DIASPORA

1. Relatively homogeneous, displaced communities brought to serve the

Empire (slave, contract, indentured, etc.) co-existing with
indigenous/other races with markedly ambivalent and contradictory
relationship with the Motherland(s). Hence the Indian diasporas or South
Africa, Fiji, Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, Surinam, Malaysia; the Chinese
diasporas of Malaysia, Indonesia. Linked to high (classical) Capitalism.

2. Emerging new diasporas based on free migration and linked to late
Capitalism: post-war South Asian, Chinese, Arab, Korean communities in
Britain, Europe, America, Canada, Australia.

3. Any group of migrants that sees itself on the periphery of power, or
excluded from the sharing power.


Assimilation
National assimilation or cultural assimilation is a socio-
political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or
promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant
culture.
The term assimilation is often used when referring to immigrants and
various ethnic groups settling in a new land. New customs and
attitudes are acquired through contact and communication.

Each group of immigrants contributes some of its own cultural traits
to the new society. Assimilation usually involves a gradual change and
takes place in varying degrees; full assimilation occurs when new
members of a society become indistinguishable from older members.
Integration
Social integration is the movement of minority groups such as
ethnic minorities, refugees and underprivileged sections of a society
into the mainstream of societies. Social integration requires
proficiency in an accepted common language of the society,
acceptance of the laws of the society and adoption of a common set of
values of the society. It does not require persons to give up all of their
culture, but it may require to forgo some aspects of their culture
which are inconsistent with the laws and values of the society.

In tolerant and open societies, members of minority groups can often
use social integration to gain full access to the opportunities, rights
and services available to the members of the mainstream of society.


Acculturation
Acculturation is the process whereby the attitudes and/or
behaviors of people from one culture are modified as a result of
contact with a different culture. Acculturation implies a mutual
influence in which elements of two cultures mingle and merge.

It has been hypothesized that in order for acculturation to occur,
some relative cultural equality has to exist between the giving and
the receiving culture. In contrast, assimilation is a process of
cultural absorption of a minority group into the main cultural
body. In assimilation, the tendency is for the ruling cultural group
to enforce the adoption of their values rather than the blending of
values.
Imperialism
Imperialist discourse - talks of progress, civilisation and
savagery, democracy, science and religion, bringing
enlightenment to the dark backward customs of indigenous
people. It positions white European, Christians as superior
and knowledgeable and marginalises and oppresses those
constructed as the 'Other' as the binary opposite