Living within a multicultural society: Implications for en – and acculturation processes

In Luxembourg, nearly half of the population is foreign – the foreign population percentage currently stands at 48%. Within this context majority and minority become fluid with the migration process itself being fluid, ranging from daily migration (transnational commuters), to medium-term stays, return visits and permanent immigration including uptake of citizenship. Second generation immigrants live alongside new arrivals. This heterogeneity has been described as super-diverse by Vertovec (2007). Diversity also goes beyond the level of country of origin as many individuals have very complex biographies. Culture contact is a permanent feature in daily life.
Such a plurally composed society presents a challenge also for value transmission processes. The boundaries between enculturation and acculturation become blurred and norms, values, symbols and language may be negotiated dependent on context. The multicultural society of Luxembourg has provided different experiential contexts for different generations. Whereas the older generation grew up in a more homogeneous context, for the current cohort growing up with people of different cultural backgrounds and language skills is the norm. Reinders (2006) has introduced the term co-culturation, as distinct from enculturation and acculturation, to describe the process of engagement with cultural diversity by both, natives and those with migration background. This concept of co-culturation encapsulates the skill of negotiating different cultural contexts and cultural frame-switching – key skills in modern societies characterized by high mobility and migration. There is some evidence that nationality becomes more salient in multicultural contexts, but at the same time the importance of cultural origins may be weakened. As results from a pilot study among secondary school children (N = 85) suggests, friendship patterns are formed on the basis of characteristics of the individual rather than origin. In the sense of the individualist marginal as described by Bourhis et al. (1997), the findings suggest that young people want to be recognized by who they are rather than what they represent. Implications for cultural value transmission will be discussed.