About the theme of this blog...

A lot of studies have been published on how immigrants adapt to a different culture and country. We’ve heard about the “segregation, integration, assimilation” concept, where segregation is the rejection of the local culture, integration is a mix between the local and native culture and assimilation is the adoption by the immigrant of local consumption habits, traditions and way of life.

This existing literature demonstrated several theories and conclusions about how people adapt to foreign cultures and countries. In this blog we would like to do research on the inverse topic: how worldwide cities adapt to foreigners? Instead of studying how a person adapts to a new environment we will focus on how an environment can adapt to people that are not used to it?

According to the NCSL’s (National Conference of States Legislatures) top 10 policy issue forecast published in 2008, integrate people with different cultures and backgrounds in a nation’s society represents a major concerns for Western countries.

Being exposed to a new environment (“unfamiliar economic, biological, physical, social and cultural conditions”) can cause tension or anxiety to some people (Luedicke, M.K. 2011). And even though tourists travel to discover new things and being confront to uncertainty; we think that expatriates, immigrants and/or exchange students won’t mind a little local help in their assimilation process.

References:

Luedicke, M. K. 2011, July 22^nd. Consumer acculturation theory: (crossing) conceptual boundaries.

NCSL. 2008. NCSL’s top 10 policy issue forecast: Heat is on state legislatures.