English

Noun

assimilationist ‎(plural assimilationists)

1. (sociology) An advocate of the policy or practice of the assimilation of immigrant or other minority cultures into a mainstream culture.

   Spanish-language education is not favored by assimilationist parents of Latino children in the US.

   • 1998, Norman Linzer, David J. Schnall, Jerome A. Chanes, A Portrait of the American Jewish Community, page xii,

     To the assimilationists, American Jews have not merely acculturated — they have assimilated.

   • 1999, Christian Joppke, Immigration and the Nation-State: The United States, Germany, and Great Britain, page 147,

     The conflict between melting-pot assimilationists and cultural pluralists betrays a fundamental uncertainty about the meaning of American nationhood, and about the role ethnicity plays in it.

   • 2000, Bruce F. Pauley, From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism, page 224,

     The one area where there was at least some agreement between assimilationists and Zionists was Palestine.

Synonyms

• (sociology): integrationist

Translations

Adjective

assimilationist ‎(comparative more assimilationist, superlative most assimilationist)

1. (sociology) Of or pertaining to assimilationism or assimilationists; that promotes or advocates assimilationism.
   • 2000, Katherine Palmer Kaup, Creating the Zhuang: Ethnic Politics in China, page 62,

     Shortly after Chiang Kaishek came to power, however, the GMD^[Guomindang] once again withdrew its support for self-determination and pursued a more assimilationist strategy.

   • 2011, Peter Scholten, Framing Immigrant Integration: Dutch Research-Policy Dialogues in Comparative Perspective, page 187,

     SCP^{[Social and Cultural Planning Office of the Netherlands]} was also more explicitly involved in advocating a more assimilationist approach in this period.

   • 2015, Michael Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism, page 224,

     To an extent, reformers – such as the Vietnamese and Tunisian constitutionalists or the Antilleans and Malagasies of the LFADCIM^{[French League for the Attainment of the Rights of Citizens of the Natives of Madagascar]} – were more assimilationist than radicals in the sense that they demanded an extension of French citizenship rights and of naturalization.

Synonyms

• (sociology): integrationist

See also

• multiculturalist
• pluralist