IS CULTURAL ADJUSTMENT NEEDED FOR INTEGRATION? : A STUDY OF IMMIGRANT PERCEPTIONS IN SWEDEN

Abstract: Sweden is one of the European countries that became a main destination for the immigrants and refugees from different countries and from different cultural backgrounds especially from the developing world.        While there seems to be a consensus in the literature that cultural adjustment is needed to integrate immigrants in the host culture, so far, it is not clear how the immigrants in Sweden perceive that need, and how willing and how welcomed they are to adjust to the Swedish culture. Therefore, it becomes necessary to shed light on the debate of the need of cultural adjustment and the major theories in this debate like the assimilation theory and Harrison’s theory, which arguing that immigrants need to culturally adjust to be able to fit in and to integrate in the host culture.        In this sense, the study aims to shed a different light on this debate through the immigrant’s perspective and how they perceive the need for cultural adjustment to integrate in the Swedish culture, and how willing as well as how welcomed they are to adjust to the host culture. A qualitative study was carried out using 18 semi-structured interviews as the primary source of data in the study, while the scope of this study was limited only to Växjö city which makes it difficult to generalize the results of this study.        The findings have revealed that the sample of immigrants in this study have perceived the need for a socio-economic adjustment rather than a cultural one and they feel willing and welcomed by the Swedish culture to make such adjustment as it is crucial and necessary for them to improve the quality of life as well as for social inclusion to be integrated and not excluded or marginalized.        The author suggests further research in this topic by conducting similar research but on a wider scope and with deeper interviews that include a larger number of immigrants to further explore how they perceive the need to adjust to the Swedish society.     Key words: culture, adjustment, integration, assimilation, immigrants.