Acculturation of South Asian Young People in Australia

This article describes the findings of a research project carried out on Indo-Australian young people in New South Wales, Australia. The subjects were drawn from three secondary schools aged 13- to 16- years- old. A total of 75 students completed a well-established Acculturation Scale (Ghuman, 1994, 1996) and filled in a family-background questionnaire. The data from the scale is analysed by using a variety of statistical techniques (Chi-Squared and Factor Analysis) and the findings are compared with three previous cognate studies in England and Canada (Ghuman, 1994, 1997, 1996). One of the surprising outcomes of the research is that girls in Australia are found to be far more traditionally orientated in their attitudes than are their counterparts in England and Canada. The findings on social class and religion, however, are in agreement with previous researches. These findings are fully contextualised and explained. The issues relating to reliability (Spearman-Brown = .78) and validity of the scale are also discussed.

Introduction

The second- and third-generation young people of South Asian origin in Britain and elsewhere in the West face special problems in the formation of their personal and social identities. Their difficulties arise due to dual socialisation processes: one of the home and the other of the school. These two institutions tend to make conflicting demands on young people’s role positions and behaviour. These may be described in three major dimensions: collectivity versus individuality, deep religious outlook versus secular orientation, and gender role differentiation and inequality versus gender role equality. 

Triandis (1994) has argued that people from traditional background are more likely to be collective in their orientation, ie, they are more conscious of the social norms, more tuned to the value judgements of ‘significant others’ and generally are more socially driven. Phinney and Rotheram (1987: 22) also suggests ‘an orientation toward group affiliation and interdependence versus and individual orientation emphasising independence and competition ‘ as one of the dimensions which may be used to differentiate cultural groups.  The schools in the West and Australia encourage the development of personal autonomy, critical thinking and a generally questioning attitude to things, whereas South Asian homes try to harmonise the family’s interest with that of its individual members.           

Sethi ( 1990, p. 12), who has carried out several investigations with parents and young people of Indian origin in the US, summarises the collectivist vs. individualistic dilemma : ‘The clash of tradition occurs when parents with a collectivist ethnic orientation are attempting to raise children in a society with an individualistic orientation.’  Shaw (1986) and Anwar  (1998) describe such a ‘clash’ of values resulting in conflict and tension between Muslim parents and their teenage boys and girls now living in England.

Research into religious vs. secular dimension  ( Halstead, 1990  Drury, 1990)  has shown that Muslim and Sikh parents are concerned about their offspring’s religious education at state (county) run schools as these tend to be mainly secular in their ethos and in their pedagogical methods.  Halstead summarises the situation of Muslim parents in Britain:

            The problem for British Muslims... is that these two goals (maintenance of      home culture and the benefits of modern scientific and technological   culture) cannot currently be achieved in the same educational institution. The second goal can only be achieved through attendance at a common school, but such a school exposes Muslim children to what may be perceived as secular, non-Islamic cultural influences which the combined    influence of the and mosque may not always be sufficient to counteract.

            (Halstead, 1994, p. 320, text in parentheses is added for clarification)

Drury (1991) found that young Sikh girls in Nottingham, England were finding it difficult to maintain the traditions (5 K’s of the Sikhs : especially that of uncut hair) of their religion. Girls were of the opinion that the teaching of Punjabi should be a part of school curriculum and that schools should also have a qualified Sikh Bhai(priest) to teach them the tenets of their faith. The Hindu communities both in Britain and North America are less concerned over this matter as they think they can adequately teach their religion at home (see Jackson and Nesbit, 1996; Parekh, 1990).

            Concerning gender, the patriarchal set-up of South Asian families stresses the differences of  role of men and women (boys and girls) and generally expresses preference for boys over girls. Researchers in the UK (Stopes-Roe and Cochrane, 1989, Wade and Souter, 1988; Dosanjh and  Ghuman, 1997) have found that young boys are very often given preferential treatment by their parents. Boys enjoy more personal freedom, choice of clothes, freedom to go out and are encouraged to stay on school to gain ‘A’ level qualifications beyond the compulsory school leaving age of 16. In contrast, schools in Australia and elsewhere in the West are committed to gender equality and equality of opportunity. Schools, therefore, have been perceived by many Asian parents to challenge the values of the home (Rex, 1985; Anwar, 1986). As a result of this conflict proportionally more Asian girls have been found to suffer from psychosomatic illnesses than their white peers (Kingsbury, 1994; Glover, et al., 1989; Merril and Owens, 1985 ) -  although research is not conclusive on this issue (see Ghuman, 1998)..

