Assimilation is a gradual process that different cultures merging into an entity. It happens more obviously under nowadays global context, but assimilation also existed back in the nineteenth century between the United States of America and Ireland. When Irish immigrants moved into the United States, in which direction did the assimilation take place? If it occurred both ways, did American assimilate Irish more or conversely? Different angles are analyzed for these questions.
The structure of Irish population dispersion in the United States resembled the original geographical distribution of Americans when they first discovered the land. At the beginning, immigrants mostly stayed on the East coast, and then, they migrated to the Midwest and West of the land attracted by the opportunities and convenience of the transportation. Once got a job, they settled down. Compared with Irish in their home country, Irish in the U.S. were employed at more skillful work or white-collar job instead of just being a bartender or a farmer. As …show more content…
The first point was their concept of home: to be a truly American, one needs to own a property on the land of America. By the late nineteenth century, the proportion of Irish descendents owning a house in the U.S. cities was even higher than the native Americans! Of course, factors that we can’t ignore was that it was the openness of the housing policy and ability of Irish immigrants allowed them to do that. In addition, the presence of Catholic churches and Irish memberships affected the Protestants and Unions in the U.S. to a certain degree. It pushed Americans’ beliefs to a forward step. What’s more, the “new coming Americans” (those immigrants from other countries who arrived later that Irish) imitated the steps that Irish Americans took to achieve a better