Acculturation

Subject of this week was acculturation. The term refers to the developing adaptation to a new cultural atmosphere. In the book, acculturation is explained in a more inclusive frame rather than just being able to adapt to new cultural norms.

Acculturation process is divided into two dimensions: Explicit and implicit acculturation. Explicit acculturation refers to the conscious changes in the behavior. Individuals integrate to the cultural environment they are in knowingly. Implicit acculturation is the process of acculturation that happen unconsciously. Depending on the original cultural background of the individual and the cultural environment the individual is in, acculturation may have various psychological effects. Changes in the attitudes, behavior, cognitions or emotions may be observed.

The research article examines how different migration methods affect the mental health of individuals. Article classifies four main methods of migration: Integration (Individual adapts to the host culture while retaining their own), assimilation (Rejecting their own cultural norms when adapting to the new ones), separation (Rejection of the host culture and retaining the original one) and marginalization (Rejection of both host and original cultural norms). Article also classifies the mental health into sections such as depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, PTSD etc. Migrants are also categorized in accordance to their reason of migration: War/conflict reasons, economic reasons, environmental reasons etc.

Results showed that while the integration strategy is the healthiest strategy for mental health of migrants, the marginalization method had the worst effects. These people could face discrimination from people from both host and original culture. Ethnic background is one of the fundamentals of identity formation, therefore the tendency to a low level of mental health of these people are relatively higher. Economic status of a migrant is also effective with migration method on mental health. Most of the studies that the research is based on are from western and high-income countries, research has limitations in this point.

Acculturation is a subject that includes a lot of politics in itself. Preventions based on individuals may not be sufficient without a corrupt sociopolitical environment. To this day, we see the application of migration strategies that are not safe for individuals to retain their mental health in order to manage the poverty in a country or ideological corruption. In my opinion the limitation of the article about the data being from western high-income countries is a bigger limitation than it seems. These studies should especially be conducted in middle eastern countries like Turkey, which both has hostile policies against migrants and minorities and is a low-income country.