Acculturation

Acculturation is the exchange of cultural features that results when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first hand contact; the original cultural patterns of either or both groups may be altered, but the groups remain distinct.

Despite definitions and evidence that acculturation entails two-way processes of change, research and theory have continued with a focus on the adjustments and changes experienced by minorities in response to their contact with the dominant majority.

Thus, acculturation can be conceived to be the processes of cultural learning imposed upon minorities by the fact of being minorities. If enculturationis first-culture learning, then acculturation is second-culture learning. This has often been conceived to be a unidimensional, zero-sum cultural conflict in which the minority's culture is displaced by the dominant group's culture in a process of assimilation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acculturation