The Chinese on Long Island -- A Pilot Study

Abstract

The two groups represent not only differences in terms of date and of circumstances of migration but also differences in present socioeconomic level and in the capital and education they brought to integrate into American life. HYPOTHESIS This study is based on Gordon's differences between cultural and structural assimilation. Gordon makes distinctions between cultural assimilation and structural assimilation in his analysis of the assimilation processes of minority groups (racial, religious or ethnic) in American society. By cultural assimilation he means acculturation or the adoption of the cultural patterns of the dominant group, the Anglo-Americans. Structural assimilation refers to the large-scale entrance of minority groups into the social cliques, clubs and institutions of the larger society on a personal and intimate level (or primary group level). He thinks cultural assimilation precedes structural assimilation. He writes: The key variable turns out to be structural assimilation. For, if plural cultures are to be maintained, they must be carried on by subsocieties which provide the framework for communal existencetheir own networks of cliques, institutions, organizations, and informal friendship patterns-functioning not only for the first generation of immigrants but for the succeeding generations of American-born descendants as well. And here a crucial theoretical point must be recognized. While it is not possible for cultural pluralism to exist without the existence of separate subsocieties, the reverse is not the case.