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Sorrells, Intercultural Communication, Instructor Resources
Chapter 5
Crossing Borders: Migration and Intercultural Adaptation
Lecture Notes: Chapter Overview, Objectives and Outline
Chapter Overview
As the forces of globalization converge, unprecedented numbers of people have been displaced, dramatically impacting those who are uprooted, those who remain and those in places where people resettle. Advances in communication and transportation technologies have created the conditions for migration networks to form that enable transmigrants to maintain, hybridize and change the “host” cultures and “home” cultures. This chapter begins with a brief discussion of different types of migrants from voluntary and involuntary migrants to postcolonial and transmigrants. The purpose of identifying different types of migrants is to highlight the particular conditions that shape the experiences of migrants. An overview of the three major waves of world migration provides a context for understanding contemporary patterns of migrant mobility, settlement and the emergence of transnational migrant networks. World migration from the first wave to the current wave has been integral to the growth of capitalism. Migrants—on a continuum from voluntary and involuntary—have fueled and resuscitated 1st World economies from the colonial to the industrial and into the post-industrial wave of migration. Viewing migration through a capitalist-labor lens highlights the varying degrees of exclusion and inclusion migrants experience in “host” countries, which significantly affects their ability to participate in “host” countries.
Theories of migration and cultural adaptation from macro, meso and micro-levels are introduced that enable us to understand the dynamic and multifaceted nature of migration and cultural adaptation today. Macro-level theories provide insight into the large scale historical, political and economic structures that shape patterns of migration and adaptation. Micro-level theories enable us to describe and explain individual migrants’ experiences of cultural adjustment and intercultural transformation. Bridging these two, the meso-level focuses on the role of migrant networks in supporting migration and facilitating the creation of transmigrant communities. These theories of migration and cross-cultural adaptation are applied to three case studies pertaining to the experiences of migrants in the global context. Throughout the chapter, the central role of communication in intercultural transitions is highlighted as people navigate the challenges and benefits of crossing borders.
Chapter Objectives
To understand intercultural border crossing and adaptation within the context of globalization.
To explore the unique aspects of migration and intercultural adaptation today as well as the similarities with earlier waves of world migration.
To introduce and apply a multi-level framework to analyze intercultural adaptation that accounts for micro, meso and macro-level factors and influences.
To gain understanding and empathy for the challenges and rewards of migration and intercultural adaptation in the context of globalization.
Key Terms *indicated in bold and italicized letters below
Migrants Chain migration
Voluntary/Involuntary migrants Xenophobia
Immigrants Nativist movements
Sojourners Transmigrants
Human trafficking Postcolonial migrants
Push/pull migration theory Refugees
World systems theory Internally Displaced Persons (IDP)
U and W curve models Guest-workers/Contract workers
Migrant-host relationships High and Low skilled labor
Assimilation Feminization of the workforce
Separation Diaspora
Marginalization Relative deprivation
Integration Brain drain
Integrative theory of cultural adaptation Migrant networks
Melting pot Transnational communications
Pluralism Social capital
Introduction
Border crossing and migration in the context of globalization are shaped by:
Advances in transportation and communication technologies that facilitate frequent, multidirectional flows and the creation of transnational networks of people.
The integration of global capital and markets that has accelerated the concentration of wealth and exacerbated economic inequity both within and across nations.
The implementation of neoliberal policies that has displaced millions of people who are compelled to move for jobs and livelihood.
Escalation in intra-national and international conflict that has propelled unparalleled numbers of people across borders in search of safety, opportunity and the spoils of war.
Nation-states that struggle to re-assert control over national boundaries through increasingly restrictive and punitive immigration policies by erecting walls, utilizing sophisticated surveillance and mobilizing large numbers of people to police borders.
Nobel Prize winning novelist Toni Morrison’s “A Foreigner’s Home” exemplifies the condition and sentiment of global migration, displacement, and exile in search of “home.”
Migrants
Migrants: People who move from their primary cultural context, changing their place of residence for an extended period of time.
Migrants who choose to leave home to travel or re-locate are called voluntary migrants.
Sojourners: Voluntary migrants who leave home for limited periods of time and for specific purposes such as international students, business travelers, tourists, missionaries and military personnel.
