In most of the metropolitan cities and other urban centres in India, the immigrants coming from different cultural regions tend to simulate their regional, cultural, and social environments. Such simulation of their regional culture in an urban situation leads to the characteristic community life of the immigrants of the city. The process of simulating the regional culture in the urban area is facilitated by the residential segregation of the immigrants, who tend to cluster around relatives and other immigrants belonging to their own region, caste, language, religion, and class. The simulation of regional culture in the city is selective in the sense that the immigrants do not bring to the city the entire joint family, but only the nuclear family. Probably because they cannot afford to bring every one. Therefore, they find all the more need for simulating the culture of their place of origin, for they do not want to be left without traditional moorings, lest their families feel lost in the city. Moreover, because of the presence of their wives and children in the city, the immigrants are likely to find a greater need for security, which is provided by the ethnic community, which simulates the culture of their place of origin.

In the process of simulating the culture of their origin, the community will not be able to perfectly replicate it within the urban area. They may have to make some functional adaptations in the city, and therefore, what one might find is a near-approximation of the native culture in the urban situation. 'Assimilation' is the term used to describe this process of adaptation. This results in a kind of "give and take,"' whereby a community dilutes or discards part of its culture by accepting others. The immigrants will not and need not adjust, adapt, acculturate, or assimilate in all spheres of life.

A migrant may feel ill at ease in a new social environment, but may feel adjusted to the professional sphere. There may be adjustments in certain aspects of life and even conflicts in others. Within various spheres of immigrant social life, there is likely to be a conflict of values between the old and the new.