Revisiting Intercultural Adaptation Models: A Phenomenological Study of International Students’ Adaptation in the U.S.

• In Event: Beyond the home/host culture dichotomy: Alternative approaches to cross-cultural adaptation

Abstract

Many traditional approaches to cross-cultural adjustment focus on outcomes of international students in terms of stress, coping, and acculturation. Given the fluidity of cultural identities and complexity of adaptation processes against the social, economic, and political structures, it is necessary to re-conceptualize and revisit the existing models from new ontological, theoretical, and methodological perspectives. This paper takes a phenomenological approach in studying the cultural adaptation experiences of international students in the U.S. colleges and universities. It addresses the dynamics of identity negotiation and flexibility of cultural alternation by disrupting the taken-for-granted discourse of one-way assimilation. Based on self-descriptions of international students’ lived experiences, this study attempts to revisit the existing cultural adaptation models by investigating the sojourners’ experience as it exists in social, cultural, and historical time and space. Phenomenology enables the researcher to examine how international students experience cross-cultural adaptation in mainstream American culture in a richer and more profound way. Exploration of critical issues of migrant-host relationships, identity transformation, and power influences will help provide new perspectives in viewing intercultural adaptation processes. The importance of phenomenology as an ontological approach to the study of and conceptualization of adaptation as an experiential process will be posited as an important, if under-explored, avenue to pursue.

Author

• Ping Yang, Denison University