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This article critically examines Krajewski's (in this issue of Contemp Jewry) argument about the assimilation and subsequent de-assimilation of the Jewish population in Poland. While Krajewski asserts that Polish Jews underwent a process of assimilation followed by a revival of their cultural and religious practices, the authors argue that the term "de-assimilation" is not applicable in this context. They propose that post-war Polish Jews consciously chose to embrace a secular identity rather than a religious one, keeping their Jewish life private. This secular identity, characterized by interests in secular Jewish culture, learning, and social justice, as well as maintaining specific distinctive habits, remained dominant even after 1989. The authors also compare this process to the experiences of Spanish and Portuguese conversos, who returned to Judaism but retained syncretic identities. They emphasize the importance of understanding the complex nature of Jewish identity and involvement, highlighting the significance of secular and cultural practices among Polish Jews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the 1968 emigration, very few Jews remained in Poland, and even more miniscule was the number of "Jewish Jews." Since then the number has grown somewhat, and much of it is due to the process of de-assimilation; i.e., some people with Jewish ancestors raised in completely Polonized families began to recover, reclaim, and readapt their Jewish background. An analysis of this phenomenon is offered with a series of putative reasons for its occurrence. The individuals constituting the "products" of de-assimilation are the majority of Polish Jews today and form much of the current leadership. While individuals everywhere can strengthen their ties to the Jewish people and can experience teshuvah or another kind of "Judaization," the process of de-assimilation does not seem to be reducible to those moves. It begins with no Jewish identity, and is highly dependent on the attitudes and cultural trends in the majority society. It does not remove the de-assimilationists from the majority culture. The phenomenon is general and deserves to be studied as a sociological mechanism working in other cases of assimilation to a majority culture. In the Jewish case, it is especially dramatic. Probably the first example can be found in the evolution of the Marrano communities settled in Holland. The presence of de-assimilation seems to differentiate some European, first of all East European, communities from the globally dominant American and Israeli ones. Probably this rather new concept is needed to describe a significant part of the world of the Jews of twenty-first century Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article responds to a proposal on de-assimilation and argues that the concept of assimilation is complex and that the label of de-assimilation is applied too broadly. It suggests that assimilation does not always mean a complete break with one's previous culture and questions whether the interest in Jewish culture in Poland is truly de-assimilation or simply a manifestation of what was always there. The article concludes that de-assimilation should not be assumed for all people of Jewish descent and that the changes seen in Poland involve creating new minority communities rather than breaking ties with the majority society. The text also emphasizes the need for comprehensive research on the topic, including the impact of identity changes on individuals and communities. [Extracted from the article]

As most studies focus on the outcomes of multiculturalism, assimilation and colourblindness (MAC) for students, little is known about why schools vary in the diversity approaches that they adopt and the role of the teacher in this process. This study explores how teachers implement MAC diversity approaches and what drives them in doing so. Based on a cluster analysis of 38 schools, three extreme cases were selected that either valued (multiculturalism), rejected (assimilation) or ignored (colourblindness) ethnic diversity. In these schools observations and in-depth interviews were conducted with 39 teachers, 23 students and 3 headteachers. Our results indicate that teachers varied in their implementation of MAC diversity approaches according to four diversity domains: 1) multilingualism, 2) religious diversity, 3) ethnic discrimination and 4) diversity curriculum. Teachers' beliefs and attitudes (individual-level) and their preconditions for teaching (micro-level) appeared as the most important motivators for adopting a particular diversity approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the number of American students achieving bachelor's degrees soaring, the gap between the most and least successful ethnic groups is becoming more pronounced. Among the lowest achieving groups are Tongan-Americans. This study uses Kramer's (2011) multilevel model of volunteer assimilation as a theoretical framework to investigate how multiple and overlapping group memberships influence Tongan-American students as they progress from organizational entry to metamorphosis, or premature exit. The findings of this constant comparative analysis suggest that Tongan-American students' multiple memberships are both complementary, increasing the likelihood of degree achievement, and contradictory, decreasing the likelihood of degree achievement. These complementary and competing memberships affect students' achievement of full membership in institutions of higher education. Implications for universities seeking to assist Tongan-American students, parents of Tongan-American students, and for Tongan-American students are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Aboriginal children's engagement with education in the central Australian region of the Northern Territory in the mid-twentieth century can be understood as strategic engagements with formal western education systems and assimilation policies. It addresses a methodological problem stemming from a project that focuses on the work of the Finke River Mission (FRM) and its head missionary Friedrich Wilhelm Albrecht who, during the 1950s and 1960s, initiated an education scheme that targeted 'half-caste' Indigenous girls living on pastoral stations in central Australia. The scheme demonstrates the key concern of this special issue in that it is an example of the entanglements of transnational forces with local expressions of Indigenous education in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of the BaM respondents in a relation, no less than a quarter is in a mixed union. We still know very little about the non-migrant partner in unions with a partner with a migration background, including their propensity to adopt the cultural practices of their partner, and their propensity to reach out and embrace ethnic diversity more generally. The growth of intimate relationships between people with and without a migration background in majority minority cities in Europe provides an opportunity to explore the attitudes and experiences of non-migrant individuals in interethnic unions, and what such unions may portend for the wider society. This article makes a critical contribution to the general debate on the assimilation paradigm, which predicts 'a whitening' of norms and practices in mixed unions. We will use the BaM data to investigate the potential bi-directional effect of being in a mixed union. Does a mixed union, as assimilation scholars argue, primarily have a whitening impact on the minority partner, or is there also a potential diversifying impact upon the other partner? