Acculturation as intergenerational trajectory and accountability concerns in immigrant youth discourse

Introduction

This study aims at exploring the ways in which young immigrants account for their cultural adaptation in Greece in interviews on their immigration history. Drawing on critical advances of acculturation literature and going along with rhetorical and discursive developments in social psychology, the article explores the ways in which participants account for their acculturation vis-à-vis other social actors and documents the accountability concerns to which they seem to be oriented.

Acculturation in Berry’s model: advances and implications

The ‘cultural adaptation’ of social actors and social groups as a result of contact has become an important topic in the social sciences. An influential theoretical model within psychology was developed by Berry (1997, 2008). According to Berry (1997), the outcome of acculturation process depends on the strategies that social actors develop toward two main issues: cultural maintenance and contact with other groups. A first possible strategy is assimilation. According to this, immigrants adopt the culture of the host country altogether, while they also participate to the social milieu of the host country. Integration, on the other hand, means that immigrants wish to maintain their own culture, while they also wish contact with the culture of the host country. Separation means that immigrants maintain their culture, but they do not wish to have contact to the host society. Finally, marginalization entails that immigrants do not maintain their culture, but they do not wish to have contact with the host society either. Later models accepted Berry’s bidimensional model and the proposed strategies, but placed emphasis on the intergroup level and the interaction between the acculturation strategies of immigrants and host society (Bourhis et al., 2010; Piontkowski et al., 2002), as well as, on the potential mobilization of diverse acculturation strategies in different domains of social life (Navas et al., 2007).

Acculturation models have been influential and have spawned a large body of research on the implications of different strategies. According to recurrent research findings, integration constitutes the most efficient and rewarding acculturation orientation (Berry and Sabatier, 2010). Specifically, immigrant youth who involve themselves in both their heritage culture and that of the receiving society tend to have positive self-esteem and psychological well-being, better performance in school and more supportive social networks. Research has also documented intergenerational conflict as a result of different acculturation orientations. Parental roles and power relations within family are seen to be affected by different acculturation procedures and pace, as second-generation immigrants tend to acculturate more rapidly than their parents. Existing studies either depict immigrant children as cultural brokers, mediating the new culture for their family and becoming family representatives to the outside world or focus on the intergenerational tensions that arise as a result of ‘culture clash’, when children are closer to the cultural values of the receiving country (Marie Skandrani et al., 2012; Portes and Rumbaut, 2001).

Acculturation: critiques and discourse analytic perspectives

Despite the prominence of acculturation models and the important social implications of the aforementioned research, several critical points have been yielded during the past years. These criticisms relate both to the methodological paradigm that these models have adopted and the assumptions on which this is founded. First is the criticism of the linearity of the trajectory implied in acculturation models. Research using in-depth interviews with middle-class immigrants from South Asia in the United States revealed that while they took their position in US society for granted and considered themselves to be integrated, after the events of 9/11, due to their physical resemblance to Muslim/Arab, they were considered as foreign and non-white, and their integrated status was disrupted (Bhatia and Ram, 2009). Chirkov (2009) advances a similar critique, arguing that, following the deductive-nomological and quantitative approach, research often overlooks the specificities of the context within which acculturation takes place and which plays a crucial role in shaping people’s experiences in a new multicultural environment. Chirkov (2009) also maintained that culture in most acculturation research is depicted as a system of beliefs which is settled and beyond controversies. This is in contrast, however, to the representation of culture as involving dilemmatic aspects, constituted in other theoretical and research traditions.

Discourse analytic work on acculturation has paid attention to the dilemmas that may arise in talk on acculturation. In relation to the faith schooling of Muslims in the United Kingdom, the print media often represented integration as imbued with liberal undertones. Nonetheless, at the same time it hid assimilative implications since the British culture was seen as the norm upon which the immigrants had to adapt (Bowskill et al., 2007). Andreouli (2013) also attested to the dilemmatic discourses of immigrants in the United Kingdom regarding their acculturation. On one hand, United Kingdom meant safety, democracy and open-mindedness, at the same time it also denoted lack of moral values in immigrants’ talk. In Greece, researchers have explored the dilemmas immigrant students may face concerning their acculturation (Archakis and Tsakona, 2016). Using written essays with students of immigrant descent, Archakis and Tsakona (2016) showed how students’ discourse is oriented to demonstrate their efforts to integrate while it aims at resisting the assimilationist, monocultural pressures of Greek society. Similar tensions have been identified in majority discourse relating to immigrant’s cultural adaptation. Specifically, in a study by Sapountzis (2013), ethnic Greek participants argued that immigrant students should have access to public schools, a fact that would facilitate their adaptation. They also maintained, however, that their presence in the classroom has negative outcomes in the educational process since schoolteachers have to devote more time to immigrants’ children, neglecting the educational needs of their Greek classmates. A tension was also identified by Figgou and Baka (2018) in an analysis of educators’ discourse regarding immigrant students’ integration. Specifically, in the context of accounting for intergroup relations, educators depicted school as a racism-free context and constructed harmonious intergroup relations as a result of immigrant students’ similarity with their non-immigrant peers (see also Rojas-Sosa, 2016). In the context of discussing acculturation, however, they devalued assimilation and prioritized cultural maintenance on the part of the immigrants. The authors related their findings to continuing dilemmas of liberal societies which juxtapose social cohesion to cultural distinctiveness (see also Figgou, 2018). Nevertheless, they also maintained that the argumentative lines identified have been certainly affected by the way in which their participants (educators) have been positioned by the frame of the interview as par excellence responsible for the management of diversity in the classroom, which brings about certain accountability concerns. Nevertheless, they did not elaborate further on this issue.