 Form the foregoing discussion, it may be inferred that the study of the acculturation of young people (the degree to which they take up the norms, values and customs of the host society)  should be of value both from a theoretical and practical perspective. Berry’s model (1998) of acculturation has been found useful by researchers ( Sam, 1985) working with migrant and ethnic minority groups. Berry (1994, p.129) defines acculturation as; ‘a culture change that results from continuos, first hand contact between two distinct cultural groups.’  His model postulates four acculturation  strategies as a function of two issues. The first one states: is it considered to be of value to maintain cultural identity? And the second: is it considered to be of value to maintain relationships with other groups?  According to Berry, the response of minority ethnic groups too these questions range from positive/positive (integration) negative/positive (assimilation), positive/negative (separation) and negative/negative (marginalisation). The model is supposed to explain behaviour at individual as well as collective levels. There are serious conceptual shortcomings to this model. The chief one being that it places the onus for acculturation on the minority groups and completely ignores the attitudes of the dominant group, which are crucial in understanding the integration or otherwise of minority groups. Secondly, it ignores the fact that the ‘host’ society might itself change as a result of inter-cultural exchanges. Thirdly, it is difficult to apply this model to the younger age groups as their attitudes have not been fully formed on concerns and issues arising out of the ‘home-school’ conflict. Therefore,  I used an eclectic approach to devise an attitude scale (referred to as Acculturation Scale) to assess attitudes towards acculturation by incorporating the aforementioned three domains, in particular centrality of the individual orientation of the West vs. the collective orientation of South Asian family and kinship. Items in the Scale  relate to areas of religion, friendship, community affiliation, independence/ family-orientation and recreational activities. Half the items ( sixteen) relate to Western European (English and Australian) way of life and half to their home cultural values. Further details of the Scale are discussed under the heading ‘instrument used’.

            The present study is a part of an on-going wider research project on the biculturalism and identity-related issues of South Asian young people in Britain, Canada and  the US. The research was conducted in New South Wales, Australia with the following objectives:

1.  To validate the ‘Aberystwyth Acculturation Scale’ (Ghuman, 1998) with a sample of young boys and girls of South Asian origin in a different cultural settings.

2.  To compare the biculturalism of the above group with the boys and girls studied in England and Vancouver (Ghuman, 1994).

Methodology: Sample

          To carry out investigation in schools in New South Wales the permission of the Director of Education was successfully sought. Four schools in Newcastle, where there was supposed to be a concentration of South Asian students, were approached. However, since no statistics are collected on the ethnic background of students, from the actual schools’ register it became clear that only two schools had a viable number of students with which to administer the background questionnaire and the Acculturation Scale. Prior to researching with young people, the permission of parents had to be sought and having, obtained parental consent, students’ participation in the research was also on a voluntary basis. Such a filtering process makes it difficult to obtain a large number for research, and makes it almost impossible to have a random sample for research. Under the circumstances, the best option is to ensure a representative sample of the population under study. All the young people from city schools come from a professional middle-class background. To obtain a sample of boys and girls from a manual background, a school in another part of New South Wales was contacted, where a sizeable proportion (nearly a quarter) of the town’s population, is made up of Sikh farmers, who have originated from the Punjab, India. There is only one secondary school in the vicinity, which serves both the Punjabi and white communities. With the consent of the principal and parents, all the students in the school were invited to take part in the research. Most of them (over 80 per cent) agreed to complete the attitude scale and the background questionnaire. A description of the sample is given in                   Table 1.

