How does assimilation occur

See below to learn some of the examples of assimilation in various groups of organisms. What is an example of assimilation in plants? Nitrogen is the basic ingredient for the survival and growth of plants. The nitrogen is supplied to the plants either by numerous fertilizers or when it is absorbed by the soil from the atmosphere.

The process of assimilation in the plants starts when the bacteria present in the soil convert the nitrogen into ammonium and then the ammonia is again converted into nitrates that can be easily absorbed by the roots of the plants [2].

Later, after the cycle of absorption, amino acids, nucleic acids, and chlorophyll are all built around those absorbed nitrates. Furthermore, the process of assimilation is also utilized in the process of carbon fixation described above in autotropic organisms.

Hence, carbon assimilation and nitrogen assimilation are found in plants and are being illustrated in Figure 2 captioned as assimilation in plants. Eating and digestion are two of the most important processes in assimilation in invertebrates.

Although assimilation is a very easy process in some invertebrates in many, it is referred to as a tedious procedure. The nutrients are absorbed straight away from the host digestive system by tapeworms. The sponges and corals directly take the food particles through a process called phagocytosis.

There is a single, long digestive tract extending from mouth to anus in nematodes. Hence, it can be concluded that all forms of invertebrates take energy from the nutrients in one way or another, they all employ assimilated nutrients for growth and energy [4]. The digestive system of humans is relatively complex as compared to plants and insects to assimilate food and water.

Food injected in the mouth travels all the way to the stomach where the process of digestion starts. The infectious bacteria are killed by hydrochloric acid and the larger food particles are converted assimilated into smaller ones that are transported into cells. The food after the stomach is pushed into the small intestine, where it is mixed with liver bile and pancreatic juices.

The nourishment is digested properly and then the nutrients in the food are supplied to various cells in the body where the energy is required. Later after the distribution of nutrients, the remaining mesh is forwarded to the large intestine. Hence, it can be concluded that the process of assimilation in human bodies occurs in the small intestine.

The food we eat is assimilated by the cells of our body. The process entails the breaking down of food into simpler particles, digests it, and then distributes it to the different parts of our body. Moreover, as described earlier, assimilation takes down the nutrients from the food to cells where it is used for growth and reproduction. To understand the concept of assimilation of nutrients, it is very vital to go through the cycle of food digestion. The digestive system primarily starts from the mouth where the food is chewed.

The saliva produced by the salivary glands moistens the food and thus it is passed to the stomach via the esophagus. The starches are also broken down into simpler particles by saliva. As the food enters the stomach, very strong acids and enzymes break the food further into various nutrients such as carbohydrates, proteins, and fatty acids. Hence, the digestion of food is partially complete and then it is pushed into the small intestine where the assimilation of nutrients occurs.

For instance, the complete cycle of digestion of food is illustrated in Figure 3. Much of the digestion occurs in the small intestine and its primary task is the absorption and assimilation of the nutrients present in the food. In adults, the average length of the small intestine is around 7 meters. The small intestine has been further divided into three segments: duodenum, jejunum, and ileum as shown in Figure 4, and which are covered by omentum anteriorly [6].

The duodenum is divided into four parts that are inferior, superior, ascending, and descending altogether around 25 cm long. The fats available in the food are often digested by bile salts from the liver.

The carbohydrates and fats are digested via pancreatic enzymes. The acid that arrives with the food from the stomach is neutralized by bicarbonate from the pancreases. The proper digestion of food and its conversion into nutrients are associated with the healthy working of the liver and pancreas. The small intestine has many minute projections referred to as microvilli.

Any group such as a state, immigrant population , or ethnicity may choose to adopt a different culture for a variety of reasons such as political relevance or perceived advantage.

However, a group may also be forced or feel compelled to do so as a result of imperialistic conquest, immigration , or drastic changes in population. Immigrant assimilation is one of the most common forms of assimilation.

It is a complex process through which an immigrant integrates themselves into a new country. Geography professor and human migration specialist William A. Social scientists rely on four benchmarks, initially formulated when studying European immigrants in the U. Other than marriage, citizenship is one of the most significant factors in assimilation. Thus, immigration debates focus not only on the number of immigrants that should be admitted into a country and the processes of incorporation but also on how citizenship should be extended and to whom.

Proponents of immigration often argue that new residents will help to build and enrich American democracy , while opponents counter that the identity and legitimacy of the nation may be challenged and perhaps even threatened by immigrants.

Questions of citizenship in relation to illegal immigration is a particularly controversial issue and a common source of political tension. The majority of immigrants have tended to settle in traditional gateway states such as Florida, New York, California, Illinois, Texas, and Massachusetts, where immigrants find large existing populations of foreign-born people.

Recently, however, immigrants have increasingly been settling in areas outside these gateway states. Sociologists Mary Waters and Tomas R. Jimenez have suggested that these geographical shifts may change the way researchers assess immigrant assimilation, as immigrants settling in new areas may encounter different experiences than immigrants settling in more traditional gateways.

Specifically, Waters and Jimenez identify three distinguishing characteristics in more recent, less traditional, immigration patterns: less established social hierarchies , smaller immigrant population size, and different institutional arrangements.

