Why Do Some Immigrants Try So Hard to Fit In and Others Simply Don't Bother?
The conversation, Building Bridges of Integration Between Asia and Brazil, brought together intercultural consultant Marlon Muraro and Claudia Gomes, a Brazilian specialist in emotional intelligence and intercultural awareness who has lived in Bangkok for sixteen years. When Renata Takacura raised the question, the example that came up was something like this. A Brazilian moving to the United States may try very hard to become American. The accent, the references, the cultural fluency, the whole project of fitting in. But a Brazilian moving to Thailand might not pursue the same kind of cultural transformation. Why?
I think part of the answer may be what assimilation is likely to buy them in that particular place, often without consciously working that out: how much will becoming local actually change my experience of belonging here? And the answer depends not only on how hard the migrant works but on what the destination society considers belonging to mean in the first place.
Belonging Is Not Defined the Same Way Everywhere
Countries do not all draw the boundaries of belonging in the same way.
Political scientists have long used the concepts of civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism to describe different ways national identity can be constructed, though real countries are rarely purely one or the other. Civic ideas of nationhood tend to emphasize citizenship, political institutions, and shared values. Ethnic or cultural ideas of nationhood place greater weight on ancestry, heritage, language, religion, or shared cultural origins.
The United States has a powerful civic conception of national identity. Citizenship and shared political ideals are central to the formal definition of being American. But American history also shows that race, ethnicity, and ideas about who looks or sounds American have shaped who is actually perceived as belonging.
The same complexity appears elsewhere. In societies where, ancestry, ethnicity, language, and cultural heritage can carry significant weight in ideas of national identity. That does not mean foreigners cannot integrate, become citizens, or participate fully in society. It means that legal membership and perceived cultural belonging are not necessarily the same thing.
A Brazilian who has lived in Thailand for decades, speaks fluent Thai, has Thai friends, works locally, and raises children there may still sometimes be identified as farang, a common Thai term for a Western foreigner. Switzerland has its own version of this distinction. Ausländer literally means foreigner in German and is commonly used to describe someone who is not Swiss. But the important question is not simply whether a word for foreigner exists. It is what the category means in practice: whether cultural fluency changes how people perceive you, whether citizenship changes the category, whether your accent or appearance or surname continues to mark you as an outsider.
The boundaries are different from country to country, and sometimes from person to person.
The Assimilation Calculation
And consciously or not they may adjust their behaviour accordingly.
People assimilate for many reasons. Language necessity, employment, children’s schooling, love of the culture. But perceived access to belonging is one of the things that shapes how much of that work a person is willing to do.
If a migrant believes that learning the language, adopting local customs, and understanding cultural references will substantially increase their social acceptance, there is a strong incentive to invest in those things. If they repeatedly experience that they will still be perceived as an outsider regardless of how fluent they become, what assimilation is likely to buy them starts to look different.
This does not mean the migrant is lazy, disrespectful of the country, or refusing to integrate. It may mean they have learned something about the rules of belonging.
The same person can behave very differently in two countries without their motivation, work ethic, or respect for either culture being fundamentally different. The surrounding definition of belonging may simply be different.
That isn’t necessarily inconsistency. It may be information.
Assimilation is something you can work toward. Belonging is something you cannot completely control.
Where Race Makes the American Case More Complicated
The United States makes this particularly interesting because its civic promise has always existed alongside racial boundaries.
European immigrant groups including Irish, Italian, Polish, and Jewish Americans encountered racial, religious, and ethnic boundaries that shifted over time, while some were eventually incorporated into a broader definition of American whiteness. The promise of becoming American was therefore real, but it was never experienced equally by everyone.
For non-white immigrants, cultural assimilation can absolutely happen. But being accepted as simply American, without a qualifier, can be more complicated. Researchers studying Asian American experiences have described this as the forever foreigner or perpetual foreigner effect: people who were born in the U.S., speak English fluently, and are culturally American can still be treated as fundamentally foreign. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 52 percent of Asian Americans reported at least one experience in which a stranger treated them as a foreigner. Pew found similar shares among U.S.-born Asian adults and immigrants.
The legal category says one thing, your cultural fluency says another, and someone else’s perception may say something else entirely. That gap matters because assimilation is not only about what you do. It is also about whether other people recognise what you have done.
What This Means for the Inherited Scorecard
The inherited scorecard that many migrants carry tells them to assimilate because assimilation leads to belonging and belonging leads to security and recognition. Learn the language, understand the culture, know the references, eat the local food, make local friends, stop sounding foreign, become comfortable enough that nobody can tell you are an outsider.
But that scorecard assumes something that may not always be true: that belonging is available if you work hard enough for it.
And that is where the scorecard can become cruel. What if the destination society does not define belonging entirely through behaviour? What if ancestry or ethnicity matters, or your accent or appearance continues to mark you as foreign even after you have learned the language perfectly? What if someone still asks where you are really from?
The problem may not be that you failed the integration test. The problem may be that you misunderstood what the test was measuring.
And perhaps that is why the same person can arrive somewhere and desperately want to become local, then move somewhere else and decide they are perfectly comfortable being visibly foreign. The migrant is learning what kind of belonging the destination actually offers.
Maybe the goal was never to become indistinguishable from the people who were born there. Maybe belonging can mean participating fully in a place while still carrying the fact that you came from somewhere else.
It may be a more honest definition of integration.
That is identity migration in its most structural form. The inherited scorecard meets the destination society's definition of who gets to belong, and the collision is where much of the pain lives.
If this is the experience you are navigating, Parenting Unpacked explores the inherited scorecard and identity migration in depth.
Jessica Gabrielzyk
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do some immigrants assimilate more than others?
Immigrants assimilate differently for many reasons including personality, age, language ability, family circumstances, social networks, discrimination, and their reasons for migrating. But the destination society matters too. People may be more motivated to adopt local language and cultural practices when they believe those changes will lead to greater social acceptance and belonging.
What is the difference between assimilation and integration?
Assimilation generally implies a greater degree of cultural convergence with the dominant society, sometimes involving the loss or reduction of one's original cultural practices. Integration means participating in the social, economic, or cultural life of a society while maintaining aspects of your original identity. But integration is always integration into something. Someone can be deeply integrated into an international or expatriate community without being equally integrated into the broader local society.
Does learning the local language help immigrants feel like they belong?
Often yes. Language can make it easier to build relationships, navigate institutions, work, participate in everyday life, and understand cultural references. But language fluency does not automatically eliminate outsider status. In some societies, ancestry, ethnicity, appearance, accent, or other markers can continue to shape how someone is perceived.
What is the forever foreigner effect?
The forever foreigner or perpetual foreigner effect describes the experience of people who are treated as though they are foreign even when they are citizens, were born in the country, speak the dominant language fluently, or have strong cultural ties to the society. It has been studied particularly in relation to Asian Americans, but the broader experience of being perceived as permanently foreign can occur in many societies.
Can immigrants belong without fully assimilating?
Yes. Belonging does not necessarily require becoming culturally indistinguishable from people born in the country. An immigrant can learn the language, participate in local institutions, build relationships, understand cultural norms, and contribute to the community while retaining their original language, traditions, identity, or connections to another country. Integration and assimilation are not the same thing.
Sources
Pew Research Center. (2023). Asian Americans and the “forever foreigner” stereotype. pewresearch.org
Brubaker, R. (1992). Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany. Harvard University Press.
If you have ever wondered whether you are not integrating hard enough or whether the country you moved to simply defines belonging differently, Parenting Unpacked was written for that question.
💕 A reader in the US, just before her move. She sent this.
