The term ‘assimilation’ is encountered in several academic disciplines: biology, linguistics, petrology, psychology, history and sociology. The definitions of the term in these respective disciplines differ depending on their specific areas of focus: history, for example, deals with assimilation in the context of historical migration research.

In sociology, the term ‘assimilation’ refers to the process of becoming similar as a result of processes of alignment and adaptation. More specifically, it concerns the processes by which an individual or a group adapts to their social environment by adopting prevailing behaviours and attitudes. The process of shedding one’s previous socio-cultural identity, which takes place in parallel with assimilation, is referred to as ‘dissimilation’. In a political-sociological sense, assimilation is the alignment with value systems. It encompasses enculturation and the learning of cultural sign systems and practices, known as acculturation. Assimilation is a key factor in the growth of tribal groups, peoples, and linguistic and religious communities.

In antiquity, the term ‘assimilation’ referred to knowledge arising from the adaptation of the knower to the object of knowledge; this approach was carried over into the modern era.^[1] Whilst in 1892 the Brockhaus Encyclopaedia defined ‘assimilation’ as a technical term used particularly in biology and linguistics, and Meyers’ Encyclopaedia of 1936 followed this definition, the term also appears in the Großes Brockhaus of 1952 as a technical term in sociology. During the Nazi era, ‘assimilation’ as a sociological term carried negative connotations, as the aim was to emphasise the exclusivity of the German people. In substance, ‘assimilation’ was closely linked to the concept of ‘(one) territory and people’.^[2]

After the Second World War, insights from Anglo-Saxon sociology, with their controversies surrounding two concepts, found their way into Europe: that of the US ‘melting pot policy ’ towards immigrants and that of Canada’s ‘salad bowl concept ’. These revitalised academic discussions within the subject, as did the interpretation of Jewish assimilation, for example in Germany and Hungary. In the view of US research, assimilation was a natural and ultimate outcome of immigration: Americanisation. Assimilation therefore had positive connotations in the USA right up until the 1970s of the 20th century.^[3] In the Federal Republic of Germany, assimilation was discussed more intensively in the 1950s of the 20th century, as the then fledgling German state signed the Geneva Convention on Refugees in 1951, which came into force in 1954, and the issue at stake was how to deal with immigrants in light of the complexity of German-Prussian history.

In this context, the distinction between ‘Assimilation’ and ‘assimilierung’ was seen as important: ‘Assimilation’ was understood as national assimilation in the sense of a gradual abandonment of one’s own national identity. At that time, Great Britain and France were regarded as advocates of a policy geared towards assimilation. ‘Assimilierung’, or more precisely ‘social assimilation’, was understood as the process of various forms of social integration of immigrants into a society; efforts were made to use the term ‘adaptation’ to describe these processes.

In the context of the employment of foreign workers in the Federal Republic of Germany, particularly in the early 1970s, assimilation was discussed very critically, and the term was given a pejorative connotation as ‘forced Germanisation’ brought about by aggressive integration policies.^[4] This use of the term in political rhetoric persists to this day; in public discourse, it helped the term ‘integration’ to gain acceptance as a description of the relationship between immigrants and the native German population. Even amongst (legal) historians, a critical perspective on assimilation processes became established as early as the 1970s; these processes – particularly given the Austrian tradition of a multi-ethnic state – were seen as a threat, for example to the preservation of the mother tongue.^[5] Currently, a trend can be observed in historical scholarship towards, on the one hand, equating assimilation with integration,^[6] and, on the other hand, conceiving of assimilation as a process parallel to acculturation, although a clear distinction between these two terms is lacking.^[7]

In English and French, the terms relating to ‘(social) assimilation’ correspond to‘accommodation’;‘assimilation’, on the other hand, refers to ‘assimilation’ in the sense of complete national integration.^[8]

Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann (1944, 1964), although now discredited due to his involvement with the Nazis, continued to expound his views on assimilation as a folklorist long after 1945, thereby shaping the mindset of German sociology students. Mühlmann understood assimilation to mean the transition of smaller or larger elements of a particular‘folk culture’into the distinctive character of another people, accompanied by a change in ethnic self-identification. Mühlmann drew attention to the phenomenon of a ‘pseudological identification with foreign groups’ and thereby sought to identify mechanisms of voluntarily enforced assimilation.

