What happens when you don't resist assimilation
Resistance is not futile
I was born and raised in Canada. When I was 5 years old, we and many other families moved from Montreal to Toronto because of Bill 101. This bill declared Quebec a francophone province and would require all institutions and businesses to operate entirely in French.
This didn’t fly with my father. He, the son of Holocaust survivors, fled communist Czechoslovakia at 17 alone to the US and then Canada because he could see that there was little opportunity for him there. He settled in Montreal where he met my mother, whose family left Marrakech due to rising tensions between Muslim Arab and Jewish people in post-colonial Morocco. My father chose Canada for its freedoms, including the opportunity to choose his children’s education. In the mosaic, multicultural haven that was Canada at the time, the threat of forced assimilation drove many business headquarters and immigrant families out of Montreal to Toronto.
I was taught that Canada is a mosaic rather than an assimilating melting pot because cultural groups are able to retain their distinct identity and contribute to Canada’s prosperity. Like many big cities, some of Toronto’s distinct ethnic enclaves slowly gave way to trendy cafes, shops, and restaurants as the neighbourhood gentrified and new centres were driven to the suburbs. When I travelled with my father to Slovakia in my 20s to visit my grandmother and aunt (of blessed memory), we visited a few Holocaust museums and memorial sites throughout the region. I discovered that my surname is a Czechified version of Moskovits, changed to sound non-Jewish. Many Jewish people in Eastern Europe (Ashkenazi jews) assimilated through name changes, dropping traditions, and marrying outside the community to pass as non-Jews, hoping to be shielded from the increasing violence and discrimination against Jews.
I eventually left Toronto in my early 30s with my Australian husband and settled in Melbourne, Australia. I experienced culture clash despite moving from one Commonwealth country to another. Navigating a new healthcare system as a pregnant woman, employment, banking, social service access, driving on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road with multi-lane roundabouts, coffee culture and in-laws was stressful. Australians are NOT like Canadians, despite what people say. I had to code switch from freely speaking my mind to being more curious, never divulging my true feelings on a matter while downplaying self-confidence to avoid being taken down by the Tall Poppy police.
I didn’t realise at the time that my stress was more than the impending birth of my first child. It was the imposed pressure to assimilate and blend in. Not surprisingly, I dyed my hair bright red and befriended the francophone community in my research institute because they seemed more familiar and warm, which helped me feel accepted as myself. While I resisted assimilation pressure in the first few years, including not adopting the Australian question intonation, my defences wore down and was partially assimilated by a few moderate cults.
The affordable suburb we moved into had experienced waves of immigrants from the former Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, India and Sri Lanka, and the Pacific Islands before we settled there. The next wave were from South Sudan and became quickly linked to increasing crime and gang activity. The problem was not actual increased crime. It was a large culture gap and absent support to facilitate the acculturation process1 to a vastly different way of life.
I witnessed the cultural assimilation of my Muslim Afghan neighbours who progressively changed from wearing a burka to wearing casual clothing and uncovered hair over the years. Some academics might refer to this process as acculturation, not assimilation because it didn’t require a radical adjustment to the host country as they had the freedom to preserve their religious identity and traditions. It would be up to my neighbours to determine whether they experienced assimilation or acculturation, and whether they see Australia as a mosaic, a melting pot, or either depending on where they live.
I experienced the privileges and detriments of assimilation in different groups and settings throughout my life. I also experienced and witnessed the damaging effects of passive assimilation by another person and in various groups. Being assimilated by another person, an equal, to gradually embody their desired version of you is psychologically distressing and confusing until you become aware of losing yourself to another person. I endured the prolonged de-enmeshing and de-assimilation process to recover myself while managing withdrawal symptoms and the backlash that accompanied leaving such a relationship.
How does assimilation relate to interpersonal narcissism? The features of a narcissistic relationship whereby one person controls another, gradually restricting their freedom and access to nourishing connections, develop through an assimilation process. A bi-product of this type of assimilation is demoralisation, causing the person to lose confidence, hope, and trust in others.
Yuri Bezmenov, former KGB agent who defected to the West described a demoralised person:
“As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore,” said Bezmenov. “A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures; even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him [a] concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it, until he [receives] a kick in his fan-bottom. When a military boot crashes his balls then he will understand. But not before that. That’s the [tragedy] of the situation of demoralization.”
If you have been in situations and relationships that changed you for the worse, it’s worth taking a closer look at the concept and process of assimilation to 1) consider the costs of trying to succeed and belong in a group 2) spot the signs and symptoms of assimilation 3) prevent being assimilated and demoralised by a person or group in the future.
It’s a big topic so grab a cuppa and a comfy seat. I’ll do my best to illustrate the invisible process of assimilation and what is sacrificed for success.
