ABSTRACT
This chapter explores selected areas of research on immigrants. The civic ideology shares common assumptions with cultural pluralism in its distinction of public and private values, demanding adherence to the former and regarding the latter as a matter of private choice. The ethnist ideology not only holds that immigrants must adopt the public values of their hosts, but also that the state has the right to regulate certain aspects of private values. The adoption of public values and the rejection of cultural maintenance by immigrants, however, need not be related to assimilation. A similar trend may be emerging in less traditional immigration destinations such as Singapore where the government’s initiative to attract ‘foreign talent’ into the country’s labour force and to entice highly skilled workers to become permanent residents was recently announced. Relations between migrants and members of the receiving community are influenced by a number of factors, and one that has been discussed extensively is social contact.
