Bourhis et al.[1] reference the earlier work of both Graves and Berry[3] in the identification of individual psychological change that the immigrant experiences during their integration into a host culture.
The Bourhis team was primarily concerned with Western countries and noticed that in these nations, the policies, research, implementation and responsibility for both immigration and integration often resided in one sole governmental agency.
This agency was often chartered with duties of writing statues, enforcing immigration laws and very possibly may be the governmental focus for assimilation and integration policy.
Based on international conventions and referencing previous work by Kaplan,[5] sovereign countries possess the right and responsibility to define the limits and scope of nationality.
The policies adopted by the state would reflect a positive view of immigrants maintaining their diverse cultures and would support these differences not only socially but possibly financially.
We would expect these policies to dictate such aspects like a single language in the schools and encourage voluntary (sometimes mandatory) cultural integration at all levels to homogenize the expressions of the immigrant population with that of the host nation.
It occasionally is manifested in the mandatory taking of host country values as necessary by the immigrant populations or more often this ideology is expressed in a requirement to be part of an ethnicity, religion or race to be accepted as a citizen.
Witness countries like Switzerland, Israel and Japan where immigrants are not accepted as they lack the ethnic blood to become full members of the citizenry and can only be allowed a lesser status such as guest worker or second class citizen.
Under Gordon's (1964) proposal, he identifies a unidimensional model of acculturation that immigrant groups undergo over time as they strive to maintain equilibrium between their own culture/heritage against those of their adoptive host state.
[12][13] Under the Berry’s model of acculturation, immigrant’s attitudes are described as being focused on two points; 1) "Is it considered to be of value to maintain cultural identity and characteristics?"
According to Berry,[14] the fact that integration was the most widely preferred mode of acculturation in his studies suggests that pluralism [where a state expects immigrants will adopt the public values of the host country (democratic ideals and criminal codes) but has mandate defining private values] may constitute the ideology that best reflects the orientation of many first-generation immigrants in North America.