creating a source of pleasure for themselves (Kincaid 262).
However, his theory and most of the previous research focus on mainly immigrants’ acculturation. Considering that there are also other groups such as sojourners and expatriates, Berry’s theory and other acculturation theories may not totally apply to the groups apart from immigrants. (Lian & Tsang , 2010). Furthermore, acculturation is usually referred as an adjustment and adaptation process of cultural change as the final outcome (Adler and Gielen (2003). For this reason, the extensive body of research in the expatriation literature has focused on cross-cultural adjustment process of individuals and minority groups in response to their contact with the dominant majority and it constitutes the central conceptual framework of this
Culture Shock-One of Common Problems in Intercultural Communication. Cross-Cultural Communication, 11(8), 71-74. INTRODUCTION Do you think studying in a different country is something that sounds very exciting? Are you like many young people who leave home to study in another country thinking you will have lots of fun?