Table: 1 Sample description

Instrument Used

            As noted earlier in the paper a Likert-type scale was constructed by the researcher in 1974 to assess the biculturalism of young South Asian boys and girls in Birmingham, England (Ghuman, 1974). The scale’s reliability (Cronbach alpha = 0.82) and validity (by extreme group method) were established on a large sample of South Asian young people (N = 465; Ghuman, 1991). Thereafter, I t was slightly extended by adding another two items and replacing an item on ‘school dinners’ and was successfully used in England and Vancouver (Ghuman, 1997, 1995). Its reliability again proved to be high indeed (ranged from 0.84 to 0.88) and it was validated by ‘extreme group’ method (Burroughs, 1975). In a study with older boys and girls (aged 15-17), the factor analysis of the scale yielded two factors, namely Acculturation and  Traditionalism. However, factor structures with younger groups in Birmingham, England and Vancouver (Ghuman, 1992, 1994) are not very clear. The scoring of the Scale items was carried out in two ways. For statistical analyses, the items expressing sympthy with acculturation were given 5 for strongly agree, 4 for agree and so on and the scoring for the traditional items was reversed. Summated scores, therefore, should indicate the acculturation level, ie high scale score implies a positive attitude to acculturation. It is important to state a caveat here. According to an established authority (Oppenheim, 1968: 136): ‘The most serious criticism levelled against this type of scale is its lack of reproducibility (in the technical sense): the same total score may be obtained in many different ways...Often for this reason, the pattern of responses becomes more important than the total score.’ The researcher, therefore, has used the total scores only as a starting point for analyses and has progressed to use the Chi-squared test on each item of the Scale to discover patterns of responses of sub-groups of boys and girls.

The scale is to be found in the appendix and the items with an asterisk are scored in a reverse manner.

Research Hypotheses

In view of the previous literature in the field (Drury, 1989; Anwar, 1998; Stopes-Roe and Cochrane, 1989), the following hypotheses were formulated for testing by using the Acculturation Scale:

Hypothesis 1:  Girls show more favourable attitudes to acculturation compared  with boys.

Hypothesis 2: Young people from professional backgrounds show higher acculturation than their counterparts from farming backgrounds.

Hypothesis 3: Young people from the Sikh background show lower acculturation compared with young people of Hindu, Buddhist and Christian faiths.

Hypothesis 4: The background of the sample (see le Depervanchi, 1984) suggests that young people in Australia are more traditionally orientated as compared with young people in England and Vancouver.

Background Variables

The students were asked to provide information on their age, gender, whether born in Australia or overseas, religion of the family, parents’ occupation and language(s) spoken at home. Table 2 summarises the results on these and other variables.

Table 2 Background variables of the sample in percentages

The following characteristics are noteworthy as they will have a bearing on the discussion of the results. The majority of the boys and girls belong to Sikh families who are engaged in small banana farming (the average acreage is 20), which is labour intensive and demands the commitment of the whole family ie,  young and old, males and females and children. The non-manual sample consists of professionals (university lecturers, engineers and doctors) who work in Newcastle city and their children attend all-white schools (non-white students are not more than 1 per cent). Most of the young people were born and attended a primary school in Australia. The overwhelming majority claim to use both languages at home, to attend their places of worship once a week and to have a best friend of South Asian background. All these features suggest a close affiliation with the traditions of their countries of origin, which should be reflected in their responses on the Scale.

Reliability of the scale

            The reliability of the scale with this sample is high. Spearman-Brown co-efficient is 0.82 for the scale with the whole sample and 0.92 and .64 with the professional and farming groups respectively. The Cronbach alpha is lower than these indices but it is still of moderate values (ranges from .64 to .77). The low level of reliability with the farming group may be due two reasons: first, the group may be genuinely ambivalent (inconsistent and conflictual) about their attitude-orientations and, second, some of the boys and girls might have had difficulty in understanding the content of the items due to their below average ability in English, although the ESL specialist was on hand to help with the task. On the whole, the reliability co-efficents are in line with the results of previous investigations with British-Asian and Indo-Canadian samples (See Ghuman, 1991, 94, 97). The validity of the scale will be discussed presently after the main results have been presented..

Gender and Class Differences:

Three way analysis of variance (Social class, gender and religion) was eschewed because of resultant very small numbers in the cells, which was due to the fact that all the Sikh families in the study, save two, happened to be banana farmers and the professional class was mainly composed of Hindus, Buddhist and Christians. Therefore, Two-way Analysis of variance was carried out on the summated scores with sex and social class as independent variables. The results are presented in table 3.

Table 3: Results of  Analysis of Variance and T- test

 The above results provide support the research hypotheses, except for the gender hypothesis, where differences are reversed. Although, there is a marked difference between the Australian and their British counterparts it is not significant at 0.05 level.

            It was thought judicious to use a qualitative test (Chi-squared in this case) to obtain a fuller pattern of responses on gender and class differences. The two sub-samples were analysed separately to understand pin down the differences between the two social classes.  The results are presented in Table 5.

