Assimilate, Integrate or Authentigrate ?
You’ll likely hear a lot of buzzwords about your transition to living abroad. Assimilation. Culture shock. Reverse culture shock. All these terms attempt to define what it’s like to experience a new culture while you’re simultaneously trying to integrate yourself into that culture. You might find yourself unsettled by the unfamiliar way of life and customs of your new country, also known as culture shock. Maybe you find yourself giving up parts of your cultural background in order to fit in, a process called assimilation. Perhaps you’ll find yourself returning to your country of origin without a clear sense of your identity or purpose, a common symptom of reverse culture shock.
It’s common for any immigrant or expat living abroad to feel caught up in the push and pull between your culture of origin and the new culture you’re now living in. But what if you didn’t have to choose one culture over the other to successfully start your new life living abroad? What if there was a way to preserve your sense of cultural identity while still engaging authentically with a new culture? Enter, authentigration.
Authentication is not a buzzword. Rather, it’s a way of understanding, welcoming, and navigating the challenges to identity that come with living abroad. To authentigrate means finding ways to be your authentic self as you undergo the transition into a new culture, maintaining your unique cultural heritage while learning and interacting with the culture you are now a part of. Typically, those living abroad take one of three routes when navigating the multitude of cultural changes at hand. They separate from their new culture, choosing to strictly maintain their cultural heritage at the expense of learning about the new culture. They assimilate into the new culture, abandoning their own sense of cultural identity and heritage. Or they become marginalized, abandoning a connection with their culture of origin and failing to successfully identify with their new culture.
Authentigration presents a fourth path, allowing the person experiencing a cultural shift to validate the pressures of that shift while finding a way forward that honors both their cultural identity and their desire to learn and grow into their new culture. When Kathra was 8 years old, her family fled from Iran, beginning a cycle of moving to a new place, trying to make it home, failing, and packing up again. After years of settling, uprooting, and resettling, Kathra and her family found themselves in Norway. By then, the struggle of simply living day to day was enough. Homesickness for their old life in Iran — missing family members, friends, and the bustling evenings spent sharing food and music – did not set in until much later. Kathra grew up watching her parents bury themselves in their determination to fit in and have a good life in Norway, and she knew there had to be a better way. As she got older, Kathra spent less and less time trying to hide her cultural heritage in order to fit in. Even after five years of being transient, she found that true belonging was a process that had to honor both her past life in Iran and her present one in Norway.
Moving to a new country is a transition full of challenges. Authentigration gives us the opportunity to honor where we’ve been and where we’re going as we learn to authentically integrate with our new culture.
Questions for Reflection
What are some elements of your culture that are important to you? How will you plan to preserve these elements when living abroad?
What excites you about moving to a new country? What element of the new culture are you looking forward to engaging with?
Have you experienced culture shock before? What was that experience like? What did you learn from it?
