CULTURAL ASSIMILATION

The treatment accorded to immigration, and the management of cultural diversity that it brings, is another side of the construction and reproduction of our Western societies. Since the nineteenth century, assimilation has been the process by which successive waves of immigrants became “French or North-American”. While objectives were common -cultural assimilation and the identification with a national-cultural identity-, the ways to get it varied from one State to another: from the “French republican model” to the North-American “melting pot”.

Management formulas: they should be understood as a ideology, policies and practices whole which not only show and express the kind of social cohesion, political traditions and identity myths, but also the forms of unequal relationship, the balances and adjustments among groups culturally different and hierarchical.

HOMOGENIZATION AND MODERNITY
Assimilation: process by which a person or a group adopts as its own the dominant culture in the society while he leaves his differenced cultural identity. The traditional immigrant-receiving countries, like France and the USA, hoped these people left their heritage and assimilated the cultural customs of the host country progressively.
Assimilation of immigrants was an other aspect of the strong trend towards the homogenization which characterized the process of the nation-state construction.

In order to assimilate these people, governments designed nation-building programs which consisted in a series of measures:
1.Promotion of a common language.
2.Only curricular content in teaching.
3.Participation in the “national” institutions.
4.Identification with some symbolic referents and historical myths, etc.
These measures were linked to some aims: modern economy, literate population and a bigger political and social cohesion.
Thus, immigrants were incorporated into societies which were constituted on the basis of a hegemonic culture and identified as cohesion and homogeneity.

The success of the assimilation process was based on social dynamics and actions of institutions, with their explicit requirements-learning the language-and implicit-adapting to the customs.

Many of these societies were more heterogeneous than its national image proclaimed.


FRENCH REPUBLICAN ASSIMILATION
The model of the III Republic involved the adoption of the French language and culture, the adherence to the “republican values”: freedom, equality and fraternity; and to a common political-national project too by the participation and framing in a series of institutions and social spaces such as school, army and the world of work.
The key idea of the French republican model: socialization through institutions of the Republic and permanent residence assimilates the immigrant, and makes him or his children, French. Thus, the well integrated immigrant expresses himself in French, identifies himself with France and with the behaviours, customs and habits of the major part of the population. As this model doesn't consider to keep the cultures of origin, it's logical its hostility towards groups and communities based on the immigrant culture. Besides it's considered a danger for the success of the acculturation process, the existence of specific groups may weaken the loyalty to the Republic.
Cultural or religious peculiarities are own of the private sphere, they shouldn't have public projection.


FROM ASSIMILATION TO PLURALISM
Both the French republican model as the American “melting pot” offered to immigrants, in exchange for their acculturation and identification with France or the USA, the promise of full social and economic integration. This promise of upward social mobility will be no longer kept. I becomes more difficult and selective in a more unequal and fragmented society, both in its structure as in its social actors, and where the greatest danger is not exploitation but exclusion. The increase in inequality and social problems entail the reduction of the protective action of States. Meanwhile, social ties which provided security, identity and sense weaken.
Not only differences and social dynamics of exclusion increase, but they tend to ethnificate. Immigrants and ethnic groups are “underneath” inserted in the social structure. Upward social mobility is much more difficult and the social ethnificated stratification is consolidated. Lost ideological and social referents, the search for meaning and discontent tend to express in identity keys.
In the 80s and 90s, conflicts with the involvement of groups arisen from immigration in poor districts grow. This situation is reflected in school failure, violent attitudes and “difficult areas”.
However, with globalization it has increased the importance given to the own culture, the assessment of the own identity and the legitimacy of its defense.


THE REPUBLICAN INTEGRATION IN THE 90s
Inclusion of immigrants happens: move towards social integration and appropriate and respectful management of cultural differences is attempted.
But, the French people is only one and there are no recognitions to specific and different identities.
The republican way of the recognition of diversity is very wary. It accepts the preservation of cultural diversity but reaffirms the specific republican accents: the need to emphasize the common things, solidarity and social cohesion as a major concern; individual integration as a citizen and the refusal to institutionalize minorities, particularly by law channel; primacy of individual rights to minority representation.