Table 5: Gender differences of professional group

On all the above items, girls show more traditional orientation than with boys. However, in the farming sub-sample girls and boys, differed on the majority of the items - girls once again displaying traditional attitudes compared with boys. All the significant results are listed in table 6

Table 6: Gender differences of farming sub-group

** Items on which boys show higher Acculturation. *Items on which girls show higher acculturation.

The girls from the farmer’s class show far more traditionally-orientated attitudes except on items relating to gender equality. Thus overall finding is in contrast to the findings of previous researches (Ghuman, 1994, 1997; Drury, 1991; Stopes-Roe and Cochrane, 1989) in both England and Canada and it will be explained presently.

            Analysis on the social class data was once again carried out to unravel a detail pattern by using the Chi-Squared test on each item of the scale: significant differences (P< .01 and beyond) were found on 17 of 32 items of the scale. The young people of professional background expressing higher acculturation as compared with their farmer counterparts, except on item.  To find out which of the items had the most saliency in differentiating the two groups,  Discriminant Analysis (using stepwise procedure) was carried out on all the items and the results are presented in table   .

Table 7: Details of Discriminant Analysis on Social Class

The discriminant function made up the above coefficients  has the power to place 97.3 per cent of the members into to the two social class categories correctly. In other words, these items distinguish the farmer and professional group in a powerful way.

Factor Analysis

The Principle Component Analysis of the whole sample did not reveal a clear pattern of factors, even with varimax rotation. A possible reason could be the heterogeneity of the sample (Kerlinger, 1971). There is evidence to suggest that the farming community, whose children constitute a sub-sample, have originated from rural villages in Hoshiarpur district of the Punjab (de Lepervanche, 1984). They have carried on their cultural and religious traditions in spite of some very radical changes in their ‘home’ villages.  Therefore, it is quite likely that their children’s attitudes may be very ‘mixed’ due to exposure to radically different dual socialisation processes. In contrast, the other group of young people in the study belong to professional classes, whose main business is white clients and who are obliged to socialise with them to some degree and to get on well with them. Therefore their offspring are likely to have less conflicting and ambivalent attitudes to their home and Australian culture. The Principle Component Analysis of these two sub-samples did indeed reveal clearer patterns. The professional group displayed three factors (two of traditionalism and one ‘mixed’) and explained just over 50 per cent of the total variance, whereas, in the farming group three factors explained only 40 per cent of the variance and the factor loadings of the items are far from consistent. The results are displayed in table 3 and table 4.

Table 8: Factor structure of professional sample

The following salient points emerge from the factor analysis. Firstly, there is not a  single clear-cut factor which loads on acculturation items; second, all the items are accounted for in  terms of factor loadings, and thirdly the first factor accounts for almost a quarter of the total variance.

Table 9: Factor structure of farming group.

In table 9 although a clear factor on ‘Acculturation’ emerges in contrast to the professional group, the structure of other factors tends to be less clear-cut, especially that of the third factor.

            In a previous study (Ghuman, 1997) with an older age group (15- to 17 year-old) in Birmingham, England, two-factors (Acculturation’ and Traditionalism) explained 40 per cent of the total variance and all the item loadings showed remarkable consistency. Likewise with a sample of girls from Vancouver the first two factors (Acculturation and Traditionalism) together explained 40 per cent of the variance. The overall picture, therefore, confirms stability of attitudes in contrast to the Australian sample towards acculturation and their home cultures 

Validity of the scale

The Scale once again has been successful in separating the farming group (which is  known to have very traditional attitudes  le Deprevanchi, 1984) and a professional group. Concerning the factorial validity of the scale, factor structures described in tables 3 and 4 suggest patterns which are ‘neat’ but not clear-cut. The scale should be tried on and validated on a larger sample of boys and girls which, however, was difficult to obtain owing to inordinate bureaucratic difficulties and human rights issues in Australia.

Discussion and Implications for Education

            The main hypotheses of the research have been upheld with the exception of that on gender differences. The professional sub-sample shows higher acculturation attitudes on a majority of acculturation items as compared with the farmer sub-sample. The South Asian professional classes in Australia, like their counterparts in Britain (Anwar, 1998; Drury, 1989) and North America (Helweg and Helweg, 1992; Sethi, 1985), have a higher degree of contact with the indigenous white people because of their employment and professional training. Higher education also tends to promote deeper understanding of other people’s culture and consequently acculturation is perceived as less threatening.

