We also can think about developmental tasks.
These criteria by which we decide if people are doing well in life.
Children or adults.
Can be thought about in terms of culture because developmental tasks can
vary across different cultures.
Some are global and universal, for example, all over the world cultures and
people of many different kinds expect their children to learn to walk,
to learn to talk and speak the language of the family and community.
But some of the developmental tasks in different cultures and
communities are more unique.
For example, there may be traditional skills.
Weaving skills, hunting skills, cooking skills that children or
young people are expected to learn that are very specific and
characteristic of, of a particular ethnicity of culture.
And some of the developmental tasks of young people are related to
multiculturalism itself.
So, many young people around the world nowadays move,
they move from one culture to another, they emigrate to a new country.
Or we have communities where there are more than one
culture living together in the same location.
And often young people who live in multiple cultures have to
learn how to navigate their way in different cultures.
For example many immigrants learn to speak more than one language.
They learn how they learn about success in two different cultures, the culture of
their home, or origin and also the culture of the new community, or the new school.
In Minnesota one of the states of the United States where I live, we have many
cultures living here who have come over centuries to live in the same place.
And we see many different kinds of expectations for young people.
Some are shared and some are unique.
And some of the young people here, have to learn to move back and
forth between different kinds of cultural expectations in their own
native culture and also in the culture that you see in the schools.
One of the interesting ideas in multiculturalism and
immigration is the idea of the immigrant paradox.
This idea, is, is based on the observations that sometimes,
not always, but sometimes immigrants who move into a new
community or culture actually do better in the first generation
better than the native born people in that community and and better than
later born members of that immigrant community second or third generation.
And people have been interested in why that might be.
What would explain the immigrant paradox when you see this kind of phenomena.
And one thought is that maybe people who
immigrate that first generation are exceptional in some way.
That they are particularly competent or resilient in some way.
Or, it could be that the immigrants, the new immigrants who come to a community,
bring with them important cultural protective factors from their culture of
origin, that promotes success in the new community but
are gradually lost over time through the process of acculturation.