To sum up, the aforementioned research has analyzed discourse on acculturation in different contexts and has mainly revealed the broader dilemmas that are reflected on speakers’ ways of accounting. It has paid less attention, however, to participants’ orientation to issues of acculturation, in order to manage their accountability in local interactional contexts. An exception to this tendency constitutes a study by Anjum et al. (2018). The authors have focused on the ways in which accountability is managed within the context of interviews on the cultural adaptation of first-generation Muslim immigrants in the United Kingdom. Their analysis indicated that different rhetorical contexts within the same interviews occasioned different ways of accounting oriented to different accountability concerns. In particular, when particular acculturation orientations were introduced by interviewers, participants treated the questions as problematic. Nevertheless, when they introduced acculturation in their own terms, they provided narratives of acculturation success. The authors concluded that participants’ accounts reflected not only their stances toward acculturation, but rather the framing of the interview and the way in which the issue had been presented.

This study wants to contribute to the discourse analytic literature on acculturation by paying attention to local accountability concerns, as well as, to historically produced (and more often than not) dilemmatic norms and values on which participants’ accounts are predicated. In particular, our focus is on accountability concerns that arise in the context of discussing acculturation as an aspect of being (dis)associated with other (groups of) people. More specifically, we put forward that when people negotiate their acculturation strategies, they also negotiate their relation to significant others, groups and individuals (parents, peers and relatives), something that raises important moral accountability concerns that need to be handled.

Methods

Extract 1

In her first turn in Extract 1, by the use of active voicing, the interviewer, A.G. openly questions the use of the term ‘assimilation’ on the part of the respondent. Illy proceeds to provide an extensive warrant that involves an intergenerational comparison. His way of accounting makes apparent that he is oriented to the potential implications of depicting himself as assimilated. As other commentators have argued cultural maintenance is something valued and it would be problematic to argue in favor of assimilation, in particular in front of an interviewer coming from one’s own ethnic group. Illy presents assimilation as a stage in an intergeneration integration trajectory. In his narrative – which is back-channeled by the interviewer – assimilation is depicted as a comparative/relational construct. It is constituted as absent from the immigration plan of Illy’s parents, while it is treated as part and parcel of their expectations for his life in Greece. This intergenerational change is treated as a common phenomenon. This is rhetorically accomplished by presenting his parental immigration plan as interchangeable with those of other early immigrants. Toward the same rhetorical objective seems to be oriented the use of lists (to work, to make some money and leave … to grow up, to study here, to learn the Greek language, to get a better job). According to Jefferson (1990), lists are typically treated as sufficient to convey generality and routine procedures.

Despite, however, the fact that assimilation is treated as a stage in a common integration trajectory and, although it has been depicted as a parental concern, Illy’s account is oriented to claim agency for ‘looking more Greek than Albanian’. The continuous use of first-person constructions by the participant attends to the agency of his actions (I have assimilated to the society, I grew up here). The interviewer replies by a gist formulation – supposed to summarize the participant’s version of the events – and asks for ratification (So, you believe that you have assimilated but your parents haven’t?). Illy recasts the formulation by emphasizing that between his way of acculturation and that of his parents there is no absolute difference but a difference in degree (not so much). His way of extensively justifying his construction of his parents as not assimilated or rather as not so much assimilated reveals again that he is ‘aware’ that his utterances may have certain identity implications, some of which he can presume that he shares with the interviewer. The comparison between himself and his (prospective) children also seems to be oriented to the management of these moral implications. Through this comparison, assimilation is constructed as a step by step gradual and inevitable process and – by implication – his assimilation is depicted as an expected stage in this course.

