Resituating Models of Acculturation: an Occupational Dimension

To date, the major models of acculturation underpinning the settlement process for new immigrants have been developed within cultural psychology. Yet, implicit in immigration is a change of physical, political, cultural, societal and economic context, which impacts immigrants’ daily occupations; occupations being the everyday activities in which people engage. Utilising an occupational perspective, this paper resituates understandings and models of acculturation as a measure of successful settlement, in the New Zealand context. The study, based in the discipline of occupational science, explored the process by which 25 Indian immigrant women engaged in occupations when settling in New Zealand. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and participant observations and analysed using grounded theory methods to uncover how and when the women engaged in occupations to facilitate their settlement. In this paper, three vignettes are presented which reveal acculturation as a transactional process embedded within time and across social and environmental contexts. The findings further uncover complexities of acculturation and the lack of agency afforded to immigrants in their choice of acculturative strategy, when situated within the bicultural context of New Zealand society.