Immigrants: Voluntary migrants who leave one country and settle permanently in another country.
Example: Europeans who moved along colonial routes during the first wave of world migration and to industrial centers in Europe and the Americas in the second wave.
Migrants who are forced to leave due to famine, war, and political or religious persecution are called involuntary migrants.
Example: Africans who were traded as slaves during the colonial era, refugees who flee their countries of origin due to war and famine, or those seeking asylum for political reasons today.
Human trafficking: A form of involuntary migration in which people are transported for sex work and other types of labor against their will.
Historical Overview of World Migration
The first wave of world migration
Traced to the European colonial era from the 16th century through the 19th century.
Thousands of migrants—sailors, soldiers, traders, missionaries, administrators and later farmer-settlers—sailed out of ports of Europe for colonies in Africa, Asia and the Americas, establishing sea trade routes that continue to structure migration flows today.
A general pattern followed as colonizers appropriated the so-called “empty” lands and used indigenous peoples to extract the material wealth of the land.
After indigenous labor was almost exhausted or annihilated through genocide and disease, the forced migration of over 15 million slaves from the west coast of Africa provided the labor for the production of commodities in mines and plantations (such as gold, silver, coffee, sugar and cotton) in the colonies.
The African diaspora dispersed people around the world to the Americas, Europe and Asia.
Some 12-37 million people were transported internationally as indentured servants, representing a significant migratory flow to over 40 countries after the abolition of slavery in the mid-19th century.
Working under very poor conditions, indentured laborers were recruited—sometimes by force and sometimes voluntarily—and then transported great distances to fill the labor needs of European colonies.
The wealth extracted from the colonies supported the lavish lifestyles of the ruling elite in Europe.
The exploitation of labor and land was crucial to the rise in economic and political power of European nations that spurred the second large wave of migration.
The second wave of migration
Took place from the mid 1800s to the early 1900s during the industrial revolution, when peasants from the rural parts of Europe, fleeing poverty and famine, migrated to urban areas in Europe, North and South America
Between 1900 and 1930, 40 million people left Europe for North and South America and Australia, first from Britain and Germany, and later from Spain, Italy, Ireland and Eastern Europe
Chain migration: Linkages that connect migrants from points of origin to destinations, leading to the segmentation of ethnic groups in the U.S.
Example: Irish, Italians and Jews tended to settle in the ports of the East Coast, while Central and Eastern Europeans were drawn to work in heavy industries in the Midwest.
Nativist movements: movements that called for the exclusion of foreign-born people.
Example: Chinese and other Asian immigrants were targeted through the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1887
Example: Italian and Irish immigrants, viewed as a threat to American values and as not capable of being assimilated, were also excluded.
Immigration policy in the U.S. has regulated the racial and economic divide and the access to citizenship.
Xenophobia: The fear of outsiders. It dramatically curtailed immigration to the U.S. until after WW II.
Textbox: Communicative practices: Rhetoric of Nativism
The textbox addresses the anti-immigration legislation in Arizona, and discuss how nativism is produced through the rhetoric of fear, criminality, and exclusion.
The third wave
Often labeled the post-industrial wave, is more diverse and multidirectional than previous migrations and encompasses patterns of movement since WWII.
Following WW II, large numbers of Jews left Europe for Israel, as well as South and North America.
Guest workers programs: Workers from the periphery of Europe, Mexico, etc. to fill the labor shortages in industrialized Western Europe and the U.S. due to the war and declining population after WWII through labor agreements established between the governments of the sending and receiving countries.
Postcolonial migrants: Migrants who leave former colonies and re-locate in colonizing countries.
Labor demands in the former European colonizing countries as well as political and economic instability in struggling recently-independent nations resulted in postcolonial migrants,
Example: The movement of Indian, Pakistani and Caribbean migrants to England; North African, Tunisian, Moroccan and West African migrants to France, as well as the movement of migrants from Indonesia, a former Dutch colony, to the Netherlands.
Postcolonial migration patterns counter the directional flows of the first wave of colonial migration resulting in the unanticipated growth of significant non-White, ethnic minority populations within Europe.
From the 1920s to 1965, immigration to the U.S. was severely restricted.
Migrant workers from Mexico were recruited through a guest worker program called the Bracero Program in the 1940s to fill labor shortages during WWII.