According to Ronald Taft (1957), assimilation is a process in which an individual transfers their membership between two different social groups. Indicators of this membership include: a mutual willingness to communicate, a consensus on norms and values, acceptance of role requirements, and identification with the group. Taft distinguishes between three forms of assimilation: (a) pluralistic assimilation: cultural pluralism, in which different cultures coexist; (b) interactionist assimilation: the convergence of two groups, in which the individual retains part of their original identity; (c) monistic assimilation: the individual is completely absorbed into a new group and renounces their affiliation with their old group.

Milton M. Gordon (1964), drawing on the paradigm of class society, identifies seven distinct states of assimilation, which should be understood not as stages but as different levels of realisation: (a) cultural or behavioural assimilation, (b) structural assimilation, (c) inter-ethnic (including marital) assimilation, (d) identificatory assimilation, (e) assimilation of attitudes and values (attitude-receptional assimilation), (f) behavioural assimilation (behaviour-receptional assimilation) and (g) civic (civil-political) assimilation. It is to Gordon’s credit that he distinguished cultural assimilation – that is, acculturation – from assimilation as a social process; he situated this process between cultural behaviour and the socio-structural conditions underpinning it.

Hans-Joachim Hoffmann-Nowotny (1970) focuses less on the differences between assimilation, acculturation and integration; rather, in the context of assimilation, he emphasises immigrants’ participation in the culture of the host society – that is, their participation in the language, norms, value systems and the like. He is less concerned with positioning ‘assimilation’ as one term amongst others, but rather focuses on the content that gives substance to the concept of ‘assimilation’. Hoffmann-Nowotny posits that assimilation requires successful acculturation and integration: complete assimilation may result from a learning process that transforms one’s personality structure. This, he argues, depends on the interaction between the majority society and the individual or group seeking to assimilate.

The reflections of Hartmut Esser (1980) and Paul B. Hill (1984) reveal several dimensions of assimilation, which Annette Treibel (2008) summarises as follows: (a) cognitive assimilation, which requires knowledge of the new environment, particularly language skills; (b) structural assimilation, which amounts to integration into the labour market; (c) social assimilation, which requires inter-ethnic contact; and (d) identificatory or emotional assimilation, which implies a change in identity.

John W. Berry (1980) regards acculturation as the central process in the relationship between immigrants and the native population. He understands assimilation as the result of acculturation, occurring when the individual relinquishes their original cultural identity and seeks a positive relationship with the host culture. In addition to assimilation, Berry identifies further possible outcomes of acculturation: he terms the simultaneous attachment to both the majority and minority societies ‘integration’; the reduction to one’s own group he calls ‘segregation’; and the absence of any discernible identification with either group he refers to as ‘marginalisation’.

In recent years, the concept of ‘assimilation’ has been the subject of increasingly critical debate, particularly in the context of discussions on integration.

Jutta Aumüller (2009) examines assimilation and integration primarily from a historical-conceptual perspective and compares the two terms. She notes that their meanings diverge significantly and depend on how individual authors use the terms.^[9]

Similarly to Klaus Bade and Dirk Hoerder, for example, with regard to historical migration research, Anna Amelina (2013) questions whether assimilation is even still a ‘suitable conceptual framework’. She states that the concept of assimilation – precisely because of the notion of a ‘nation-state container’ associated with it – is unable to account for the possibilities of incorporation of transnational migrants into a new environment, and she proposes that this term be dispensed with when considering migration from a transnational perspective.^[10]

