An intercultural encounter takes place when you become aware that you are interacting with a member(s) of a different community whose ways of thinking and or actions are quite distinct from your own.

These experiences often occur when you go abroad, but they can basically take place anywhere you happen to be, for example in any society that has many different cultural groups such as almost every major city in Europe or when your line of work brings you in contact with many various cultures. 

During an intercultural encounter, you become aware that you and the other person are operating according to different sets of beliefs and values. This may mean that you are acting in ways that are unfamiliar to each other, which can provoke a sense of unease in one or both participants. But such encounters can offer significant learning opportunities, provided that you use them to think about your own expectations, and to explore the cultural assumptions that appear to be shaping your behaviour and that of the other person.

In this section we will be looking at, Possible Reactions  to these encounters like Culture Shock, Ethnocentrism and group encounters.

From the outside in

The simplest form of intercultural encounter is between one foreign individual and a new cultural environment. The foreigner usually experiences some form of CULTURE SHOCK.

CULTURE SHOCK:

a state of distress following the transfer of a person to an unfamiliar cultural environment.          It may be accompanied by physical illness symptoms.

Our values were acquired early in our lives, and they have become so natural as to be unconscious. They form the basis of our conscious and more superficial manifestations of culture: rituals, heroes and symbols. The inexperienced foreigner can make an effort to learn some of the symbols and rituals of the new environment (words to use, how to greet people, when to bestow presents), but it is unlikely that he or she can recognize, let alone feel, the underlying values. In a way, the visitor in a foreign culture returns to the mental state of an infant, in which the simplest things must be learned over again. This experience usually leads to feelings of distress, of helplessness, and of hostility toward the new environment.

People residing in a foreign cultural environment have reported shifts of feelings over time that follow more or less "The Acculturation Curve" pictured below.

Acculturation: assimilation to a different culture

The acculturation curve.

Feelings (positive or negative) are plotted on the vertical axis, and time is plotted on the horizontal axis.

Euphoria: The Honeymoon, the excitement and curiosity of being there.

Culture shock: when real life kicks in, in the new environment. (disorientation, anxiety, frustration, insecurity and maybe even anger or fear)

Acculturation: sets in when the visitor has slowly learned to function under the new conditions, has adopted some of the local values, finds increased self-confidence and becomes integrated into a new social network.

Stable state: stable state of mind.

                      a) It may remain negative compared with home.

                           e.g., the person continues to feel alienated and discriminated against.

                      b) May be just as good as before

                           This can be considered to be bi-culturally adapted

                      c) Maybe better than before

                           “Gone native” more Roman than the Romans

The length and time of the acculturation is variable, it seems to adapt to the assumed duration of stay.

Culture shocks are environment-specific.

For every new cultural environment there is a new shock.

Question: How has it been, in your (new) FRONTEX Society so far? 

From the inside out

There are also standard types of reactions within host environments exposed to foreign visitors. The people in the host culture receiving a foreign culture visitor usually go through another psychological reaction cycle.

The first phase is Curiosity, somewhat like the euphoria on the side of the visitor.

If the visitor stays and tries to function in the host culture.

A second phase sets in: Ethnocentrism. The hosts will evaluate the visitor, by the standards of their culture, and this evaluation tends to be unfavourable. In the host's eyes, the visitor will show bad manners.

Ethnocentrism is to a people what Egocentrism is to an individual: considering one’s own little world to be the centre of the universe.

If foreign visitors arrive only rarely, the hosts will probably stick to their ethnocentrism.

If regularly exposed to foreign visitors, the hosts may move into a third phase: Polycentrism, the recognition that different kinds of people should be measured by different standards. Some will develop the ability to understand foreigners according to these foreigners’ own standards.

Cultures that are uncertainty avoiding will resist polycentrism more than cultures that are uncertainty accepting. However, individuals within a culture vary around the cultural average, so in intolerant cultures one may meet tolerant hosts, and vice versa.

Groups

Intercultural encounters among groups rather than with single foreign visitors provoke group feelings. Contrary to popular belief, intercultural contact among groups does not automatically breed mutual understanding. It usually confirms each group in its own identity. Members of the other group are perceived not as individuals but rather in a stereotyped fashion: all Chinese look alike; all Germans are punctual all Dutch know better.

The majority of people in the world live in collectivist societies, in which, throughout their lives, people remain members of tight in-groups that provide them with protection in exchange for loyalty. In such a society, groups with different cultural backgrounds are out-groups to an even greater extent than out-groups from their own culture.

Integration across cultural dividing lines in collectivist societies is even more difficult to obtain than in individualist societies. This is the major problem of many decolonized nations, such as those of Africa in which national borders inherited from the colonial period in no way respect ethnic and cultural dividing lines.

Specific group

Migrants and refugees usually also experience differences in power distance. Host societies tend to be more egalitarian than the places the migrants have left. Migrants experience this difference both negatively and positively - lack of respect for elders but better accessibility of authorities and teachers, although they tend to distrust authorities at first. Differences on masculinity-femininity, on uncertainty avoidance, and on indulgence between migrants and hosts may go either way, and the corresponding adaptation problems are specific to the pairs of cultures involved.

First-generation migrant families experience standard dilemmas. At work, in shops and public offices, and usually also at school, they interact with locals, learn some local practices, and are confronted with local values. At home, meanwhile, they try to maintain the practices, values, and relationship patterns from their country of origin. They are marginal people between two worlds, and they alternate daily between one and the other.

Reverse culture shock

Migrants who have (almost) fulfilled the acculturation process and then (voluntary or not) return to their native culture can experience a reverse culture shock in readjusting to their old cultural environment. Migrants who have returned home sometimes find that they do not fit anymore. This feeling is even stronger when it comes to families where a child / children are born in the other culture. Don't forget that for those children it's a genuine culture shock especially outside the household.

The Quiz.

Now that you have gone through all the material it's time to take the quiz. The answers will be shown after you have sent yours in.