Thursday, April 7, 2011

EFFECTS OF HORIZONTAL MOBILITY

            ABV-IIITM GWALIOR M.P. (7-April-2011)

                    While horizontal mobility may mean a financial improvement for the family, an opportunity to bury the past, and a chance to gain a higher social status, it also means breaking old friendship and making new ones, adjusting to the mores and social life of a new group, and disrupting the schooling of children and adolescents. Until adjustments to the new environment are made, there is generally a period of loneliness and dissatisfaction and a longing to return to the old environment.

                    Studies of new children in neighborhoods have shown how difficult a situation they face. Many such children are teased, bullied, or ignored by those who make up the established groups. It is unusual for the members of the group to take the initiative, generally by winning the attention and interest of one child in the group, However, this is often interpreted as "pushiness" and it increases the group's tendency to ignore or reject him.

                    The difficulty of becoming accepted in a new group varies with age and environment. Adolescence and young adulthood are, on the whole, the most difficult  periods in life for horizontal mobility because, at those ages, cliques are already established and newcomers not only are unwelcome but are often regarded as potentially disturbing influences and threats to those in power.

                        In rural and suburban communities, there is more "neighborliness" than in urban centers, and acceptance in a new group is easier to achieve. Rural and suburban families usually have more in common than urban families. However, should the person move into a housing development in an urban center, assimilation into the group is relatively easy because of homogeneous nature of the environment.

                        In no case is acceptance into a new group achieved quickly. Nor is acceptance, once achieved, likely to be as complete as that which the person was accustomed to in his old group. AS a result, he will  experience the physiological damage that comes from social neglect or social rejection. This damage is greater for those who are used to high social acceptance or who anticipated higher acceptance in the new group than they are able to achieve.

                        Psychosocial isolation and loneliness lead to anxiety, dogmatism, and personality disorders of a minor or major degree. Anxiety depends mainly on the time when the environment is disrupted, While dogmatism is primarily a result of frequency of disruption. Most studies of mobility show that geographic mobility and various personality disorders go together. Thus it can be said that the "basic effects of geographic mobility are disruptive in nature".














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