A Dynamic Process-Oriented Model – How is Acculturation Experienced?

Though Berry asserted that acculturating migrants follow predictable trajectories that can be categorized within his four-fold model, he has also reflected that significant events can transform these orientations and make migrants reconsider their adaptive strategy (see Sam & Berry, 2010). This formulation places dynamic renegotiations as secondary effects of

acculturative stress, while Bhatia & Ram (2004) emphasize that these alterations are central to understanding how migrant youth begin to situate themselves in response to novel

circumstances. Drawing on theories of globalization that recognizes how migrants maintain ‘transnational’ ties to their homeland while living in their new country (see Glick Schiller, Basch, & Blanc, 1995; Pedraza, 2006), Bhatia (2012) emphasizes that current migrants often belong to diasporic communities. Importantly, this situates transnational individuals between worlds, where identities must be negotiated to function in these communities and reexaminations are necessary and expected (see Bhatia & Ram, 2009). This is further complicated by Hermans’ (2001a) assertion that contemporary globalizing forces are deterritorializing cultures, placing them in constant fluctuations and individuals living in this environment dialectically negotiate personal identities, sometimes constantly. This necessitates a postcolonial and poststructuralist conceptualization of acculturation that highlights this dynamism and questions whether

individuals can ever be fully adapted in society due to questions of race and power.

Boski’s (2008) review of different conceptualizations of ‘integration’ has been influential in moving beyond Berry’s “universal variables” (Cresswell, 2009, p. 168), but these theorizations are more efficacious is describing its different forms, rather than exploring the process that leads to diverse manifestations of integration. For example, Benet-Martínez and Haritatos (2005) conceptualize bicultural identity integration (BII) to explain hybridized identities across domains of cultural conflict and distance but reflect that “further studies are clearly needed to expand and clarify the exact nature of the BII process” (p. 1043). Recognizing this gap, Bhatia (2002a) proposes that

cultures where here and there, past and present, homeland and hostland, self and other are constantly being negotiated with each other (p. 15, emphasis in original).

This approach rejects ideas of a linear, universal model of acculturation because contemporary individuals are situated within ambivalent identities. This provides a novel conceptualization of acculturation, but poses a challenge to scholars trying to operationalize these concepts – how can one measure such an inherently dynamic, situated process? Bhatia (2012) proposes that scholars engaging in identity-based studies on contemporary migrants living in diasporic communities should conceptualize acculturation as a dynamic, ‘dialogical’ process.

Hermans and Gieser (2012) write that conceptualizing a ‘dialogical self’ involves considerations of a “dynamic multiplicity of I-positions” (alluding to James’ [1890] concept of identity; p. 2) that exemplify different components of the self and are constantly repositioning themselves in hierarchies of power. Drawing on Bakhtin (1986), these I-positions are then voiced in an interactive dialogue with one another and are influenced, mediated, and

continually resituated due to globalizing forces and external power dynamics (see also Bhatia, 2002a). Importantly, “otherness enters the self from the most explicitly ‘external’ realms to the most seemingly ‘internal’ ones” (Hermans & Gieser, 2012), leading to ‘double-voiced’

discourses and internal contradictions / oppositions that necessitate ongoing negotiations with divergent senses of self (Bhatia, 2012; see also Howarth, Wagner, Magnusson, & Sammut, 2014). Bhatia (2002) reflects that “being othered or racialized is part of many non-European / Western immigrants’ acculturation experience, and these experiences are tightly knit with their evolving conceptions of selfhood that is hyphenated, fractured and in-between” (p. 71), thus

reconceptualize the paradigm of linking initial ‘strategies’ with long-term, stable adaptation, because “advocating the strategy of ‘integration’ as an end point or examining acculturation in terms of universal categories overlooks the multiple, contested and sometimes painful voices that are associated with ‘living in-between’ cultures” (Bhatia, 2012, p. 127).

This approach necessitates idiographic, qualitative studies of psychological acculturation that seek to understand migrant realities from their perspectives as opposed to interpreting attitudes along external, universal measures (see Rudmin, 2006). This research paradigm aligns with this study’s goals, for “a dialogical approach, especially with regard to the acculturation of diasporic immigrants, assume I positions are shaped by issues of race, colonization and power” (Bhatia, 2002a, p. 73). This integrates the revisions of Berry’s model pertaining to questions of culture and national context, where ethnographic studies of contemporary migrants must critically investigate how citizenship and immigration laws or ‘othered’ racialization affect the dialogical acculturation process of individuals from diverse migrant groups (see Bhatia & Ram, 2004). To understand these contexts, Cresswell (2009) advocates that scholars prioritize migrant experiences and engage in concrete activities that may elucidate their dialogical process. Particularly, analyzing the acculturation process through narrative life stories have been efficacious in understanding how individuals’ I-positions are repositioned when engaging in local, national, and global contexts of change (see Bhatia, 2018; Kadianaki, 2010; Yampolsky, Amiot, & de la Sablonnière, 2013). Bamberg (2005) prioritizes these narrative inquiries in understanding diasporic identity formation, for “narrative analysis in identity research is fully interested in the inconsistencies, contradictions, and ambiguities that arise in interactions” (p. 222). Axiologically, this situates the participant as an active agent of knowledge production

while also allowing for politically motivated research designed to ameliorate challenging life circumstances resulting from asymmetrical power dynamics and persistent coloniality (García- Ramírez et al., 2011; Paloma et al., 2016).

Interrogating the dialogical self within a diasporic transnational migrant context allows for a unique reconsideration of acculturation that departs from Berry’s influential four-fold model. Investigating the actual process involved in these transitions provides opportunities for expanding current understandings of the diverse life experiences of migrant groups around the world. This framework situates the acculturation process as a continuous renegotiation of contested, conflicting voices and selves, especially when considering the dynamism of

globalizing forces (Bhatia & Ram, 2001, 2004, 2009). While Berry’s model has been heuristically vital to the development of psychological acculturation theory, it is necessary to conceptualize this as a dynamic, contested process, to axiologically situate the migrant participant as an active producer of knowledge, and to contextualize studies within larger structures involving race, power, and agency in order to actualize the decolonizing project (Tuck & Yang, 2012).