            A notable finding is that girls, irrespective of social class (interaction between social class and gender was not significant), show less favourable attitudes on most items (save those relating to gender) compared with boys - an inversion of scores as compared with their counterparts in Britain and Canada. My in-depth interview (Discussed in detail elsewhere: Ghuman, 1999)  with parents, teachers, and girls revealed that Punjabi parents are extremely protective of their daughters. Girls are not allowed out after school (except to help on the family farms) and only on Sundays to the local Gurdwara where the importance of the retention of Sikh traditions is stressed. Also the rhetoric of the Gurdwara tends to be anti-white young people. They are perceived to be, amongst other undesirable things, embroiled in drug culture, carriers of ‘Aids’ and a rebellious lot.

            On the other side of the coin, the white people in Australia  have been very discriminatory against the Indians and other people of colour (see de Le prevanchi, 1984). In the local town in which part of this study was carried out, until very recently the Punjabis were barred from the white social clubs and were generally considered persona non-grata. The Punjabis therfore have shown a great deal of solidarity and have become a self-sufficient community, which is in a position to hire white people’s services and has shown a certain degree of condescension towards them.  Furthermore, at the time of research (March, 1989), Australia was going through a turbulent period as far as race and ethnic relations were concerned. There was a climate of fear and anxiety amongst the Asians mainly caused by the vitriolic anti-minority speeches of Pauline Henson, pending the forthcoming national election. As is widely documented in the literature (see Tajfel, 1985), under such circumstances minority groups tend to revert to their roots and seek security in their enclaves. In this situation, woman and young girls are particularly at risk and perceived to be at high risk  (see Ghuman and Thomas, 1981) and are given more protection and ‘moralising’ talks about the virtues of ‘home culture’.

            It seems to be for this very reason girls from the professional backgrounds - whose parents are liberal and adaptable - also achieve lower scores on acculturation than do the boys (mean scores : 103 and 113.8 respectively; P<0.01; mean scores of farmers girls and boys  90.6 and 99.3 respectively).

            There are major differences between the two sub-samples: The farmers’ group score lower than the professional’s and the Sikh boys and girls score lower than the combined scores of Hindus, Buddhists and Christians. However, as the religious factor is compounded with social class (all Sikhs, except two, are farmers), it is difficult to come to a clear-cut conclusion regarding the role of religion in this group of boys and girls. However, a survey of literature suggests that Sikh communites tend to be more traditionally orientated compared with Hindus, Buddhists and Christians (Modood et al. 1997).

            This is a small sample study from two locations and it would be inappropriate to generalise from its findings. But a few suggestions are in order in view of the overall findings of the study. The whole group expressed sympathetic attitudes to the retention of a core traditional values, namely: religion (att3: M =  1.55) language (att14: M = 2.04), primacy of family over individuals (att31: 2.59) and retention of their religious-inspired names (att16: M = 1.47). The reader is reminded again that low scores implies sympthy with ‘home’ culture and high implies acculturation). At the same time they are in favour of adopting some of the values of their host society, viz: going to mainstream ‘English’  cinemas and theatres (att28: M = 4.35), eating other than the South Asian food (att15: M = 4.47) and ‘Visit the homes of our Australian friends’ (att20; M = 4.28), and ‘gender equality’ (att1: M = 4.31). The group is somewhat ambivalent about arranged marriages (att29: M = 3.04), going out with boys and girls (att18; M = 3.24), and living in one’s own community and celebrating Christmas as a religious festival. They utterly reject ‘separatist’ orientation as is apparent by their scores on the following items: ‘Make friends with my own community’; ‘I feel very uneasy with white Australian’; ‘Only Asian doctors can understand our illnesses,’. Also they reject assimilationist attitudes, viz items: ‘The quality of Australian life is better than Asians’,  ‘more marriages between our people and other Australians’, ‘Ignore our languages’. In sum, the data presented in this paper shows that that they are in favour of a some from of biculturalism (Summated score: M = 99.35: maximum and minimum being 160 and 30 respectively) in which they can accommodate the Australian norms within the reasonable demands and imperatives of their home cultures. Such a strategy of adaptation is called integration by Berry ( 1998). He argues that an educational policy based on integration is likely to prove more just and humane than a policy based on assimilation or separation. Bullivant (                                  ) takes a similar stance after some two decades of research with ethnic minorities in Australia. It is suggested that schools and teachers in multicultural schools ought to have  positive policies on bilingualism, be sensitive towards minority cultural values and  respect those traditions - which, of course, do not violate human rights of their students - in order to facilitate the development of a bicultural outlook of their students. This should improve both their self-esteem/ self-image and their scholastic achievement. For further discussion on topic the reader is referred to Bullivant’s (1994, 1197) research in Australia.

References

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