Years ago, I was talking to a recently made acquaintance about the ways immigrants adapt to a new country. That acquaintance, who was also foreign, volunteered four ways in which this occurred. I thought his classifications were excellent, but I also know that immigrant adaptation doesn’t always fit neatly into a box, and that furthermore, an immigrant can move from one stage to the other both deliberately and unconsciously. In my book, Shifting Allegiances, you’d see that this is the case.

But his classifications help shed light on the ways immigrants adapt and I am sharing that here, with my own examples:

• Immigrants who embrace the new culture completely- These are immigrants who are so happy to be in their new country, that they adopt everything the new country has to offer. They adopt the culture, way of speaking, way of eating, dressing etc. You can see this with immigrants who start speaking with the new foreign accent and start dressing in the new way. Their friends are natives of the new land. Some even turn their backs entirely on their previous culture and don’t want to be associated with it. As far as they are concerned, this new culture is IT.

• Immigrants who reject the new culture- These immigrants never integrate and keep themselves separate. They fiercely maintain their previous culture and only hang out with people from their homeland. They go to the same religious institutions they went to back home. They eat only the foods they are used to and do business only with their people. These people trust what they know, don’t deviate and are happier that way. Even though they are in a new land, they are not of the new land. An example would be an extreme version of an ethnic enclave.

• Immigrants who reject the new culture, but also don’t fit into their previous culture- These people inhabit some sort of alternate space, a no man’s land where they are not happy in their new country, but also not happy in their old country. These people never quite fit in with the new culture, but they change sufficiently enough not to fit into their old cultures. They are not foreign, but they aren’t natives either.

• Immigrants who integrate completely and can still go back home- These immigrants are comfortable in the new culture and can get along with everyone else easily. But they could also return home and adapt easily as well. They kept their previous connections alive and travel back frequently.

So what is the ideal state? Certainly it’s better (it’s always better), if a person can be happy where they live. But there are so many factors which can influence how an immigrant adapts. Availability of financial resources, a rich support system, the degree of closeness between the old and new culture, the experiences one has in one’s homeland and the experiences one has in the new homeland.

So how can a would-be immigrant predict how he or she would adapt? You can’t know that prematurely. Until you experience the new culture for yourself, you wouldn’t know how you’d adapt. Plus life is this thing that changes constantly. You just can't predict.