Assimilation

Assimilation is the process through which one group of people is socially absorbed by a second group of people with the result that the group that is being absorbed takes on the characteristics of the group absorbing them. Assimilation can be unplanned or planned, and it can be both unforced and coerced. As a strategy for managing social diversity, assimilation appears to offer the possibility of inclusionary control through which a dominant group can neutralize what it fears to be the disruptive effects of outsider, marginal, newcomer, or nonconforming groups. In practice, assimilation is not a smooth, linear process through which one culture is inevitably displaced by another.