marginalization

n. Originally coined by sociologists, the term marginalization is used in acculturation psychology to refer to the phenomenon whereby a person maintains little connection to her/ his cultural group of origin and its traditions and engages in little association with any other cultural group and its traditions. Related terms include deculturation and alienation. In the work of Park (1928), Stonequist (1935), and others, marginalization is suggested to be most likely to occur to a cultural group that is subject to prejudice and discrimination of a sociopolitically dominant group. Members of the nondominant group begin to adopt the dominant group's negative attitudes toward their group, but discriminatory barriers prevent them from passing into the dominant group. Marginalization has often been exemplified by the experience of some colonized indigenous people who have been forced to abandon their cultural traditions and simultaneously been ostracized by the colonizing society. In this situation, a person may feel that she/he lives at the intersection of two cultures, not fully belonging to either group. Such a predicament is claimed to be linked to the experience of identity crisis and confusion, feelings of anomie or norm- lessness, and a sense of loneliness and homelessness. Faced with the tension of living in a marginalized situation, individuals may be at higher risk for psychological and physical distress, although empirical research has not unequivocally supported this assertion.

Indeed, a contrasting perspective argues that as a result of the greater individualization that results from relinquishing cultural group memberships, the marginal person may experience greater cognitive flexibility, bicultural competence, and less ethnocentrism. This description has some similarities to the notion of integration. Other scholars suggest that the liminal experience is related to greater engagement in activism and resistance to oppression by dominant cultural groups. Still others insist that the notion of deculturation, in the sense that one can be devoid of culture or "cultureless," is meaningless if one views culture as an interpersonal process that is an inherent dynamic of human life rather than as a repertoire of psychological traits and characteristics that can be "lost." It is likely some people would describe their experience as "life on the margins" of two or more cultures; it behooves acculturation researchers to articulate better the conditions under which such an experience promotes a negative sense of alienation, a positive feeling of self-actualization, or other patterns of adaptation.

- KN