I won’t cover the end result of generations of assimilation, or the uptake of digested food molecules by tissues, speech sounds, Piaget’s theory, how the Borg forcibly assimilates captives, and any other assimilation process you know.
An overview of assimilation
There are MANY definitions and descriptions of the cultural assimilation process. You won’t find consensus among immigration scholars as the process is contextual. For example, Jewish assimilation throughout history in Europe and MENA is quite different to First Nations assimilation in Australia. Assimilation and acculturation are often used interchangeably despite having very specific meanings. What is experienced as acculturation to one migrant can seem like assimilation to another. Adaptation to a new work culture can feel seamless when the employee’s values and behaviours align with the employers’ (due to assimilation in other contexts) but can require several jarring changes to a different employee.
Another type, behavioural assimilation is defined as a phenomenon in which you adjust your behaviours to match those of the people around you. It’s what teenagers do as they join a new friends or social group (as I witnessed with mine), baffling parents when their child seems to change overnight. This also occurs in moderate cults when you are expected to prioritise specific values and express them according to how they are modelled by the anointed authorities. Or, medical students learning bedside manner from their seniors in order to earn the trust of their patients and give appropriate care. As is the case in medicine and many other professions, behavioural assimilation is part of the complex process of professional identity formation through prolonged socialisation that can also be detrimental to the individual, which I will expand on below2.
describes the formation of symbolic capitalists of the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic) flavour and their process of assimilation. For those who have already assimilated to become symbolic capitalists (facilitated by their upper class upbringing or educational opportunities), they will continue to follow a typical social and professional trajectory that require mingling with their kind to reinforce their distinguishing unconscious behaviours, values, and beliefs collectively known as habitus. This particular group of people is more destructive to society than the beneficial impact they perceive to have.There are also examples of forced assimilation through a resocialisation process that coerces a person to change their identity, beliefs, behaviour, and personality to fit into a society.
Total institutions3, such as asylums of the past and some re-education camps eliminate freedom of movement and expression through:
cutting individuals off from the outside world and support system
sleep deprivation and severe forms of torture
removal of possessions
deprivation of privacy
eliminating choice
ritual degradation
indoctrination
forced labour
surveillance
The desired outcome of resocialisation is to suppress, erase, and replace prior identity and loyalties, and render the individual compliant so their behaviour embodies the Assimilator’s ideal. The Pitești Prison Experiment in Romania (1949-1951), Vietnam’s re-education camps after the end of the Vietnam war, and Uyghur re-education camps in northwestern China (2017-present) are some examples of sadistic, forced assimilation and its horrors.
Similar tactics used in total institutions are also employed by narcissistic abusers who are cult leaders, political elites, or intimate partners to control and subjugate their victims.
European countries are discovering the impact of an open immigration policy with an absent structural assimilation process of migrant groups whose beliefs, values, and practices are antithetical to living in harmony and respecting the host culture, societal values, and its laws. You can find entitled and judgemental rants on social media by some immigrants who left restrictive nations and were welcomed into democratic nations as asylum seekers. While this does not reflect the behaviour of all migrants, the large influx, inconsistent vetting process, lack of government pragmatism, tolerance to antisocial behaviour, fear of accusations of discrimination, and changes in social cohesion across the Western world provide the ingredients for societal disintegration and replacement.
and provide excellent analyses about the influence of mass, uncontrolled immigration and the clashes between third world problems and first world values on Western culture.
In summary:
Assimilation involves enabling or forcing one, few, or many to embody an idealised identity.
We actively assimilate to attain privileges and benefits of belonging to a dominant group that mirrors the ideals of a society.
Assimilation in public/private institutions facilitates upward social mobility and status.
Assimilation is active, passive, or forced, each requiring different strategies to achieve the Assimilator’s end goal, and involves intentional adjustment by or is forced onto the individual.
It can benefit or harm the individual based on the sacrifices the individual makes, the toll of assimilation pressure on the individual, and the outcomes of assimilation.
The dominant group or nation that I’ll refer to as the Assimilator, holds a cultural ideal or fantasy imposed on the minority group to adopt its values and beliefs.
The individual’s cultural, national, religious, ethnic, or gender identity will be replaced with the Assimilator’s ideal.
Routes to destructive assimilation and demoralisation
I will illustrate a few types of assimilation by drawing from my own experiences of being in dominance-based hierarchical relationships. This type of relationship is the norm in professional settings and institutions, most of our professional relationships, public service system, some of our friendships, family dynamics, and many types of community groups. In a dominance-based hierarchy, one person/group will dictate the norms and expectations of the relationship. As in any narcissistic relationship, the person who desires equality and reciprocity will challenge, question, and rebel against the authority to level the power imbalance when they realise they are the subordinate. The subordinate who does not rebel against or resist imposition of cultural norms will gradually assimilate into the ideal of the authority.