The Study Of The Acculturation Of The Migrant Population And Its Mechanism In The Development Process Of The Ethnic Minority Regions

The development of society not only accompanied by economic growth and advanced technology,but also result in large migrant population.The transregional mobility leads to the interaction and clash among different culture group inevitably.For example,due to the national large-scale industrial construction strategy,some of Chinese ethnic minority regions have developed rapidly in recent 30 years.The early political migrant and the later migrant form the external population of these regions.The encounter of various culture,combined with the complex local ethnic culture,make the issue about the acculturation of migrant population in ethnic minority regions become challenging and valuable.However,many studies pay attention to the migrant population of the east region instead of the western ethnic minority regions.Even if there are a few publications study it,they are restricted to the question of acculturation itself without discussing the social context behind it.Therefore,this research used the theory of emerging culture,chose the Ejin Horo Banner of Ordos as the site,which has got a fast development since 1990s.Referring to Wisler's division of cultural content,this paper detailed the concept "acculturation" into three aspects:food habits,festivals and customs,language.By the description of the acculturation of the migrant population,the research finally summarized the mode and external mechanism of acculturation.There are mainly three findings of this research:firstly,in terms of acculturation,for the dimension of food habits,both early and latter migrant population experienced the initial stage of maladaptation.The early group are more likely to accept the local food habits.But the latter group tend to partly accept it,which means that they learn the local cooking method actively as well as maintain some of their own food habits.For the dimension of festivals and customs,because of the propitious symbolic meaning and the lively atmosphere,the customs of the Ejin Horo Banner are generally accepted by the migrant population.Whereas,the early and latter migrant group are neatly divided over the custom named "Yuan-suo",which is a custom including a series of rituals to congratulate children's twelve years old birthday.The latter migrant group rejected to accept this custom because they couldn't understand its alienated ritual while the early group made it part of their lives.Simultaneously,the people moved in the Ejin Horo Banner in recent several years still maintain some festival customs of their hometown such as the Double Ninth Festival,which partly influenced the local residents' arrangements for festive events.For the dimension of language,the population movement and floatation bring multiple dialects into the Ejin Horo Banner.The result of the game among different dialects is that the mandarin got the final victory.The promotion of mandarin and the need for communication made the mandarin with local accent become the dominant dialect in the areas with large migrant populationSecondly,there are two changes in the acculturation pattern of migrant population.One is the change between the former and latter migrant groups.The acculturation pattern converts from the "assimilation-like" with roughly full acceptation of local culture to the "mutual embedding",which means both learning the local culture and retaining one's own culture.Another is the change in the acculturation pattern of latter migrants.This group has experienced a complete process from passive acculturation to mutual embedded acculturation,in which the residence intention played an important role.These two changes finally led to the emergence of a new culture type.In the Ejin Horo Banner,people's diets are getting richer,the festival customs are becoming more diverse and the language for daily communicate is increasingly consistent.Today,an eclectic,inclusive and open culture is emerging.In addition,the process of acculturation also promotes the cultural communication among different ethnic groups.The local traditional Mongolian culture has embedded in the lives of migrants.Thirdly,this research discussed the social factors and mechanism behind the change of acculturation pattern.It argues that the early and latter migrant population have experienced different social development periods of the Ejin Horo Banner.So,there are differences in their immigration backgrounds,motivations and occupations and so on,in which includes the influence factor of acculturation pattern.For one thing,most of the early migrant population interviewees came from a coal mining unit in the planned economy period.Such regions are academically known as cultural islands.In contrast to existing results,it is believed that the life experience in the cultural island also has the potential to make migrants more inclined to accept the culture of the destination.For another thing,the Ejin Horo Banner's rapid improvement in economic,education and infrastructure construction level let more and more latter migrants want to settle down,which became the key factor of the acculturation pattern change from passive to active as well.Furthermore,the social network plays a regulating role in the process of acculturation.The support of group in which people came from the same place and the expansion of interpersonal communication have a significant effect on the extent of migrants' acculturation.Accordingly,on the basis of field research materials,this research clarified and constructed a set of analysis path for acculturation of migrant population in the ethnic minority regions.It provides a fresh possibility for the related research and exploration in current academic circles.