Assessment - Cultural Values

Professionals living and working in another country should adapt to the cultural ways and values of the host country.

Migration has some high and some low points. People are becoming more and more ambitious because they are always looking for better conditions in other countries. Consequently this brings an exchange of information between two different cultures and it causes an acculturation between cultures. Acculturation is a learning process of living successfully in a different culture by selecting the best cultural elements of the new culture.
While some people claim that we must forget our culture others believe that we must try to mix the two cultures. In one hand, people say that a person in the acculturation process will adhere to some selected values as well as rules of the new culture in order to be integrated in the social life. Thus, this person will enrich his culture due to the fact that he did not forgot his first culture and he will select some aspects of this host culture, focusing in a positive valuation of the aspects of both cultures. A further argument is that the majority of the people think that acculturation is the most appropriated process because, for instance, when I contact with another country, especially with a different culture, I need to be really careful because what I say or how I behave in my own country might not be appropriate and it might be an enormous offence to the people from the host country (the values, signs, behaviour and gestures interpretation change one country to another). Therefore I need to rethink all of my actions to avoid bad situations.

On the other hand, if I get new cultural habits, my culture will enrich but if I lost the majority of my cultural traces and my traditions, my culture may disappear and I may lost my social identity and my cultural patrimony thanks to this cultural shock that confuses people. They may lose their strong and positive identification to their mother culture. They should live their cultural differences in order to avoid the lost of their cultural identity. Certain habits may be forgotten by replacing new habits that belongs to the host cultures and for this reason they may lose their cultural patrimony.

To sum up we can say that it’s important to learn and respect some aspects of that new culture however our social identity can not be forgotten. The person that moves to another country needs to change a little his cultural habits to be accepted, yet this new society needs to be open and tolerant so that not only people get along well but also they feel a social integration as well as social cohesion.

Written by Carina Ferreira