Patterns of relations between immigrants and host societies

This paper provides an overview of migration and cultural diversity across seven countries in three major geographical regions. It describes the evolution of acculturation theory, models and research. Next, the paper briefly reviews the developments in the application of social psychological theory to the study of immigration and intergroup relations and illustrates the convergence of these approaches across ten studies. Finally, it makes recommendations for the course of future research. Specifically it recommends to clearly distinguish between cultural heritage and cultural identity, to take transnational contacts into account in models of acculturation, and to examine the concepts of pluralism and creolization as outcomes of culturally heterogeneous host societies. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.