Unit 2.1 Understand the concept of interculturality and how cultural clashes can affect your ability to peer support young migrants and refugees
Understand the concept of interculturality
Understand the concept of interculturality and how cultural clashes can affect your ability to peer support young migrants and refugees
Understand the concept of interculturality and how cultural clashes can affect your ability to peer support young migrants and refugees
Understand the concept of interculturality and how cultural clashes can affect your ability to peer support young migrants and refugees
As a future VE-Trainer, you will find yourself working with young migrants and refugees from a variety of countries and cultural backgrounds. Moreover, they will have unique personal stories and experiences which most likely had a strong role in shaping who they are and what they wish to do.
Remember that the young people you will support have expressed their desire to become providers of workshops in their local communities, which is why they are taking (or have taken) the e-VELP online dedicated course. Each of them might wish to provide workshops in different topics and subjects, such as music, cooking, a specific language or dialect, maths, history, their own culture, etc.
The list is potentially endless, as are people’s abilities 😊
You cannot be expected to be an expert in the various topics of training chosen for their workshops. However, you can certainly learn how to be prepared to help them when they need support during their exciting journey. In order to do so, it is important to understand interculturality, and how cultural clashes can affect our ability to fully help others.
Interculturality - the existence and equitable interaction of diverse cultures and the possibility of generating shared cultural expressions through dialogue and mutual respect.
UNESCO [1]
In short, this term refers to the interaction and communication between culturally diverse human groups within a given society. When it was first coined, the term implied a static conception of culture. According to these theories, mostly from Europe and North America, culture was considered to be a rigid collection of elements which collectively represent it. Therefore, people from different cultures had “objective” and immobile features that made them part of a given culture. Things have changed since the term was coined, and now “interculturality” is understood to be a much more flexible and complex phenomenon [2].
Modern theories explain culture as “dynamic” rather than “static,” made of not only objective features (such as nationality, religion, language, and so on), but also of subjective and symbolic interpretations. The difference is that older explanations of interculturality believed that there was a single and clear space “between” cultures.
Modern interpretations say that the situation is much more complex and hybrid, so we need to look at interactions that happen “between” different human groups, “within” the same human group, and at features that are common of most cultural groups.
In simpler language, this means that a person can sometimes identify with his or her cultural group, and other times feel distant, or not in line with his or her group. Similarly, we can at times feel very distant from other cultures, and other times we may feel a certain similarity or familiarity with people who are culturally different from us.
Do you remember an occasion in your life when you felt different from another person or another cultural group? And can you think of a time when you felt more affinity to a different culture than you expected? If you wish to, write both memories down on your notebook 
, try to list the reasons which made you feel either distant, or connected with a different culture.
Culture as a system of power relations
Another important element about interculturality, which might be useful to be aware of when supporting people from other countries and backgrounds, is the widespread idea that a society is made of “majorities” and “minorities.” This popular view sees culture as a well-defined system with homogeneous characteristics, and interculturality is described as different “us” versus “them” groups that interact with each other. The dominant group (i.e. “us”) is the majority, whereas all people outside of the majority (i.e. “them”) are the minority groups. One potential problem with this theory is…..
Who decides who belongs to the majority? Typically, it is those who have more “power,” in terms of social, economic, political, and ultimately cultural advantages. In fact, thinking of a social group as made of a majority versus a minority implies that some people will have more privileges than others. If you are identified as part of the dominant group, you will have more social contacts, more access to jobs, to high quality education, to political power, etc. Whereas those who are labelled as the minority will most likely be forced to assimilate (i.e. merge with the different culture and hide their identity) in order to be integrated. Typically, the definition of majorities and minorities is historical, meaning that those groups who had more power in the past also shaped the way social systems work today.
This is why modern theories of interculturality prefer to describe culture as more inclusive and complex. Interculturalism therefore is about the way relationships between different human groups can change over time, and the idea that perceptions of the majority can be changed. According to this view, different human groups can identify with the same social group. In other words, there can be differences within the same culture, and similarities between different cultures.
Now that you have been introduced to the concept of interculturality, it is useful to reflect on cultural clashes, because this is something that the young people you will support might be exposed to. Like interculturality, the process of cultural clashes is more complex than we might think at first.