An intergeneration comparison is also drawn in the next extract. The exchange quoted in Extract 2 is from the opening part of the interview with a young man who migrated from Albania to Greece with his family in the 1990s. The interviewer after introducing the aim of the research (as a study on the immigration experience of young people in Greece) invites the participant to unfold his immigration story by starting with the first years in Greece, using a vague formulation (the ‘circumstances’ for you and your family).

Extract 2

Ιn his first turn, Leonid does not adopt the footing provided by Panos’s question (… for you and your parents). Instead of referring to his family experiences, he proceeds by the use of an extreme case formulation (all the Albanians) (Pomerantz, 1986) to depict the poverty of first-generation Albanian immigrants as a widespread phenomenon. The conditions of impoverishment of the Albanian immigrants are given the status of common knowledge by the immediate agreement of the interviewer. Nevertheless, the initial agreement turns to a question on the Albanians’ immigration plan, when Leonid points out that within these conditions most Albanians aimed at saving money to take back home. The interviewer’s question seems to raise important accountability concerns on the part of the participant. This is made apparent by various rhetorical features of the Leonid’s answer. First, pauses and false starts indicate that the topic under discussion may be a delicate one. Second, by a footing change (Goffman, 1981), the immigration plan which has been previously presented as a fact is granted the status of a personal opinion (I think, I mean). Finally, the immigration plan of the first-generation is warranted through recourse to the backwardness and the extreme poverty in Albania (100 years back, they came here thirsty, hungry). By this way of accounting and in particular by constructing immigration as the product of necessity rather than choice Leonid seems to be oriented to legitimate Albanian immigration to Greece and to construct first-generation immigrants (including his parents) as not having the intention to deceive the Greek state, in front of an interviewer of Greek origin. Other commentators have pointed out that the ‘not having a choice’ trope, used to differentiate between deserving and undeserving immigrants, is important for the management of moral accountability in discourse regarding immigration (van Dijk, 1993). This trope is used in our data to differentiate the first with the subsequent generations of immigrants which are depicted to have choices but also important challenges and acculturation expectations to meet. Leonid’s last contribution to the above exchange, using a ‘we’ formulation, elaborates on the different conditions of his generation in relation to the one of his parents: we grew up here, we learned the language, we grew up in the same way with our peers. In the same vein with the Extract 1, the participant positions himself, but also his generation in relation to his parents – but also in relation to his Greek peers – and constructs acculturation as a relational, comparative construct.

Extract 3

Stella in her first turn adopts a distant footing and explicitly differentiates herself from the voice of those who, according to her account self-identify as the ‘Albanian clan at school’. The interviewer’s next turn, however, probes the participant to position herself vis-a-vis her Albanians school mates and provokes a rather symmetrical account on her part (I never entered this clique … neither I was giving the cold shoulder). In this account, the speaker seems to be oriented to the management of a double challenge: to avoid being identified with the Albanian clique and at the same time to avoid showing disrespect to her Albanian school mates, by ‘being a Greek woman’. In the language of acculturation models, the speaker position herself as ‘doing integration’ by maintaining an eclectic (albeit privileged) relationship with Albanian peers and by continuously distancing her situation from them.

It is noteworthy that Stella recurrently positions herself in juxtaposition to (them as) Albanians. It is also important to note that the speaker seems to be ‘aware’ of the potentially negative identity inferences that presenting herself as Greek would have. The rhetorical features of her account (active voicing and pauses) make apparent that mentioning that she ‘appeared to be a Greek woman’ may raise accountability concerns. To the same concerns seem to be oriented Stella’s dispreferred response – or rather nonresponse – to the interviewer’s invitation to consent if there really was such an impression. According to Pomerantz (1984), dispreferred second turns almost always include some type of justification for what has been circumvented. Stella does not proceed to (dis)confirm the actuality of the impression of her being Greek. She turns, however, to justify her non-typicality as an Albanian immigrant woman. Her educational path is, according to her account, what makes her (and some unspecified others) as not representative of Albanian youth. The way in which the speaker constructs her acculturation trajectory as exceptional serves to construct (by implication) separation as the typical adaptation pattern for immigrant Albanian youth. It has also consequences, however, for the construction of agency for acculturation. The educational integration of Stella (and other unspecified Albanian youth) is depicted as involving personal motivation and choice (It saved us that we decided to study).

Before the exchange quoted in Extract 4, A.G. asked the participant (a young man in his early 20s) if there have been occasions in which he has hidden his ethnic background and immigrant identity. The participant replied that he ‘felt like doing it’ in the beginning and the interviewer proceeded to ask him whether he felt bad about it.

