Abstract
Many first generation immigrants share a concern for retaining their heritage culture, though they still aspire to successfully assimilate into the country of residence society. Assimilation theories suggest facilitating factors for positive assimilation but differ in terms of whether the loss of heritage culture is inevitable. The Coptic diaspora illustrates that upward mobility can be achieved without loss of heritage identity. Religious structures can play an important role not only in sustaining heritage identity but also facilitating positive assimilation. A review of the Coptic Orthodox Church’s ministry in diaspora, along with findings of a Coptic diaspora survey may offer lessons for other immigrant groups. The study affirms some theoretical findings and raises questions for future research.
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Notes
Many of the interview subjects are not native English speakers. The quotations that follow retain the original stylized language.
At the time the research was conducted, the Church was led by Pope Shenouda III (deceased March 17, 2012).
The Coptic Orthodox Church Network (http://www.copticchurch.net) lists 165 churches; a voluntary online registry (http://directory.nihov.org/) lists 174.
Similar requests were made to bishops in Australia and the UK, though without response.
Owing to historical persecution in Egypt and state-mandated identification and subsequent discrimination, this minority has a strong culture of keeping personal information private from outsiders.
p values indicate the probability of observing differences of this magnitude (or larger) by country of origin in the sample if there were no differences in the population. For example, p < 0.001 suggests that there is less than a one in one thousand chance that country of origin and level of education are uncorrelated in the population.
Respondents were asked to indicate their agreement with the following statements: What the community stands for is important to me, I talk about how great the community is to other people, and I am proud to tell others that I am part of the community. Cronbach’s Alpha was used to determine reliability of the composite mean scores.
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Brinkerhoff, J.M. Assimilation and Heritage Identity: Lessons from the Coptic Diaspora. Int. Migration & Integration 17, 467–485 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-015-0418-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-015-0418-0