Acculturation strategies and attitudes according to the Relative Acculturation Extended Model (RAEM): The perspectives of natives versus immigrants

Abstract

The purpose of this work was to study acculturation of the African immigrant and host populations in an area in the southeast of Spain (Almería), characterized by a high rate of immigration. A new acculturation model, the Relative Acculturation Extended Model, RAEM [Navas, M., Pumares, P., Sánchez, J., García, M. C., Rojas, A. J., Cuadrado, I., & Asensio, M. (2004). Estrategias y actitudes de aculturación: la perspectiva de los inmigrantes y de los autóctonos en Almería. Sevilla: Dirección General de Coordinación de Políticas Migratorias. Consejería de Gobernación. Junta de Andalucía; Navas, M., García, M. C., Sánchez, J., Rojas, A. J., Pumares, P., & Fernández, J. S. (2005). Relative Acculturation Extended Model: New contributions with regard to the study of acculturation. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 29, 21–37], is used for this. This model differentiates between the real and ideal planes of acculturation, that is, between the strategies that are actually put into practice and attitudes that are preferred. Moreover, the model distinguishes seven spheres, or domains, of acculturation (political, work, economic, social, family, religious and ways of thinking), in which persons (immigrants and natives) adopt and prefer different acculturation options (strategies and attitudes). About 1523 persons (397 Maghrebis, 434 Sub-Saharans, 398 Spaniards who evaluated the Maghreb exogroup and 385 Spaniards who evaluated the Sub-Saharan exogroup), answered a questionnaire made expressly for the study. According to our predictions, immigrants and natives coincide in their choices for acculturation (“assimilation”) in the peripheral domains of the RAEM (work, economic); they also coincide in their acculturation attitudes in the social domain (“integration”); however, they differ enormously in the options preferred for the central spheres, or hard core, of the culture (e.g., family, religious, ways of thinking): While immigrants prefer “separation”, natives continue to prefer “assimilation”. Advantages of the RAEM division into domains of acculturation are discussed with regard to previous models, as well as the implications for predicting inter-group conflict.