Joining a new culture

Integration in a new country works well when immigrants maintain links with their own culture while also fully participating in the society they now live in

TEACHING IMMIGRANT children how to be Irish is not the best way to integrate them into our country, according to a Canadian expert on social psychology.

Prof John Berry, emeritus professor of psychology at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, believes a multicultural approach to integration that values both the culture of the immigrant and the dominant culture of the host country is the best way forward.

Berry has been in Ireland for the past few weeks, visiting the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences at Trinity College Dublin.

Terms such as assimilation, integration and multiculturalism are often bandied about when we talk about how people from different cultural backgrounds can fit into our society.

Berry is cautious about the casual use of these terms which have distinct meanings and very different outcomes for society as a whole.

Assimilation, for instance, really means becoming part of, or the same as, the dominant cultural identity of the place you have emigrated to, he says.

“Countries like Germany have had programmes teaching people how to become a German and teaching Britishness has been a Labour Party policy in Britain,” he says.

France is another country which has encouraged its immigrant population to become French with very mixed results.

His research on immigration has found that the model which promotes integration through multiculturalism works best for both the people from the host country and those who come to live there.

“This model encourages immigrants to maintain links with their own heritage and culture while at the same time encouraging them to participate fully in the society they have come to live in,” he explains.

“People who hold on to this sense of continuity with their own cultural backgrounds do better than those for whom the links are broken,” he explains.

“However, if they only hold onto these links and don’t participate in the wider society by learning the language, joining clubs, and so on, they risk becoming separate from the society they live in.”

Family life and schools are the key features in young people’s lives that help or hinder integration into a new country. Yet giving everyone the chance to set up their own schools is something he cautions against.

“In Holland, two years ago, the Dutch parliament declared that multiculturalism had failed because schools didn’t serve an integration function.

“A number of different schools had been set up but social interaction between the children was largely absent.”

And although he praises the “mutual accommodation” integration principles adopted by the EU, he is concerned by the division between public and private domains when it comes to the expression of your cultural heritage.

“The idea that you can express your culture privately and not in public flies in the face of institutional change,” he says. “Education and health practices should reflect all the cultural traditions in society.”

His view is supported by Mary Ryan, chairwoman of the English Language Support Teachers Association and a member of the D15 School Cultural Mediation Project.

“We are connecting with local communities so that we can all learn to honour our own culture while embracing others,” she explains.

She is also assistant principal at Castleknock Community College and points to the school’s policies on interculturalism and anti-racism.

“Ten per cent of our students are international and we aim to reflect this percentage in the mentors, prefects and awards given out by the school,” she says.

The college also has an afterschool international board games club in which students teach other students games from various cultures.

Berry acknowledges that the economic situation in countries strongly correlates to attitudes to immigrants.

“There is a Canadian study which looked at annual unemployment figures from the 1960s to the present day. This study shows that the harsher the economic climate, the harsher the attitudes towards immigrants,” he says.

Growing up as a member of the only English family in a small French village in Canada, his own experience of cultural dominance was formed at an early age.

“I was a bit isolated – divided by both language and religion. I had to take a bus to a school in a town some distance away every day.”

Despite that, he believes the long-standing multiculturalism policy in Canada is a good model. “Through this policy, people are supported financially to maintain, develop and transmit their heritage and culture and nothing can be done to undermine this.

“Everyone also has the right to fully participate in the larger society and this motivates people to get involved which reduces prejudices and breaks down attitudinal and behavioural barriers.”

Ultimately, he believes everyone has to be willing to negotiate and compromise in an immigrant nation.

“It’s not only the immigrants who have to change but everyone has to change. If your culture is threatened, your attitudes will turn hostile to the source of this threat. And only when people are secure in their own identities, will they be able to accept those who are different from them.”

The Immigrant Council of Ireland says that while the Irish Government recognises the need to promote integration “at the moment, efforts are still largely ad hoc and the onus is on the individual migrant to make an effort, without systematic processes in place”.