Page 432 - Cultures and Organizations

Intercultural Encounters 397

compatriots in the country of migration, especially if they are single, but
even when they come with their families, which anyway represent a much
narrower group than they were accustomed to in their home country.

Maintaining migrant communities fits into an integration philosophy as
previously described. Unfortunately, host country politicians, responding
from their individualist value position, often fear the forming of migrant
ghettos and try to disperse the foreigners, falsely assuming that this action
will accelerate their adaptation.
Migrants and refugees usually also experience differences in power
distance. Host societies tend to be more egalitarian than the places the
migrants have left. Migrants experience this difference both negatively and
positively—lack of respect for elders but better accessibility of authorities
and teachers, although they tend to distrust authorities at fi rst. Differences
on masculinity-femininity, on uncertainty avoidance, and on indulgence
between migrants and hosts may go either way, and the corresponding
adaptation problems are specific to the pairs of cultures involved.

First-generation migrant families experience standard dilemmas. At
work, in shops and public offices, and usually also at school, they interact

with locals, learn some local practices, and are confronted with local values.
At home, meanwhile, they try to maintain the practices, values, and rela-
tionship patterns from their country of origin. They are marginal people
between two worlds, and they alternate daily between one and the other.
The effect of this marginality is different for the different generations
and genders. The immigrating adults are unlikely to trade their home
country values for those of the host country; at best they make small adap-
tations. The father tries to maintain his traditional authority in the home,
but at work his status is often low. Migrants start in jobs nobody else
wants. The family knows this, and he loses face toward his relatives. If
he is unemployed, this makes him lose face even more. He frequently has

problems with the local language, which makes him feel foolish. Sometimes
the father is illiterate even in his own language. He has to seek the help of

his children or of social workers in filling out forms and dealing with the
authorities. He is often discriminated against by employers, police, authori-
ties, and neighbors.
The mother in some migrant cultures is virtually a prisoner in the
home, not expected to leave it when the father has gone to work. In these
cases she has no contact with the host society, does not learn the language,
and remains completely dependent on her husband and children. In other
cases the mother has a job too. She may be the main breadwinner of the