Extract 4

The interviewer’s question seems to hold the interviewee accountable for denouncing his origin. Enzo, in order to tackle this, introduces a narrative where he presents himself as the victim of racism (at least in the first grades in Greek school). Racism in this account is constructed as a by-product of ignorance, since – in accordance with ‘contact hypothesis’ (Allport, 1954) – it is depicted to vanish in latter grades, when everyone had an acquaintance with people from immigrant origin. This lay contact hypothesis serves to mitigate the racism of the Greek students which is presented as the result of not interacting with people of immigrant descent. It can also be considered to protect the identity of the speaker from the moral censure of accusing others of racism (Augoustinos and Every, 2010). The interviewer then asks about his group of friends and whether they consisted of Greeks or Albanians. When the participant replies that in the beginning, he hanged out just with Greek people, A.G. asks for justification, making apparent that this utterance may have important moral implications for the participant. She, at the same time, however, offers Enzo a potential escape move by asking whether this was by choice or not. Having only Greek friends may be received as an attempt to hide or reject one’s origin, unless it is not the result of choice; unless it has ‘just happened’.

The participant adopts the ‘not having a choice’ trope but also unfolds a number of rhetorical devices oriented to manage the potential aforementioned implications. First, he uses the discourse of particularization (Billig, 1985). Instead of talking about Albanians in general, something that could raise the censure of prejudiced thinking, he considers an individual case of an Albanian peer that he got to know and dislike his character. Hence, he presents himself as someone who is open-minded and does not befriend people based on origin but based on character. The use of the word compatriot does also important rhetorical work in the direction of dodging potential negative identity inferences. It is important to note here that the use of the term compatriot and its potential implications in the specific interactional context are occasioned by the common (Albanian) origin of A.G. The word ‘compatriot’ indicates that the participant acknowledges his connection with people who share the same descent as his and he does not reject tout court his descent and his fellow countrymen.

Finally, toward the same end, namely, toward maintaining a balanced position between not looking down on someone’s co-ethnics, on one hand, and making friendships on non-ethnic criteria, on the other hand, seems to work the last contribution by Enzo. The participant replying to the question whether there were many co-patriots in different grades in school, he questions the category boundaries, by a knowledge disclaimer. He argues, in other words, that since some students of immigrant descent were born in Greece, he does not know whether they are considered Greek or Albanian.

Extract 5

Erian grounds his lack of Albanian language competence on his need to translate from Greek (to Albanian) when he talks and to his lack of Albanian accent. The Greek language is constructed as his ‘first language’ based on which he understands and gives meaning to things. In contrast, his contact with the language of the country of origin is described as a process (albeit a slow one, little by little) which remains incomplete, because as soon as he manages to recall and practice the language, he needs to leave Albania again. It is noteworthy that the interviewee’s effort to justify his lack of fluency in Albanian (as well as the interviewer’s questions toward this direction) reveals that this is not considered to be a natural implication of living in Greece. It is rather something that he has to account for. Accountability concerns are also raised by the positioning of the participant as just a bit closer to Greece in his next turn. Footing shifts and reference of voice, as well as active voicing (Oh our cousins came) work rhetorically to manage these concerns. The relatives in Albania are depicted to warmly welcome their cousins from Greece who do not look like Albanian. The familiarity in their faces cannot compensate, though, for the feeling that Greece is home upon his return from Albania. Despite the construction of Greece as home, the speaker emphatically and recurrently argues that his affinity with Greece, in comparison to Albania, is only a little bit greater. Nevertheless, even this slight superiority of Greece (in terms of familiarity) seems to disappear in Erian’s last contribution in the above exchange which follows the interviewer’s invitation to add anything he considers important before ending the interview. In this turn, the greater affinity with Greece gives way to a positioning of the participant as ‘between’ cultures and, specifically, as ‘neither Albanian nor Greek’. And although this is constructed as an interesting situation, it is also seen as a transitory one, since it is predicted that the next (third-generation) will have a less hybrid and more solid identity.

To sum up, the speaker seems to be oriented to manage certain accountability concerns as he thrives to construct a successful integration trajectory in Greece, on the one hand, and to show respect for his kinship with people and practices in Albania. By a narrative that involves recurrent shifts in affinity/proximity with both countries, he seems oriented to construct his journey as one that ends up in a harmonious combination of elements from both countries. Interestingly, however, he does not depict this mixed identity as the end point of the trajectory. On the contrary, he constructs a solid either/or identity as the natural implication of the ongoing (through successive generations) integration process.