Migrants who participated in this program made tremendous contributions to the agricultural industry in the U.S. They provided skilled, low-wage work until the mid-1960s when the program was ended due to protests over harsh working conditions and severe human rights violations.
Migration to the U.S. declined until amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965 challenged the discriminatory national-origins quota system.
The change was not intended or expected to instigate large-scale migration from non-European countries. Yet, with the shift to kinship and family reunification with U.S. citizens as the main criteria, the number of Latin American and Asian immigrations increased dramatically.
Migration Trends in the Context of Globalization
In the later part of the 20th century and into the new millennium, migration is increasingly rapid, complex, multi-directional and diverse.
Countries in Europe who were, in the first and second waves of migration, primarily sending countries are now receiving migrants from Eastern European countries and from former colonies.
Example: While European countries depend on immigrants to fill labor needs and to support the negative population growth, ethnic, racial and religious demographic changes have heightened cultural and political conflicts and increased anti-immigrant sentiment.
Example: Latin America was previously seen as a receiving continent during the colonial and industrial migration waves. However, as a result of macro-level changes such as economic liberalization, Latin America is experiencing massive rural to urban migration within nations, international migration within Latin America (for example, temporary migrants from Nicaragua to Costa Rica and from El Salvador to Mexico) and international migration to North America.
Example: As global economic integration concentrates wealth in more developed countries, Africans from less developed and poverty-ridden countries are driven to more affluent neighboring countries such as the Ivory Coast and South Africa.
Refugees: People who are forced to flee for safety from their country of origin due to war, fear of persecution or famine.
While the number of official refugees has declined in the last decade, the number of internally displaced persons, refugees within one’s own country of origin, has increased to approximately 25 million.
Contract workers: Migrant laborers who work through labor agreements established between the governments of the sending and receiving countries.
Example: Migration patterns within and to the Arab region are propelled primarily by the magnet of oil rich countries that draws laborers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia to the Middle East.
High and Low Skilled Labor: A global division of labor in which educated, high skilled workers migrate to developed countries to work in high tech and medical professions, and low skilled laborers migrate to wealth concentrated countries driven by poverty, and seek work in places such as factory, agriculture, food processing, sex industry and domestic labor.
Regional economic disparities draw low skilled workers from poorer countries—Philippines, India, Sri Lanka—to wealth concentrated Asian countries—Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia—who often perform what is known as the three Ds in Japan, work that is “difficult, dangerous and dirty” such as factory, agricultural, food processing, sex industry and domestic labor.
On the other end of the spectrum, educated, high skilled workers migrate from Asia, primarily from India and China, to developed countries such as the U.S., Canada, England and Australia to work in high tech and medical professions.
Feminization of the Workforce: An increased demand for female migrant workers as domestic caretaker and low-skilled factory workers.
Women are often preferred for low-skilled work because they can be paid less and are more easily exploited.
Today, one half of the 192 million international migrants are women, exacerbating the familial, social, and economic impact of migration and displacement.
Theories of Migration and Intercultural Adaptation
Macro-level Theories
Push/Pull Theory: A theory of migration that circumstances in the country of origin “push” people towards migratory paths and conditions in the country of destination “pull” people towards particular locations.
World-systems theory: A theory of migration that international migration today is a result of the structure of the global capitalism.
Migration flows from less developed or 3rd World countries to more highly developed or 1st world countries are a result of global structural inequity grounded in colonization.
Nation-states and global institutions that act on behalf of capitalists drive migration as they take advantage of land, labor, resources and markets in peripheral or 3rd World countries.
Decisions, policies and treaties made at the global institutional level—the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank—create conditions where people cannot survive in their countries of origin, propelling migration.
Melting Pot: A metaphor of U.S. society that the migrants’ adaptation to a new culture inevitably requires and allows newcomers to “melt” or “blend” into the mainstream to form a cohesive whole.
Popularized by Jewish immigrant Israel Zangwill in his play in the early 1900s, assumes that the migrants’ adaptation to a new culture requires and allows newcomers to “melt” or “blend” into the mainstream to form a cohesive whole.
The myth of the melting pot masks the ways that some migrants are not allowed to “melt” and casts suspicion on those who do not want to shed their cultural norms, values and practices.
