A Study on the Integration of Western Immigrants

Hello, do you want to "build a wall" or "build a bridge" for the phenomenon of immigration? Tepran, who just finished the first debate of the US presidential candidate, has always supported the first option. There are other politicians who think the latter is better. Then there is: how to build it? This project, funded by the British and started in Calais, France, provides a guide to building walls with practical actions. It is better to watch scholars discuss the method of building bridges-how to integrate immigrants into the mainstream society.

Many countries implement compulsory integration policies, such as prohibiting immigrants from learning their mother tongue or restricting the wearing of certain clothes and religious activities. But can these policies achieve the expected results of the government? Akerlof, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, answered in the negative. In a paper co-written with Kranton, an economics professor at Duke University, he put forward a theory: schools that publicize and educate a single idea may marginalize students whose cultural background is far from this idea, and consolidate and strengthen students' own values and beliefs. Bisin and other scholars have put forward similar theories. They believe that the mainstream social environment unfriendly to ethnic minorities will strengthen their culture and national identity. Because a person's values are influenced by family education and social education, if social education restricts minority culture, parents with stronger national cultural identity may pass on more ideas and values of mother tongue culture to their children.

Theory needs to be tested by facts. VasilikiFouka, an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University, verified the above theory in his doctoral thesis. Professor Foucault takes German immigrants as his research object. She studied the influence of banning German teaching on the integration of German immigrants into American society.

At the beginning of the 20th century, German immigrants established many private schools teaching in German in the United States. In some areas with a large German population, they also won the opportunity for their children to enjoy bilingual teaching in public schools. German immigrants are a group successfully integrated into American society, and they can be said to have been recognized and respected by the mainstream society.

However, after the outbreak of World War I, this situation changed significantly. Americans' attitude towards German immigrants ranges from friendliness to complexity, and then from complexity to disgust. The federal government passed a bill requiring foreign language publishing institutions to translate all news related to the same war into English; Iowa prohibits citizens from speaking German on the phone; Some patriotic organizations even demanded that German be banned. From 19 17 to 1923, * * 2 1 States have promulgated laws prohibiting private schools from using any foreign language teaching-but in fact, at that time, the "foreign language teaching" in American private schools was almost only German teaching-among them, Indiana and Ohio explicitly prohibited German teaching. However, the Supreme Court ruled these bills unconstitutional in 1923.