The theory of segmented assimilation for second generation immigrants is highly researched in the sociological arena. They also point out that since the model has not been empirically tested beyond the current second generation the members of which are still very young , segmented assimilation may misinterpret oppositional attitudes historically found among the young and misconstrue the pace of assimilation.

As insightful and useful as the above theories of assimilation may be, some researchers believe they do not adequately explain the assimilation paths of today's immigrants in the United States. Classic assimilation tends to emphasize that the new immigrants are non-black.

Therefore, classic assimilation envisions newcomers gradually becoming accepted and integrated into American society across time and generations. The Mexican case in the United States exemplifies the difficulty of applying a strictly assimilation or ethnic-disadvantage perspective to new immigrants. Observers have often been uncertain how to characterize this group's experience and thus gauge the completeness of its incorporation.

Even though Mexican immigration dates back many generations, and even though current Mexican immigrants are diverse in terms of their migration status and modes of entry into the United States, theorists have tended to envision the group's experiences in one of two ways — either as similar to that of European immigrants i.

The assimilation perspective thus views Mexican-origin persons primarily as a recently arrived immigrant group whose integration will, in due course, mirror that of earlier groups.

In this perspective, natural assimilation processes require sufficient time to occur, presumably over three or four generations. In this view, substantial progress is not likely to occur simply with the passage of time but necessitates new policies both to help eradicate discrimination and to compensate for its past effects.

Research testing whether a downward trajectory as predicted by segmented assimilation theory applies to Mexican-origin persons has found inconsistent evidence for the existence of such a pattern. The ways the new immigrants identify themselves, as sociologists Jennifer Lee and Frank D. Bean have noted, do not follow the trajectories implied by the old models.

The bulk of new immigrants define themselves as neither black nor white, and the younger ones are more likely to identify themselves as multiracial. The largest group, Mexicans, as well as many other Latinos, come mostly from mixed backgrounds, including in the Mexican case a history of mestizaje mixing that does not involve black-white hybridity, but rather a centuries-old melding of white and indigenous groups.

Therefore, traditional models reflecting a bipolar racial context are less relevant to the historical and contemporary experiences of Mexicans. And such dichotomies are scarcely more relevant for Asian immigrants, many of whom obtain legal permanent resident status by dint of their high skills.

As a result, they often are better educated upon arrival than non-Hispanic whites. As Bean, Gillian Stevens, and Susan Wierzbicki note, this means that ethnic identification does not relate in a straightforward way to social and economic mobility. Rather, ethnic identification appears strongest among the lowest and highest social classes of immigrant groups.

Reactive identification is most likely to arise from the repeated experience of discrimination and may also contribute to the hardening of oppositional attitudes and the occurrence of downward assimilation. While most common among the children of immigrants in lower socioeconomic classes, reactive identification can also develop among those in higher classes.

Selective assimilation tends to characterize the children of immigrants with better resources and socioeconomic prospects. Their parents' generally higher levels of education foster more opportunistic than oppositional orientations toward economic incorporation.

Also, such parents and children usually belong to ethnic networks and institutions that have enough resources to offer support unavailable outside the ethnic community.

Symbolic ethnicity may emerge among those already largely incorporated economically. It seems most likely to occur among the children of immigrants of the highest class. The working class and middle class generally would stand to gain the most from assimilation and might therefore shed much of their ethnic identity. They may also maintain social networks and perhaps even marry across racial or ethnic boundaries, providing examples of identifications that do not correspond with economic mobility in a straight-line way.

Of course, such decouplings proceed most rapidly in the absence of strong discrimination or value conflict. Otherwise, external barriers could block assimilation and foster ethnic identification. The relative autonomy of identification and economic mobility appears more likely to occur among middle- and higher-class groups.

It is still too soon for evidence in support of this perspective to have emerged among new immigrants. If classic assimilation was the predominant perspective on immigrant integration throughout most of the 20th century, the Civil Rights movement of the s highlighted how this perspective had failed to depict the situation of African Americans.

The Civil Rights movement also ignited decades of backlash that stressed racial disadvantage and the persistence of racial and ethnic identities. That same year, Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou introduced the concept of segmented assimilation, which stressed a three-part path: assimilation for those with advantages in human capital, ethnic disadvantage for some because of poverty and racialization, and the selective retention of ethnicity for yet others.

Thus began a reexamination of assimilation theory, with new stress on institutional roles and the contingent nature of ethnic identification.

In the last two decades, gender has also emerged as a focus of incorporation studies, as some scholars have noted that girls whose parents come from traditionally patriarchal countries are excelling in the American schooling system and joining the workforce in large numbers. As today's second generation begins to bear the third generation, the focus of research will become more longitudinal and cross-generational. At the same time, studies of assimilation are becoming more comparative, as more traditional sending countries turn into immigrant-receiving countries.

In countries where the mythic "melting pot" has never served as a national metaphor, the boundaries between immigrants and natives can be much clearer. A key question then becomes how governmental policies, such as those concerning resettlement and language training, can ease the economic mobility of immigrant groups.

The fact that some countries, such as Canada, have set forth official policies welcoming immigrant settlement brings up the final question: What is the end point of assimilation? Even after generations in North America, many people of European ancestry appear to retain a symbolic level of ethnicity.