Changing Perspectives: English Nationals’ Acculturation Strategies towards Immigrants’ Cultures in a Post-Brexit Era

Acculturation implies changes in behaviours, attitudes and values due to consistent first hand contact between members of different cultural groups. Despite its definition as a two-way process, past research has focused on immigrants’ acculturation strategies towards the host culture and host country nationals’ acculturation expectations of immigrants or their intergroup ideology endorsements (e.g., multiculturalism or colour-blindness). Only little research has explored host country nationals’ acculturation strategies towards immigrants’ cultures. Notably, a recent study could meaningfully cluster its Norwegian sample into three acculturation strategies which usually describe immigrants’ acculturation – separation, integration and undifferentiated – with no support for an assimilation cluster. Considering UK’s ongoing immigration debate in response to the 2016 referendum vote on leaving the European Union (i.e., Brexit), the present study focuses on English nationals’ (N = 100+) acculturation strategies towards immigrants who are currently living in England. Specifically, using quantitative acculturation scales as well as indicators for individualism and identification with a global community from the globalisation literature, the present study will elaborate the previously identified acculturation clusters for host country nationals. Moreover, how English nationals’ acculturation clusters relate to their mental health (e.g., feelings of loneliness), desire for social distance from immigrants and sympathy for radicalization (e.g., looking for physical confrontation at demonstrations) in a post-Brexit era is of further interest. Data collection will begin shortly and preliminary results will be discussed during the presentation.