Pluralism: An ideology that emphasizes the maintenance of ethnic and cultural values, norms and practices within a multicultural society.
Micro Level Theories
U-curve model of adaptation Models of cultural adaptation, consisting of three stages: anticipation, culture shock, and adjustment.
Anticipation: Excitement about the new culture characterizes the sojourner’s experience.
Culture shock: The disorientation and discomfort sojourners experience from being in an unfamiliar environment.
Adjustment: The sojourner learns to negotiate the verbal and nonverbal codes, values, norms, behaviors and assumptions of the new culture. Adjustment varies considerably based on a range of factors including the sojourner’s desire to adapt, the host culture’s receptivity, the degree of similarity or difference between home and host cultures, as well as age, gender, race and socioeconomic background.
W-Curve model:
Addresses the challenges of re-entry into one’s “home” culture
Re-entry or return may follow a similar pattern of anticipation, culture shock and adjustment.
Migrant-Host Relationships: The attitudes of migrants towards their host and own cultures.
Assimilation: The migrant values the host’s culture more than his/her own culture.
Separation: The migrant values his/her own or home culture more than the host culture.
Marginalization: The migrant places little value on either her/his own culture or the host culture.
Integration: The migrant values both his/her own culture and the host culture.
Migration in the Context of Globalization
The attitudes of the migrant to adaptation are not the only factors that influence the migrant-host mode of relationship.
The host nation’s immigration policies, the institutional practices and the attitudes of the dominant culture towards the migrant and her/his group also impact migrants’ experiences.
It is important to consider what role racism and ethnocentrism play in the host or majority culture’s receptivity to the migrant and his or her culture
Migrants move more frequently and rapidly between “host” and “home” cultures, and the modes of relationship that migrants maintain with their own culture within their country of origin is increasingly significant in the intercultural adaptation process.
Textbox 2: Cultural Identity: Home, Family and Culture
A discussion on a Chinese American man whose cultural identity shifted throughout his life across his American culture and the Chinese ancestral homeland.
Integrative theory of cultural adaptation
A theory of cultural adaptation that the individual and the environment co-define adaptation process, including the attitudes and receptivity of the host environment, the ethnic communities within the majority culture, and the psychological characteristics of the individual.
Humans have an innate self-organizing drive and a capacity to adapt to environmental challenges.
Adaptation of an individual to a given cultural environment occurs in and through communication.
Adaptation is a complex and dynamic process that brings about a qualitative transformation of the individual.
Stress, adaptation and growth interact with each other in adjusting in new and different cultural environments.
Deculturation: The unlearning of some aspects of their culture of origin.
Intercultural transformation: Occurs as a result of this stress-adaptation-growth process and identifies three outcomes:
Increased functional fitness of the migrant’s ability to engage effectively with the host culture.
Improved psychological health of the migrant in coping with the environment.
A shift towards an intercultural identity, which allows the migrant to connect and identify with multiple cultural groups.
Meso Level Theories
Meso-level theories of migration and cultural adaptation seek to bridge macro-level theories that emphasize structural issues and micro-level theories that focus on individual attributes in the cultural adaptation process.
Migrant networks: Interpersonal connections among current and former migrants, as well as non-migrants in origin and destination areas through ties of kinship, friendship and shared origin.
Social groups and collective cultural relationships motivate, sustain and give meaning to migration and cultural adaptation processes.
Migrant social networks provide information and support for travel, housing, employment, education and health care.
Social Capital: The sense of commitment and obligation people within a group or network have to look after the well-being and interests of one another.
Transmigrants: Migrants who move across national boundaries to new locations for work and family reunification and yet, also maintain cultural, social, economic and political ties with their country, region, or city of origin.
Example: Social networking website for migrants.
Case Studies: Migration and Intercultural Adaptation
Villachuato, Mexico to Marshalltown, Iowa: Transnational Connections
A case study about Mexican migrants in Iowa.
Macro-level analysis:
High unemployment and poverty in Mexico relative to the U.S. “push” migrants from Mexico and “pull” them to the U.S.
A world systems approach argues that historically, colonization and military force were used to establish conditions for the accumulation of capital by European and U.S. powers.