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We address an apparent discrepancy in the literature on how context stimuli influence evaluations of target stimuli. While a rich literature suggests that target evaluations are often contrasted away from the valence of context stimuli, reported effects of evaluative conditioning (EC) are almost exclusively assimilative. Specifically, when a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) repeatedly co-occurs with a positive unconditioned stimulus (US), the CS is later evaluated more positively. Contrast effects from mere co-occurrences are absent in the EC literature. We hypothesized that this can be explained by the stimulus composition in EC tasks, which usually depict different objects as target (CS) and context (US). In 10 experiments, we confirmed that when target and context stimuli depict different objects, assimilation clearly dominates. Yet, when target and context depict stimuli from the same object class, contrast effects become dominant. These contrast effects are invisible in standard EC tasks because CSs are contrasted with all positive and negative USs of a given stimulus set. The present work thereby identifies a central determinant of the direction that evaluative context and conditioning effects take. While different-object contexts evoke assimilation, same-object contexts increase the likelihood of contrastive evaluations. We discuss the various theoretical and practical implications of our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'Asian Visits Fund' was the Australian Government's first Cold War people-to-people public diplomacy programme. Standing in the Fund's way was Australia's racially restrictive immigration programme. A central feature of the scheme, therefore, was to present a vision of a non-racial Australia through the new national ideology of Assimilation. The treatment of indigenous Australians was showcased as one way to highlight Assimilation and debunk broader claims of racism. Ultimately, however, the Asian Visits Fund was unable to alter the negative perception of Australia's immigration policy. It was the last major initiative aimed at selling the unsellable 'White Australia Policy'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, two First Nations groups—the Chippewa of the Thames and the Six Nations of the Grand River—attempted to evict two other First Nations groups—the Munsee of the Thames and the Mississauga of the Credit—from the Thames and Grand River reserves in southern Ontario. These land disputes were successfully resolved by the turn of the twentieth century and no evictions did take place, but the 20 years of conflict are revealing of the complexities, contingencies, and evolutions of dispossession in Canada over the nineteenth century. This article presents a narrative of these attempted evictions and proposes the concept of "compound dispossession" as a means of grappling with these complexities. It is argued that compound dispossession not only captures the snowballing complications of historical dispossessions over time, but also captures the imbrication of multiple disparate trajectories of dispossession as the pressures of settler land hunger and encroachments on Indigenous sovereignty in the late nineteenth century bore down on four neighbouring First Nations groups simultaneously. Rather than interpreting these conflicts through a binary of assimilation/resistance, compound dispossession suggests the pervasiveness of dispossession as a discourse and the agency of dispossession as an adaptation to the unfolding settler-colonial paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Christian migrant groups make up a sizeable part of the immigrant population in Europe, little is known about their religiosity. This paper studies patterns of intergenerational change and proposes and tests hypotheses that specify when and why changes across generations are stronger. Using data from the European Social Survey (2002–2018) on 33 European countries, it is found that there is a strong pattern of intergenerational decline in the level of religiosity among Christian migrant groups in Europe. This process of religious decline is by no means universal. Results show that children from two foreign-born parents are much more religious than children from intermarried (foreign-born and native) couples. We also observe that intergenerational decline is much less pronounced in European countries that are more religious. Finally, when Christian migrant groups belong to a religious minority group, this is associated with higher levels of religiosity in both the first and second generation. It is argued that these insights can explain the 'puzzling' strong intergenerational religious transmission among Muslim migrant groups in Western European societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay looks at four little-known texts that represent a number of disagreements among Native American people educated in the American schools in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. A close reading of these texts by Henry Roe Cloud, Dennison Wheelock, Elizabeth Bender Cloud, and Louisa La Chapelle Wheelock provides an opportunity to enrich and complicate our understanding of the thought of the Native intellectuals generally called "Red Progressives." