Shifting Perspectives: Majority Member’s Proximal-Acculturation

Katharina Lefringhausen (Heriot-Watt University)

How, if at all, do ethnic majority members (e.g., white UK nationals) culturally change towards ethnic minority members (e.g., immigrants) in a shared society (e.g., the UK)? Or in other words, can majority members integrate/become bicultural even without moving to another culture? What are the predictors and outcomes for majority members who culturally change (e.g., more supportive of multiculturalism) and for those who do not (e.g., higher perception of cultural threat by ethnic minorities)? This talk will provide a summary of my work on the establishment of a new field within the acculturation literature: majority members’ globalization-based proximal acculturation. In so doing, I will outline the model’s theoretical origin in Berry’s (1980) bidimensional acculturation model, its antecedents and outcomes. Moreover, I will outline my current and future work on this topic.