Today, the conditions are established and maintained by “free trade agreements,” (i.e. NAFTA and CAFTA) negotiated through global governance bodies such as the IMF, WB and WTO.
Meso-level analysis:
Migrant networks pass along knowledge and experience about safe migration routes, work, housing, and other services through interpersonal communication with friends, family relations and community connections.
Transnational communities: Communities constructed by transmigrants, characterized by intertwining familial relationships across locations, identification with “home” or sending locations, and the ability to mobilize collective resources.
Micro-level analysis:
The transmigrants’ social, cultural, economic and political allegiance to and sustained contact with their community in Mexico challenges the migrant-host mode of relationship of assimilation.
The migrant-host mode of relationship in this case is initially one of separation both voluntary and imposed.
As a transnational community is forged, Marshalltown residents and the community as a whole are also changed over time by the interactions and experience a process of intercultural adaptation characterized by stress, adaptation and growth.
Fujian, China to New York City, USA: Human Smuggling of Low-Skilled Workers
A case study of a Chinese family migrated to New York City through underground network.
Micro-level analysis:
U-Curve and W-Curve Model: Ms. Zhang experienced the stages of the U-Curve model as she progressed through excitement and anticipation, the disorientation and anxiety of culture shock and an extended period of cultural adjustment. She experienced disorientation after her return to China.
Macro-level analysis:
Push-pull theory: Workers in China, on average, can make about twice as much in cities than in rural areas and as much as eight times more in coastal cities.
In the U.S., the average income is twenty times that of earnings in coastal cities of China. Yet, on a wage of $3 per hour as undocumented workers, migrants work 80-90 hours per week to cover basic needs and pay off debts to their smugglers.
Media: Media images of wealth, lavish lifestyles, and material success circulate around the world creating dissatisfaction with what one has and instilling desires for greater wealth and status, creating a sense of relative deprivation.
Brain Drain: An aspect of high-skilled migration in which high-skilled workers migrate to another country, resulting in a huge loss in terms of knowledge, skills, investment and capital for sending countries.
Example: The large numbers of Indian scientists, doctors and computer programmers who migrated to the U.S. and other 1st World countries in the 1980s and 1990s are an example of brain drain. Yet, today, with the phenomenal growth of high tech industries in India, many Indian migrants are returning to India.
North Africa-France: Post-colonial immigrant experience
A case study of Nazim, a 25 years old French citizen of Algerian descent who struggles to belong in French society and his parents’ Algerian culture.
Macro-level analysis:
Colonial history and postcolonial relationship between France and Algeria.
As a postcolonial immigrant, Nazim negotiates his racial, cultural, religious and class positions in France.
Racism and prejudice underscore the experiences of Algerian immigrants in France.
Meso-level analysis:
Migrant networks: Algerian migrants’ segregation from and stigmatization within mainstream French culture was intensified by discriminatory housing and employment practices, law enforcement, legal and educational systems.
Immigrant Algerian communities in France played a significant role in the Algerian independence movement leading to brutal conflicts between French authorities and protesters.
Protesting the rise in racist killings and their second-class citizenship status even as they hold French nationality, young people from Algerian communities in France organized anti-racist social movements in the 1980s.
Stereotypes, institutionalized forms of discrimination and anti-immigrant rhetoric have intensified in recent years as high levels of unemployment and socio-economic crisis exclude French citizens of Algerian descent.
Micro-level analysis:
Marginalization best describes the migrant-host-home relationship that Nazim experiences both in France and Algeria.
When he returns to Algeria, he is perceived as “too French,” as a “traitor” in the complex postcolonial and neocolonial relationship between Algeria and France.
In the Algerian community in Paris, he sets himself apart from local groups who have organized based on religious affiliation to meet the needs of the community.
Summary of the Case Studies
A number of factors influence the experiences of migrants crossing borders today.
The history of relations between nations.
The globalization of capitalism, integration of markets, and the implementation of neoliberal polices.
Legal and economic status, educational level, language abilities, gender, age and familiarity with the “host” culture.
The reception of the “host” culture to the migrant group also has a tremendous impact.
Migrant networks and support.
Summary
Types of migrants.
Historical overview of world migration
Migration trends in the context of globalization
Theories of migration and intercultural adaptation
Case studies
