Preserve your culture and celebrate other people’s cultures
It is not a melting pot
There is a big misconception about integration. Integrating well with other societies does not mean becoming one melting pot. Feeling pressured to abandon one’s culture and values and become similar to the people around is a big mistake that put an undue pressure to the person trying to settle in. If a society with different cultures become a big melting pot, it loses its beautiful variety. It is said with power comes great responsibility but with variety comes great richness.
Integration
One of the nicest and most tolerant multicultural countries who understood the value of integration is Canada. The definition of integration from a Canadian perspective is as follows.
“To integrate is to put two or more things together to make something new. It also means the things that are put together often keep many of their individual characteristics or features. When we talk about integrating cultures we usually refer to several cultures coming together to form a new, multicultural society. Each culture keeps its character and many of its features and values.”
System Integration
Another way of looking at integration is to look at engineers who brings together different components into one system. They basically ensure that the components function together as one system without fusing the components together. An eagle eye view of the system reveals different subsystems but these subsystems are unified via this integration.
Requirement for good integration
Although one can preserve his cultures, characteristics, religion and values there is an effort to be exercised for integrating well with other cultures and in my opinion it is a continuous effort and learning. One of the things to do are as follows.
- Learn the official language of the country.
- Find a job that you like and provide a unique service for everybody while doing the job.
- Respect the law and the regulations of the country.
- Respect other cultures not matter how different they seem from yours.
- Engage in community work and if possible in volunteering work
- Try to understand other people cultures and learn about their festivals.
- Resolve any clash in a respectful manner and consider any fellow citizen as your brother.
- Be happy and adapt to the environment and nature around you.
How success is measured from NZ perspective
New Zealand looks at the following metrics to measure whether immigrants are integrating well.
- Migrant working in a job that matches his/her skills
- Migrant is learning and getting well educated
- English language fluency and confidence level
- Sense of belonging and feeling included in the society
- Migrant health and wellbeing
As we see from the above points, success is not measured if one undergoes a transformation and becomes another person with other habits, cultures or values.
Conclusion
If you ever decide to immigrate, emigrate or live for a long period in another country, you do not need to undergo a series of transformation. You just have to enrich others with your culture, talent, good work ethics and perseverance and learn the language and law that will govern your new life.
