1.1 Strategies and processes of adaptation in immigration  (Page 8/11)

Barbara Ballis Lal (1986, pp. 280-298), distinguishes characteristics of the new approach for racial and ethnic relations by the:

1. Preference to speak of “transformations of traditional cultures” instead of integration or assimilation.
2. Suggestion to take race and ethnic groups as variables and not as constant characteristics from the life of the group; and to consider that the racial and ethnic borders are in a constant process of negotiation and renegotiation.
3. Accentuation of meaning; the subjective and symbolic aspects of racial and ethnic relations.
4. Worry about the historical events like migration and the human experiences that are involved (1986, p. 297).

There are plenty of these characteristics in Hispanic or Latino literature. The literature of Hispanics in the U.S. has been on the increase throughout the 1980s. Denominated by some as the “decade of the Hispanics,” it frameworks a new and remarkable impulse to celebrate the 5th Centennial of the Discovery of America. CORTINA, R. y MONCADA, A. (eds.), Hispanos en los Estados Unidos , Madrid, Ediciones de Cultura Hispánica, ICI/V Centenario, 1988. BUXÓ REY, M. J. y CALVO BUEZAS, T. (eds.), Culturas hispanas en los Estados Unidos de América , Madrid, Ediciones de Cultura Hispánica, ICI/V Centenario, 1988. MOORE, J.&PACHON, H., Hispanics in the United States , Englewood Cliff (NJ), Prentice-Hall, 1985. PORTES, A.&BACH, R., Latin Journey. Cuban and Mexican Immigrants in the United States , Berkely (CA), University of California Press, 1985. PADILLA, F., Latino ethnic Consciousness. The Case of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago , Notre Dame (IND), University of Notre Dame Press, 1985. GARCÍA, F. Ch. (ed.), Latinos and the Political System , Notre Dame (IND), University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. MONCADA, A., La americanización de los hispanos , Barcelona, Plaza y Janés, 1986. ID., Norteamérica con acento hispano , Madrid, Ediciones de Cultura Hispánica, ICI/V Centenario, 1988. This literature, on the other hand, represents the continuity and extension of a series of investigations previously made about Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans. A good example of these pioneering studies was made by Tomás Calvo Buezas (1981) on the Chicano movement in California; by Juan Strong Luis Adrados (1975) on the Puerto Rican families in New York; and by the already mentioned A. Portes (1984) on Cubans and Glenn Hendricks (1974) on the Dominicans.

Recovering the concept of "adaptation”

When it comes to defining what happens in a migratory process (to name it and to establish theoretical categories to put in order, classify, and interrelate the different aspects and elements from that process), terms, concepts, and categories are used with different types of connotations and biases. Sometimes these biases are reflections of the receiving society or another of the immigrant groups in a unilateral, exclusive way. Other times, the bias and confusion can come from an investigator’s indiscriminate mixture of analytical approaches while rigorously trying to understand what actually happens to the immigrant’s social, political, and religious ideologies during migratory processes versus what where the immigrant’s original intentions in these three areas. The classic sociological approach to understanding migratory processes, based on reality, would be to try to explain their causes then to risk making anticipatory projections for them. The individually or collectively idealistic approach, based on intentionality, tries to influence the processes by projecting determined ideals, and assigning determined goals as an expression of a social ethic, or a certain social, political, humanitarian, or other type of intervention. This difference between real and ideal migratory processes can cause confusion for the receiving society or in the collective immigrant.