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the cultural implications of the assimilation of Hong Kong movie production in the process of China–Hong Kong coproductions. Local Hong Kong cultural products tend to be stripped of their local characteristics to cater to the Chinese market when prosperous businesses become based in China. Moreover, distinctive cultural resources in the Hong Kong movie industry, such as techniques, professionals, and intellectual property (IP), are assimilated and coopted by China's cultural industry to ensure the success of its future development. This assimilation may result in cultural conflict, which was indicated by the reaction of Hong Kong audiences to China's embezzlement of their cultural products. This study analyzes three animated movies in the McDull series through focus group interviews with movie investors and audiences in Hong Kong and China. The findings show that assimilation driven by economic factors induces negative sentiment in Hong Kong audiences as they witness the assimilation of their nostalgic icons. Based on these findings, the ramifications of such assimilation for cultural dynamics are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As public attitudes toward gender roles in Western societies become increasingly liberal, Muslim immigrants and their children in Europe are regarded as conservative and unassimilated. This study treats acculturation as a process by which immigrants and their children shift from the attitude distribution in their origin country to that of their settlement country, and distinguishes the influence of Islam and origin-country gender norms on Muslim immigrants' and their children's gender role attitudes. Using data on gender role attitudes from 32 European settlement countries and 98 origin countries, the study models the relative influence of origin and settlement contexts on 25,220 first- and second-generation immigrants in Europe. Similar to previous studies, this study finds that Muslim immigrants have more traditional gender role attitudes than non-Muslim immigrants when controlling for the effect of origin-country gender norms. However, there is no evidence that Muslims are more attached to their origin country's gender norms than non-Muslims. Instead, Muslim immigrants' attitudes about gender norms are more similar to those in the settlement society than those of non-Muslim immigrants: Unlike their foreign-born parents, second-generation Muslims are as liberal as non-Muslim populations. Taken together, these results suggest that second-generation Muslims are adopting mainstream European gender norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Events such as Brexit have drawn attention to the precarity of contemporary migrants' settlement rights and reopened the debate on the nature of integration and assimilation processes. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with Italian and Bulgarian migrants in Brexit Britain, this article develops a novel approach for understanding migrants' changing relationships with their countries of settlement and their current and future practices. This approach builds on the sociology of emotions, which it extends to migration and diversity with a transnational sensibility. The approach is then applied to explain the different displays of emotion undertaken by our participants and their consequences. Overall, the article develops a new way to examine the subjective experiences of integration at times of change that is capable of offering important insights into the emotional costs of the neo-assimilationist climate characterising several western societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the fields of gender studies and anthropology, this interdisciplinary study analyzes the racist experiences lived by immigrant Latin American women in Spain, which influence the adherence of the subjects to cultural assimilation techniques. Assimilation is an acculturation strategy where individuals reject the culture of origin in an attempt to fully incorporate themselves into the culture of the host society. Rejecting the Latin American culture through practices and discourses is a way of protecting oneself against the systematic racism experienced in the European territory, as well as a way of getting closer to the white privilege of natives. The methodology used has been qualitative through an intersectional analysis with a gender perspective of semi-structured individual interviews carried out with ten Latin American women immigrants in Spain. In conclusion, on one hand, it is verified that the integration discourses produced by the European institutions have been incorporated by the immigrant subjects, often being interpreted as a duty of assimilation or adaptation that would imply the rejection of the culture of origin. On the other hand, it is also recognized that, simultaneously, women put into action multiple processes of agency and empowerment during their migration journeys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asian Americans' incorporation into American society is structured by interactions with a racial hierarchy that presents greater barriers for some ethnic groups more than others. The racialized assimilation framework predicts that experiences of discrimination shape incorporation into US society. This study investigates the impact of discrimination on the importance placed on three identities—racial, ethnic, American identity—relative to indicators of structural assimilation. Using the post-election wave of the 2016 National Asian American Survey (N = 3923), we estimate multivariable models to explore the centrality of racial, ethnic, and American identity among an ethnically diverse sample of Asian Americans. Regardless of ethnic group, a large majority deem American as a central identity, with greater variation in race and ethnicity centrality. Discriminatory encounters increased centrality of racial and American identity; meanwhile, educational attainment drives down the centrality of racial identity, though exerting no impact on American identity centrality. Ethnicity moderates these relationships as discrimination enhances racial identity centrality for Koreans, Indians, and Japanese but drives down racial centrality for Chinese adults. Findings reveal that racialized encounters are a distinctive component of the assimilation process resulting in variable expressions of identity among Asian Americans, revealing identity variation across Asian American ethnic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Τhis paper studies online narrative texts, which, despite their declared antiracist stance, reproduce racist positionings against migrants. Based on the broader framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, our main research question concerns the ways racist and antiracist positionings coexist. To this end, we employ an enriched version of Bamberg's tripartite model which distinguishes the micro-levels of narrative world and narrative interaction, from which the positionings towards the discourses of the macro-level, in