Immigrants and International Students
A salient issue, especially for people living in countries other than their native country, is the issue of which culture they should follow. Should they try to fit in and adapt to the culture surrounding them, or should they hold on to their native culture and try to avoid interacting with the culture surrounding them? This issue is increasingly common today. Globalization has caused immigration rates to rise sharply for most developed and developing countries. In a country that is strange to them, immigrants are surrounded by a culture that does not belong to them.
International students also face this issue: they have a choice of modifying their cultural boundaries and adapting to the culture around them or holding on to their native culture and surrounding themselves with people from their own country. The students who decide to hold on to their native culture are those who experience the most problems in their university life and who encounter frequent culture shocks. But international students who adapt themselves to the culture surrounding them (and who interact more with domestic students) will increase their knowledge of the domestic culture, which may help them to "blend in" more. Such individuals may be said to have adopted bicultural identities.
Read more about this topic: Intercultural Competence, Cross-cultural Competence
Famous quotes containing the words immigrants and/or students:
“The admission of Oriental immigrants who cannot be amalgamated with our people has been made the subject either of prohibitory clauses in our treaties and statutes or of strict administrative regulations secured by diplomatic negotiations. I sincerely hope that we may continue to minimize the evils likely to arise from such immigration without unnecessary friction and by mutual concessions between self-respecting governments.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“We must continually remind students in the classroom that expression of different opinions and dissenting ideas affirms the intellectual process. We should forcefully explain that our role is not to teach them to think as we do but rather to teach them, by example, the importance of taking a stance that is rooted in rigorous engagement with the full range of ideas about a topic.”
—bell hooks (b. 1955)