Chapter 2: Closing the Gap Between Immigrants and Communities
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Immigration is a process that takes place along two major axes: time and intensity. Ideally, as the number of years that an immigrant has been in a country increases, so should his or her attachment and feeling of belonging. This chapter proposes four phases and three dimensions to capture the integration of immigrants into official language minority communities. It also suggests that immigrant integration should not be a one-sided process of assimilation but that both immigrants and communities are transformed in the process. As a result, some attention here is focused on the minority community itself and how it may need to change its own collective identity in order to become a host community capable of successfully integrating new members.