Conclusion

Τhis study explored the ways in which young immigrants from Albania in Greece, belonging in the so-called ‘second’ generation, account for their integration and orient to different integration strategies in semi-structured interviews. Analysis indicated that participants’ accounts of acculturation contain multifaceted temporal and intergroup comparisons and juxtapositions which involve interesting tensions and raise important accountability concerns. In other words, when people orient to particular acculturation strategies, they also orient to social norms and values which involve contradictions and dilemmas that need to be handled in the local interaction.

Specifically, our young participants seem to be concurrently oriented to construct themselves as successfully crossing the integration path in the receiving country, the end point of which is being or rather appearing assimilated. Interviewees are also concerned, however, to avoid the potential identity inferences that remoteness from one’s cultural roots and co-ethnics (including an interviewer of the same origin) may generate. Hence, when they are invited by the interviewer to account/elaborate on being assimilated or on appearing Greeks, they construct assimilation as a relational instead of absolute, unqualified state. As a relational construct assimilation can characterize someone more or less and can be attributed to a different extent to different immigrant groups.

Moreover, participants’ accounts indicate concerns related to the understanding of acculturation as a temporal, intergenerational construct. First, participants are oriented to protect the generation of their parents from potential negative identity implications arising from failing to integrate in receiving country. This is accomplished mainly by the mobilization of a no choice trope. Parents are depicted to be concerned with the assimilation of their children (to learn the language, study and succeed in Greece) while they do not have assimilation in their own immigration/integration plans. Moreover, participants often manage the moral implications arising from their level of acculturation/integration through comparisons between themselves and their (prospective) children. Therefore, acculturation is being constructed as an ongoing present and future-oriented trajectory. This is noteworthy given that existing research on acculturation has a long-standing concern on the different acculturation strategies that different generations of immigrants follow or on the changes on the same generation over time (e.g. Berry and Sabatier, 2010; Fuligni, 2001). Following a discursive approach in this study, we maintain that these cross-generational acculturation concerns do not just represent different acculturation strategies, but rather different rhetorical concerns that arise in everyday verbal interactions (see also Ní Maolalaidh and Stevenson, 2014).

While managing important ideological dilemmas in context, participants are also concerned to construct themselves (and immigrant groups in general) as the main agents of the integration procedure. They are constituted as responsible to get integrated and to maintain cultural practices and in-group relations and affinities. Even in those cases in which the dominant group’s stance toward integration is constructed as negative (racist or xenophobic), it is treated as a trivial obstacle which naturally and automatically subsides as time goes by and integration takes place. Therefore, the immigrant group is constituted as responsible not only for its own successful integration in the new country but also for the positive change in the acculturation stances of the dominant group.

These results may have some vital implications for the study of immigrants’ integration. First, they show that the so-called orthogonal dimensions that acculturation models suggested (contact with the dominant group and cultural maintenance) provide dilemmas of ideological proportions which, being managed in actual interactional contexts and intersecting with social values, generate multiple puzzlements and concerns. By demonstrating the range of accountability concerns speakers attend to in various relational settings, the article highlights the reductionist and limited typologies contained in existing bi-dimensional models. Second, our analysis reveals that the potential implications of discursive constructions of acculturation may lie not only in the prioritization of one strategy versus the other, but also on the articulation of different orientations with specific constructions of agency.

Last but not least, our findings can contribute to the debate on the potential of interview data to provide information on (cultural/normative) resources and practices that ‘carry beyond the immediate local context’ (Potter and Hepburn, 2012; Wetherell, 2003). In particular, current analysis revealed some recurrent differences between the accountability concerns (and in their consequent local management) of those participants interviewed by a Greek interviewer and those interviewed by an Albanian interviewer. The above does not mean to suggest that there is a consistent, one to one relationship between the ethnic identity of the interviewer and the type of accounts provided. Other social identities (including gender and age) and other contextual factors may also exert influence. It tends to reinforce, though, the idea that in actual interactional contexts, the ways in which acculturation matters are discussed by participants are highly influenced by concerns related to a number of contextual/interactional factors, including the way in which the interviewer or other social actors are positioned. This finding suggests that interview data, approached as a specific type of interaction, although may not afford general inferences concerning precisely when and how specific types of accounting are used, they provide valuable information on social routines (see also Anjum et al., 2018). Furthermore, it has important implications not only in the field of research but also in the domain of institutional policy, since interviews that explore issues concerned with acculturation are part and parcel of institutionalized practices that constitute a prerequisite of citizenship acquisition or immigrants’ reception in many national contexts (Gray and Griffin, 2014; Johnston, 2008).