the present case the national discourse, emerge. A common feature of the media narratives under study is the ambiguity between an antiracist reading and a motile racist one. In these readings the denοuncement of majority instances of illiberal/frozen racism coexist with the representation of migrants as people largely assimilated to the majority context. Due to this coexistence, such texts become vehicles of liquid racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines identity formations and negotiations among Indo-Europeans, and senses of 'race' in the postcolonial Netherlands. We do so by analysing daily practices of 'being', 'feeling' and 'doing' identities by second- and third-generation Indo-Europeans in the North-Eastern Netherlands. The paper contributes to 'mixed-race' literature by highlighting new, underexplored contexts in which 'mixed-race' identities are negotiated. We focus on practices, relations and transmissions across two generations and changing contexts within the Netherlands. Drawing on life story interviews, the narratives reveal how participants' identities are politically and historically contingent, shaped by larger structures of racialized violence Indo-Europeans experienced in both the Dutch East Indies and the Netherlands. Identities are navigated in various ways with divergences and negotiations between self-identification, social imposition and familial and biological narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although assimilation theories acknowledge that the host society adopts aspects of migrant culture, empirical work continues to focus on the assimilation trajectories of immigrants. This study represents the first effort to investigate, on a national level, whether Asians and Hispanics exert a cultural influence on local populations. We assess this possibility by using ethnic restaurants – both national chain and local establishments – as a test case. County-level data is pooled from the decennial U.S. Census, the American Community Survey, the Economic Research Service, the Voting and Elections Collection from CQ Press, and Reference U.S.A. to investigate the association of interest; Nielsen Marketing data is used to further supplement analyses. Results indicate that Asians and Hispanics may indeed influence local community expressions of culture – both in terms of restaurant availability and the extent to which those outside of the co-ethnic community engage in restaurant ownership. Moreover, we find compelling evidence that assimilation may be stronger in locations with advantaged majority populations. In combination, this manuscript offers innovative theoretical perspectives as well as preliminary evidence to suggest assimilation is indeed a multidirectional process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on perspectives on triadic group relations and status hierarchies, we predicted that Americans would be more likely to expect immigrants from a perceived low-status rather than high-status country of origin to assimilate to the U.S. mainstream culture and that ethnocentrism would mediate this effect (N = 2,246). Using 60 countries/areas as targets, Study 1 showed that perceived country status negatively predicted assimilation expectations for immigrants from that country. In Studies 2 through 3, participants were exposed to a news article which emphasized China's shortcomings, achievements, or status-irrelevant attributes. In Studies 4 through 7, including one preregistered study, participants were presented with a portrayal of a fictitious country with high (or intermediate) or low status. Compared with high-status (or intermediate status) conditions, American participants were more likely to expect immigrants from a low-status country to assimilate to the United States, and ethnocentrism (causally) mediated these effects even when alternative mediators were controlled. Moreover, assimilation expectations mediated the effect of country status on a tendency to Anglicize a new immigrant's name. A meta-analysis supported a significant effect of country status on assimilation expectations, and a mega-analysis verified the mediating role of ethnocentrism. This research reveals a status bias toward immigrants, broadening our views on how international relations affect domestic relations, highlighting the importance and malleability of ethnocentrism. The generalizability of current American findings to other countries is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore identity formation among adolescents, using the first wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study in Norway (CILS-NOR). The results show that immigrant origin youth gradually adopt a stronger self-identity as Norwegians, regardless of regional origins and religious affiliation. However, while adolescents of European immigrant origin report that others see them as being even more "Norwegian" than they identify themselves, children of immigrants from Africa and Asia report that others see them as being far less "Norwegian" than how they identify themselves. Non-recognized national identity – the product of an asymmetrical relationship between self-identity and ascription – is most common among well-established minority groups, and we show that both ethno-racial origins and religious affiliation are major hurdles for acceptance. Ethnic identities associated with the parental homeland, which are closely related to religion, are more stable, and only very weakly related to the formation of a national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses particular essays and short stories written by Josip Novakovich, dealing with identity construction in the context of migration of individuals causedby the war. Since the concept of migration is closely tied to issues such as assimilation perspective and cultural bereavement, identity formation is considered as fluid, dynamic, vibrant and hybrid. Novakovich’s characters show great variety in adapting to new places and cultures and the feelings of loneliness, nostalgia and suppressed memories play an important role in their embracing the new way of life in diaspora. The analysis of main characters in short stories “Spleen” and “Hats and Veils” show that richness of diversities in multicultural and globalized societies can help an individual integrate into the society, but at the same time, they can also emphasize vulnerability of an individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assimilation theories that have been the dominant approach in U.S. sociology for studying the experience of migrants and their children in the United States are based on a paradigm centering on ethnic relations and assimilation as