Culture Clash
It can be useful to think of a culture clash as a shock that a person experiences when realising that despite many similarities, people from different cultures perceive things differently or act based on different norms and rules of conduct [3]. Of course, a culture clash is more likely to happen when we move away from our own country and culture, and experience differing parts of the world and different people. It is estimated that currently about 400 million people are migrants (nearly 4% of the world population); there are currently 7 million refugees; there are nearly 5 million foreign students; and 1.3 billion people go abroad as tourists every year (with exceptions over the last year and a half due to the COVID19 pandemic)[4].
The shock, or clash, that can result from a meeting of different cultures works both ways: in other words, it can be the “shock of visiting a new culture,” but also the “shock of being visited.” The attitudes that we adopt towards host communities, or towards immigrants, can play an important role in the way we integrate and allow others to integrate. As a VE-Trainer, you have a central role to play in helping young VEs maximise their possibility to adapt positively and flourish in their new community!
The internal conflict that we can feel when experiencing a culture clash does not necessarily arise from major or obvious differences. Sometimes, we feel discomfort also as a reaction to more subtle and minor elements.
- How would you define culture shock?
- What is the source of culture shock?
Cultural shock - “The interaction with a person or object from a different culture, set in a specific space and time, which provokes negative or positive cognitive and affective reactions, a sensation of loss of reference points, a negative representation of oneself and feeling of lack of approval that can give rise to uneasiness and anger.”
- Cohen-Emerique & A. Rothberg (2016) [5]
But what is the source of cultural shock? According to Cohen-Emerique it is something called sensitive zones, meaning cultural domains which are particularly important in one’s cultural frame of reference (i.e. nationality, ethnicity, age, gender, profession, etc.).
Below we present some examples of sensitive zones [6].
1) Rules of social organisation: gender roles, the role of community, family, etc.
2) Embodiedness: role of physical contact, hygiene, smells, climate, physical sensations.
3) Conceptions and uses of space: instrumentalization vs harmony in the use of the environment.
4) Conceptions and uses of time: linear vs non-linear, monochromic vs polychromic, future/past/present orientation.
5) Way of life, working style.
6) Style of thinking and learning, conceptions of the world: scientific approach vs. transcendental approach.
7) Interaction codes and patterns: direct vs. indirect communication; context-rich vs. context-poor communication; formal vs. informal communication.
8) Intergroup relations, differences in demographic, different religious composition of the societies.
For each of these sensitive zones, can you think of examples of personal experiences when you felt affected, either positively or negatively?
If you like, you can use your digital notebook where you can write down your thoughts. You can access all these notes in your profile.
| Examples of negative reactions:
– Fear, terror |
Examples of positive reactions:
– Experience of joy, beauty
|
It is also important to think of how our emotions affect us. They are indicators that “something is happening,” they reveal a strong reaction to a conflict, to some tension, to the difference between an expected and an experienced scenario. There is no such thing as “objectivity,” so when we judge a situation, we always do it from a personal perspective affected by many different elements, or sensitive zones. We can think of these as “cultural glasses” that affect our ability to see things in a clear way.
Author M. Cohen-Emerique proposes to use the method of critical incidents to get rid of our cultural glasses. The method has 3 Steps:
1. Decentration
- Taking a “step back” towards cultural neutrality
- Understanding how our own values, norms, and expectations influence our way of interacting with different cultures
2. Understanding the reference frame of the other
- Having an open mind for other people’s cultural references
- Avoiding stereotypes and generalisations
- Making an effort to integrate the context (the migration path, the cultural plurality of the protagonists)
3. Negotiation
- As a professional, going beyond the mere observation of cultural differences
- Reaching a solution which takes into account the best possible identities of both interaction partners
1) Look through the images in this link. Then chose the one that shocked you the most, either positively or negatively, and perform the task below.
2) Create a Topic on the Cultural Clash Reflection forum:
-Add your selected Image to the topic.
-Objectively describe the image. What do you see?
-How does the picture make you feel? Write your emotions.
-What values does the picture tackle?
3) Read and comment on 2-3 topics posted by other VE-Trainers.
ACTIVITY TOOLBOX
We created a toolbox of activities which you can use when you meet Volunteer Educators in person.
Check the Power Walk activity 1 in the Activity Tool box (link). Use this as an activity to reflect with VEs on the difference between their culture of origin and the host culture, and to focus on commonalities and positive elements of sharing.