• Jutta Aumüller: Assimilation. Controversies surrounding a concept in migration policy. Bielefeld 2009.
• John W. Berry: ‘Acculturation as a Variety of Adaptation’. In: Amado M. Padilla (ed.): *Acculturation: Theory, Models and Some New Findings*. Boulder 1980, pp. 9–25.
• Hartmut Esser: Aspects of the Sociology of Migration. Assimilation and Integration of Migrants, Ethnic Groups and Minorities. An Action-Theoretical Analysis. Darmstadt 1980.
• Özekan Ezli, Andreas Langenohl, Valentin Rauer, Claudia Marion Voigtmann (eds.): The integration debate between assimilation and diversity. Bielefeld 2013.
• Alex von Gagern: Assimilation/Dissimilation. In: Joachim Ritter (ed.): Historical Dictionary of Philosophy. Vol. 1. Darmstadt 1971, col. 546ff.
• Paul B. Hill: Determinants of the Integration of Labour Migrants. Königstein 1984 (Materials on Labour Migration and the Employment of Foreigners 10).
• Hans-Joachim Hoffmann-Nowotny: Migration. A Contribution to a Sociological Explanation. Stuttgart 1970.
• Berthold Löffler (ed.): Integration in Germany. Between Assimilation and Multiculturalism. Munich 2011.
• Annette Treibel: Migration. In: Nina Baur, Hermann Korte, Martina Löw, Markus Schroer (eds.): Handbook of Sociology. Wiesbaden 2008, pp. 295–318.

• www.krimlex.de/artikel.php?BUCHSTABE=A&KL_ID=21 (“Assimilation”, in: The Encyclopaedia of Criminology [a co-operation project between the Universities of Bochum and Tübingen])
• www.hegel.de/werke_frei/hw108106.htm (‘Assimilation’, in: Outline of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences [1830])

[1] Albert Schirrmeister: Assimilation and Negation. Ancient Dream Knowledge in Modern Sciences. In: Georg Toepfer, Hartmut Böhme (eds.): Transformations of Ancient Sciences. Berlin 2010, pp. 93–144.

[2] Cf. Ingo Haar: Historians under National Socialism. German Historical Scholarship and the ‘Struggle for National Identity’ in the East. 2nd revised and expanded edition. Göttingen 2002 (Critical Studies in Historical Scholarship 143), p. 210; see also Aumüller: Assimilation, p. 37.

[3] Cf. Paul L. Metzger: American Sociology and Black Assimilation. Conflicting Perspectives. In: American Journal of Sociology 76 (1971), pp. 627–647, here pp. 628ff.

[4] The *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* wrote in 1981: ‘Integrate, do not Germanise’ (*FAZ*, 28 October 1981). Prior to that, in 1979, a Spanish migrant worker argued in a public discussion in Stuttgart: “Nevertheless, ‘Germanisation’, the other extreme, must also be avoided” (Stuttgarter Nachrichten, 17 December 1979). For further reading on integration programmes and assimilation, see Klaus J. Bade: Sozialhistorische Migrationsforschung. Göttingen 2004, p. 404.

[5] Theodor Veiter: Nationalitätenkonflikt und Volksgruppenrecht im 20. Jahrhundert. Vol. 1. Munich 1977 (Arbeitshefte. Bavarian State Centre for Political Education, Munich 55), see curriculum vitae in note 52.

[6] ‘In substance, it [the term “integration”] essentially corresponds to the concept of assimilation’ (Wolfgang Bosswick: ‘Integration’. In: Detlef Brandes, Holm Sundhaussen, Stefan Troebst [eds.]: *Lexikon der Vertreibungen. Deportation, Forced Resettlement and Ethnic Cleansing in 20th-Century Europe. Vienna 2010, pp. 295–298, esp. p. 295).

[7] On the ‘relationship between the concepts of assimilation and acculturation’, see Andreas Hoffmann: School and Acculturation. Gender-differentiated Education of Boys and Girls from Hamburg’s Jewish-Liberal Upper Class 1848–1942. Münster 2001, esp. pp. 143–146. See also Barbara Widawska: On the acculturation of Polish intellectuals in Habsburg Galicia in the second half of the 19th century in the light of the memoirs of Kazimierz Chłędowski (1843–1920). In: Polilog. Studia Neofilologiczne 1 (2011), pp. 133–144, here p. 136.

[8] Cf. Gotthold Rhode: Terminology relating to the refugee problem. Marburg 1956, p. 21.

[9] Aumüller: Assimilation, pp. 128ff.

[10] Anna Amelina: ‘Transnational Inclusion as a Multilocal Phenomenon. A departure from the assimilation paradigm in migration research? In: Ezli, Langenohl, Rauer, Voigtmann (eds.): The Integration Debate, pp. 119–155.

Roman Smolorz: Assimilation. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2014. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32851 (accessed 25 May 2021).