a process of incorporating into the "majority society." In this article, the author discusses the central arguments of the contemporary versions of these theories in light of the main critiques of them, particularly those formulated from a paradigm centering on "race" relations, reproaching them for not taking seriously into account the determinant role of racialization and structural racism in the lives of migrants and their descendants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rebirth of French horror cinema at the start of the twenty-first century coincided with a critical moment in the country's debates on immigration. The Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) called for cultural assimilation and integration from its immigrant population, but there was also a growing trend in the party towards a more hard-line approach. This article uses Jacques Derrida's writing on hospitality to propose that the politics of the UMP and questions of identity, immigration and assimilation are key to the renewal of French horror cinema in the first decade of the twenty-first century. It argues that the films Sheitan (Kim Chapiron, 2006), Frontière(s) (Xavier Gens, 2007) and La Meute (Franck Richard, 2010) represent the white French anxiety over the nation's political move towards the right (as opposed to a fear of the immigrant Other directly), reading these horror films as exhibiting the tension between tolerance and hospitality key to Derrida's writing. Therefore, this article proposes that the negative depiction of white rural communities, the inclusion of characters of immigrant descent and the emphasis on 'hosting' locations such as the hotel and the roadside café reveal a country working through its position as a host nation within Fortress Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration research developed significantly in the past decades. However, with the life course approach and the concept of transnational migration, there are still two different, as yet largely unconnected conceptual perspectives on migration. Both approaches have their merits but also their shortcomings. This paper tries to overcome these shortcomings by combining the advantages of both perspectives to suggest a unified theoretical concept of transnational life courses (TNLC). TNLC builds on the multidimensional understanding of transnational migration research that (potential) migrants live in multiple social and cultural spaces leading to parallel assimilation and dissimilation processes. This perspective is merged with the life course approach with its chronologically ordered understanding of causality relying on preceding determinants and subsequent outcomes in form of events and periods. Based on data provided by the German Emigration and Remigration Panel Study (GERPS) some simple empirical analyses were conducted to illustrate the potential of the TNLC approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper first critically assesses the sociology of immigration and refugee studies and demonstrates that they have long ignored refugee adaptation. Immigration studies have focused on the assimilation of labor immigrants and their descendants in the Global North. Refugee studies have developed largely as a depoliticized humanitarian field with attention to refugees in the Global South. The paper, then, reveals the differences between immigrants and refugees in terms of networks, demography, mode of incorporation, and perceptions and argues that these differences result in dissimilar adaptation pathways. The paper finally points out that investigating refugee adaptation in the Global South can significantly modify existing assimilation/integration theories because of the blurry configurations of racial, ethnic, social, cultural, and religious boundaries between refugees and host societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1901, a small group of Norwegian immigrants relocated from Minnesota to Eastern Washington. The community grew quickly, with other immigrants coming directly from Norway. The group maintained a strong Norwegian character for several decades; for example, their church continued to hold services in Norwegian until the late 1920's. Assimilation into American society was evidenced by the names the community members gave to their children, as traditional Norwegian names were quickly replaced by more typically American monikers. This paper examines the extent to which the assignment of forenames represents the assimilation of Washington's Selbu community into the broader American society around it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how, through discussions about immigrant assimilation in fin de siècle Algeria, French republicans contemplated and wrote into law the ethnic traits of French national identity. Republicans assumed that the North Mediterranean immigrants who settled in Algeria shared ethnic origins with French settlers and consequently asserted that France should work to "fuse" the two groups. Assertions about immigrants' ethnicity took different forms. In the colony they appeared either at the margins of colonial administrators' attacks against immigrant communal organization or in literary representations of French-Mediterranean fusion. In the metropole republican legislators portrayed immigrants as innately prone to becoming French and thus supported the 1889 nationality law that naturalized them. The passing of the 1889 law prompted the creation of an explicitly ethnorepublican assimilatory model. The model's proponents combined sociological and eugenicist principles to both socialize immigrants into the nation and promote the transfer of their Mediterranean "vigor" into French bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper estimates the effect of immigrant networks on education of school-age Salvadoran immigrants in the United States. • Salvadoran immigrants exposed to a larger network complete fewer years of schooling after arriving to the United States. • Immigrants may face a distorted trade-off between studying and working when exposed to large immigrant networks. • Young immigrants may decide to not go to school if they are exposed to a network that offers them low-skill jobs. This paper estimates the effect of immigrant networks on the education of school-age Salvadoran immigrants in the United States. I construct an instrument for the network size in the U.S. using previous settlement patterns and municipality-level push factors in El Salvador such as crime, agricultural land use, and economic development. I find that Salvadoran immigrants lose half a year of education when their network size exogenously increases by 1 standard deviation (4.7% decrease). Causal links between the education decisions of immigrants and their network may partly explain the low level of education attained by new young immigrants. Immigrants with more education may assimilate better into their host countries and contribute to their economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue that second-generation migrants experience multiple tensions and exclusions as a result of the interaction of transnationalism, assimilation, diaspora and racialization in their lives. Yet, I suggest that they are reflexive actors who respond by crafting their own "positioned belongings". The paper draws on ethnographic research conducted with Palestinian-American second-generation interlocutors conducted in New Jersey and the West Bank in the wake of Donald Trump's election as President. It presents data regarding this understudied yet significant second-generation group and their relationship to their diaspora community, hostland and homeland. I argue that a feeling of exclusion and "in-betweenness" is navigated by the second-generation through discursive and material practices that centre the second-generation "self". In doing so, I give new insight into how assimilation and transnationalism interact in dynamic and plural fields and what is lost and gained amongst the children of migrants in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of vibrators, dildos and other sex toys for sexual stimulation and pleasure is common among women and is growing in popularity. While the phenomenon has positive benefits, it might equally present adverse consequences to users. This research aims to assess the popularity of sex toy use among women from different nations. Furthermore, the study aims to find out if the use of other household items for sexual stimulation is popular among women between the ages of 18 and 50. Finally, the study attempts to discover if sex toy users observe changes arising from the use of various sex toys and if such variations can be attributed to the assimilation of the sex toy used. I employed a convenience sampling in eight countries. The study observed that sex toys are popular among women between the ages of 18 and 50, but sex toy use appears to produce varying effects on users. It was also evident that a majority of participants use vibrating sex toys without a clinician's recommendation. Some women observe changes in sensitivity levels of their sexual responses after using sex enhancements. It was observed that while there is a crackdown on the use of sex toys in Islamic nations, religion itself has a certain influence on the individual adherent's desire to explore use of sex enhancements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent macro-level trends have created a gendered context of assimilation for second-generation Latinos, pointing to favourable condition among Latina women and potential vulnerability among Latino men. This article examines second-generation assimilation in young adulthood for the top ten Latino groups using gendered reference groups to benchmark their integration into American society. We find a significant female advantage on individual-level indicators, but no clear gender differences on household-level indicators among Latinos. We also document significant heterogeneity in achievement among the top ten Latino ethnic groups, with Mexicans being the most disadvantaged group. In contrast, Cubans and South Americans are the most advantaged and have achieved parity with native whites. These findings point to the emerging significance of gender as a key dimension of stratification in the assimilation of Latinos into American life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers new qualitative insights into ongoing internationalization processes in Japanese higher education. Drawing on ideas from migration studies and informed by analysis of junior international faculty members' (JIFs) experiences in Japanese universities, we posit a novel, actor-centered typology of internationalization that delineates between integration, assimilation, and marginalization of mobile actors, and considers their implications in practice. Twenty-three interviews were conducted with JIFs from a variety of disciplines and institutions across Japan. Findings indicated a pattern of disillusionment with their role in internationalization, as many perceived themselves to be tokenized symbols of internationalization rather than valued actors within it. Participants identified various barriers which prevented them from participating in the academic "mainstream" and confined them to peripheral roles. We argue that their experiences are indicative of assimilative and marginalizing forms of internationalization, which pose persistent barriers to reform in Japanese universities despite decades of state-sponsored internationalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines one of the defining features of French Jewish historiography: the debate over assimilation. Beginning with Jewish nationalist historians in the late nineteenth century, French Jews were accused of having gladly renounced their Jewish identity to partake of the benefits of emancipation. Twentieth-century historians writing in the wake of Hannah Arendt offered a similar condemnation of the "politics of assimilation." At the end of the twentieth century, however, historians began to question this consensus, suggesting that French Jews sought out distinct ways of maintaining their religious and cultural identity. Ultimately, this article argues that the debate reflects a conflict over ideological frameworks used to interpret Jewish modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores nation-building processes in the Transnistrian imagined community. While some scholars describe Transnistria's nation-building strategy as a civic, multicultural project, the analysis of recent demographic and educational data corroborated with the close examination of local media content and official discourses—all point to the emergence of a distinct political culture marked by the increasing use of the Russian language in the public sphere, and the politicization of the Moldovan identity. Discourses about ethnic and national identity in the region have evolved as the Transnistrian elites reimagine the political community as part of the Russkii Mir. These circumstances suggest that, in the long run, the breakaway region might function as the southeastern frontline of Russian irredentism with the elites of the Pridnestrovska͡ia Moldavska͡ia Respublika continuing to call on the Russian Federation to annex the parastate instead of seeking a peaceful reintegration into Moldova. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The New Normal, NBC's 2012 sitcom about gay fathers, contradicts itself: While striving to normalize gay men as respectable parents, the show often mocks feminine gay men as unsuitable parents. I take this "effeminophobic" contradiction as a case study to extend queer theory's critique of LGBTQ assimilation. I read The New Normal through a joint framework linking Lisa Duggan's well-known critique of homonormativity with Zygmunt Bauman's critique of Jewish cultural assimilation. This connection clarifies how the pitfalls of homonormative assimilation, like The New Normal's self-stigmatizing humor, reflect a broader "trap of ambivalence" inherent to assimilation itself. In turn, this insight illustrates how queer theory can benefit from seeking explicitly Jewish perspectives on sexuality. This study also invites queer theory to analyze how sexual difference is co-structured with Jewish difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individual ethnic boundary crossing, i.e. the change in the ethnic category of an individual, is one of the elementary strategies of ethnic boundary making. The large bulk of the empirical literature so far has shown that ethnic categorization is correlated with cultural and economic attributes of the individuals. However, few empirical studies are able to investigate individual boundary crossing. This article adds to this literature by studying ethnic boundary crossing between 2001 and 2010 with a panel of about 340,000 Ecuadorians. It is shown that while ethnic boundary crossing is common, the overwhelming majority of crossings were made from or to mixed categories. In order to explain these boundary crossings, I test a cultural assimilation and an economic "money whitens" hypothesis. I find evidence for both explanations with cultural assimilation having a much stronger effect on ethnic categorization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When people perceive their thoughts and judgements as unduly affected by some biasing factor (in themselves or in the judgement setting), they often attempt to avoid or remove those biases. Theories describe different psychological mechanisms guiding these efforts. We review the primary theories of bias correction and focus on the use of naive theories of bias in attempts to form accurate assessments of judgement targets. One distinguishing feature of the theory-based correction approach is its ability to deal with corrections for contrastive biases (i.e., biases that lead judgements in a direction opposite to the meaning of the biasing factor). Another is that any perceived biasing factor can result in corrections, even when those factors are not easily mapped into the kinds of mental representation mechanisms that form the heart of alternative approaches. We use corrections for mood-based biases to illustrate the utility of the theory-based correction approach, even though many mood-based biases can be conceptualized in ways that fit alternative approaches to bias correction. Implications for correction of many potential types of biases are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the epistemological ramifications of understanding Thomas Aquinas' conception of truth (famously defined as adaequatio rei et intellectus) in terms of a dynamic process of cognitive assimilation within the human psyche. In particular, the author addresses two potential pitfalls for his theory, namely (i) 'failed assimilation' as the basis of false judgments and (ii) 'negative assimilation', i.e., correspondence to non-being: how is the human mind capable of assimilation to 'nothing' (in the sense of 'no thing') at all? Aquinas addresses these two problems in various passages throughout his works; the author connects and reviews their arguments with regard to their philosophical cogency and attempts to answer the question of whether Aquinas ultimately succeeds in solving the several puzzles that 'failed' as well as 'negative assimilation' seem to create in his conception of truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medieval Aristotelians assumed that we cannot assimilate forms unless our soul abstracts them from sensory images. But what about the disembodied soul that has no senses and hence no sensory images? How can it assimilate forms? This article discusses this problem, focusing on two thirteenth-century models. It first looks at Thomas Aquinas' model, which invokes divine intervention: the separated soul receives forms directly from God. The article examines the problems this explanatory model poses and then turns to a second model, defended by Matthew of Aquasparta: the separated soul actively apprehends forms that are present to it. It will be argued that this model explains assimilation in terms of appropriation, rather than reception, of forms and thereby radically changes the traditional account of cognition. Finally, the article draws some methodological conclusions, arguing that the focus on the 'limit case' of separated souls made theoretical change possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The articles in this issue are a selection of the papers presented at the conference Knowledge as Assimilation , held at the University of Helsinki on 9-11 June 2017. The conference was the result of a collaboration between two research groups that have been established in Finland and Sweden from 2013 onwards: the research project Rationality in Perception: Transformations of Mind and Cognition 1250-1550 , funded by the European Research Council (2015-2020) and hosted by the University of Helsinki, and the research programme Representation and Reality: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Aristotelian Tradition , funded by the Riksbankens jubileumsfond (2013-2019) and located at the University of Gothenburg. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In six studies (N = 2,340), we identified one source of people's differential support for resettling refugees in their country--their beliefs about whether the kind of person someone is can be changed (i.e., a growth mind-set) or is fixed (i.e., a fixed mind-set). U.S. and UK citizens who believed that the kind of person someone is can be changed were more likely to support resettling refugees in their country (Studies 1 and 2). Study 3 identified a causal relationship between the type of mind-set people hold and their support for resettling refugees. Importantly, people with a growth mind-set were more likely to believe that refugees can assimilate in the host society but not that they should assimilate, and the belief that refugees can assimilate mediated the relationship between people's mind-sets and their support for resettling refugees (Studies 4-6). The findings identify an important antecedent of people's support for resettling refugees and provide novel insights into the science of mind-sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some ethnic groups are remarkably resistant to surrounding influences, and only slightly undergo assimilation. What, then, are the most significant factors affecting ethnic assimilation? The foremost is state intervention. The state can support the nationalist tendencies of one group of inhabitants while suppressing the ethnic expressions of non-dominant groups. How do various ethnic groups respond to this kind of support or oppression? In this research note the Baloch minority, a relatively small group in Turkmenistan, have been chosen as a case study to examine the questions raised above. The chosen ethnic group under investigation here does not have a homeland to provide it with support. There are numerous such ethnic groups in non-dominant positions without states that cause tension between minorities and majorities. The tension is often extremely strong, even when such groups have political autonomy (e.g., the Kurds in Iraq and the Uyghurs in China). The aim of this report from the field is to explain how self-aware the Baloch of Turkmenistan are of their identity and the extent to which they have succumbed to modernization and attempts to render them Turkmen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article complicates the image of Benedictine missionary Jean-Félix de Hemptinne (1876–1958), a central figure of the 20th century Belgian colonial and evangelisation endeavour in the Congo, as a steadfast missionary with political, religious and economic power. It contextualises his ideas within wider debates on religion, civilisation and colonialism and looks at the strategies he employed to defend his authority. Through the figure of the Apostolic Vicar of Katanga, this article rethinks the ideas and the power mechanisms, in particular the "trinity" between church, state and capital and the church-state alliance, which underpinned the Belgian colonial and missionary enterprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article juxtaposes two U.S. cities' differing educational reactions to mass migrations prior to the Progressive Era. During the nineteenth century, Boston, Massachusetts, developed a model urban education system, one that was visited and replicated throughout the nation. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Boston was a relatively communal city in which a small group of elites dominated civic life. As waves of poor, rural New Englanders and, later, Irish immigrants threated the supposed cohesive nature and shared values of the community, Boston's public school system focused on assimilating the newcomers through moral training. Like Boston, Cincinnati, Ohio, created public schools that were toured and studied, largely because of the city's renowned German-English program. Unlike Boston, however, the city and the schools were co-developed by migrants. Highly educated German immigrants and settlers from the East developed the public schools together and, unlike the assimilationist schools in Boston, created an educational system that had a relatively pluralistic mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines acculturation strategies among second-generation Israeli migrants in the United States as part of their ethnic identity formation process. Utilizing data obtained through semi-structured personal interviews and building on Berry's model (J Soc Issues 57(3):615-631, 2001, Int J Intercult Relat 29(6):697-712, 2005), as well as Cohen's (Int Migr 49(4):1-22, 2011a) expanded typology, it traces four dominant strategies among this group; Those who employed Group Integration (A) and Group Nostalgic Insulation (B) expressed explicitly positive attitudes towards their parents' country of origin as well as co-migrants while those using Individual Integration (C) were equally attached to their homeland and host country cultures. A fourth group subscribed to Assimilation (G), a strategy that entails negative attitudes towards the country of origin and the in-group of migrants but highly positive identification with the host society and culture. Thus, interactions and networks in the host—versus home—society dynamically construct acculturation strategies of second-generation migrants and contribute to the formation of their ethnic identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context is known to affect how a stimulus is perceived. A variety of illusions have been attributed to contextual processing-from orientation tilt effects to chromatic induction phenomena, but their neural underpinnings remain poorly understood. Here, we present a recurrent network model of classical and extraclassical receptive fields that is constrained by the anatomy and physiology of the visual cortex. A key feature of the model is the postulated existence of near- versus far- extraclassical regions with complementary facilitatory and suppressive contributions to the classical receptive field. The model accounts for a variety of contextual illusions, reveals commonalities between seemingly disparate phenomena, and helps organize them into a novel taxonomy. It explains how center-surround interactions may shift from attraction to repulsion in tilt effects, and trom contrast to assimilation in induction phenomena. The model further explains enhanced perceptual shifts generated by a class of patterned background stimuli that activate the two opponent extraclassical regions cooperatively. Overall, the ability of the model to account for the variety and complexity of contextual illusions provides computational evidence for a novel canonical circuit that is shared across visual modalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ways in which education policy and practice in Botswana negotiate tensions between assimilationist and multiculturalist approaches to ethnic diversity. We find that the curriculum, as written and as taught, is preoccupied with unity and the avoidance of armed conflict, goals that have perpetuated an assimilationist approach, normed around the culture and language of the Tswana ethnic majority. We argue that a multicultural approach could foster conditions of positive peace, including recognition and equality of opportunity across ethnic groups, which is more urgent today given the sustained absence of armed conflict. We offer strategies for how practitioners and policy makers might move forward in transforming existing multicultural policy discourse into multicultural school practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]