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:
“Even American women are not felt to be persons in the same sense as the male immigrants among the Hungarians, Poles, Russian Jews,—not to speak of Italians, Germans, and the masters of all of us—the Irish!”
—Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842–1906)
“The fetish of the great university, of expensive colleges for young women, is too often simply a fetish. It is not based on a genuine desire for learning. Education today need not be sought at any great distance. It is largely compounded of two things, of a certain snobbishness on the part of parents, and of escape from home on the part of youth. And to those who must earn quickly it is often sheer waste of time. Very few colleges prepare their students for any special work.”
—Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958)