Acculturation Strategies

Week 3 Assignment: Acculturation Strategies Worksheet
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Part 1: Acculturation Strategies Much cross-cultural research has focused on acculturation—that is, the process by which people adjust to contact with a culture other than their own. John Berry has developed a model for understanding the strategies that people use in acculturation. This activity involves applying Berry’s model to your own acculturation experience in order to better understand this process.Directions: Think about an experience you have had acculturating, or adjusting, to another culture. You may have traveled outside of your country or to an unfamiliar region of your own country. Perhaps you have spent time with an ethnic group or social class different from your own. For people entering an unfamiliar academic culture, adjusting to college may even involve acculturation. In the space provided below, describe your acculturation experience. Then answer the questions based on Berry’s model in order to analyze your own acculturation experience.Description of your acculturation experience: Just before the COVID-19 pandemic, my white friend invited me for a two-day trip in the countryside to birdwatch. At first, I felt that engaging in such a recreational activity was awkward and a waste of time I could spend having fun elsewhere, including partying with my local friends. Despite this reluctance, I accompanied her on this new adventure.  
John Berry’s model includes four types of acculturation strategies employed by members of the non-dominant culture: Integration, Assimilation, Separation, and Marginalization (Berry, 2001; Donà & Berry, 1994). Read the descriptions of these strategies below and think about which one best describes your own acculturation strategy.• Integration – The individual maintains their own cultural identity while at the same time becoming a participant in the dominant culture.• Assimilation – The individual gives up their own cultural identity and becomes absorbed into the dominant culture.• Separation – The individual maintains their own cultural identity and rejects involvement with the dominant culture.• Marginalization – The individual does not identify with or participate in either their own culture or the dominant culture.
1. Which of the four modes above best characterizes your acculturation strategy? Please explain.Integration is the mode that characterizes my acculturation strategy. Although I participated in the dominant cultural activity, birdwatching, I maintained my identity as an African American female. 
Berry’s (2001) model also includes four types of acculturation strategies adopted by the dominant culture: Multiculturalism, Melting Pot, Segregation, and Exclusion. Read the descriptions of these strategies below and think about which best describes the orientation of the society or group into which you are acculturated.• Multiculturalism – T...