Page 431 - Cultures and Organizations

396 IMPLICATIONS

■ Descendants of imported labor (examples are American blacks,
Turks, and Mediterraneans in northwestern Europe)
■ Natives of former colonies (for example, Indians and Pakistanis in
Britain and northern Africans in France)
■ International nomads (Sinti and Roma people—Gypsies—in most of
Europe and partly even overseas)

In many countries the minority picture is highly volatile because of
ongoing migration. The number of people in the second half of the twenti-
eth century who left their native countries and moved to a completely dif-
ferent environment is larger than ever before in human history. The effect
in all cases is that persons and entire families are parachuted into cultural
environments vastly different from the ones in which they were mentally
programmed, often without any preparation. They have to learn a new lan-
guage, but a much larger problem is that they have to function in a new cul-
ture. Hassan Bel Ghazi, a Moroccan immigrant to the Netherlands, wrote:

Imagine: One day you get up, you look around but you can’t believe your
eyes. . . . Everything is upside down, inside as well as outside. . . . You
try to put things back in their old place but alas—they are upside down
forever. You take your time, you look again and then you have an idea: “I’ll
put myself upside down too, just like everything else, to be able to handle
things.” It doesn’t work. . . . And the world doesn’t understand why you
stand right. 15

Political ideologies about majority-minority relations vary immensely.
Racists and ultrarightists want to close borders and expel present minor-
ities—or worse. The policies of civilized governments aim somewhere
between two poles on a continuum. One pole is assimilation, which means

that minority citizens should become like everybody else and lose their dis-
tinctiveness as fast as possible. The other pole is integration, which implies
that minority citizens, while accepted as full members of the host society, are
at the same time encouraged to retain a link with their roots and their col-
lective identity. Paradoxically, policies aiming at integration have led to bet-
ter and faster adaptation of minorities than policies enforcing assimilation.
Migrants and refugees often came in as presumed temporary expatri-
ates but turned out to be stayers. In nearly all cases they moved from a
more traditional, collectivist society to a more individualist society. For

their adaptation it is essential that they find support in a community of