The world has never been more connected today than it has ever been in the past. No other generation has been able to say that they can go online and search for news of things happening halfway across the world, and we can also search out and speak with people from differing cultural backgrounds on forums or chat rooms any time of the day. So, being this connected means that we are in a unique place of cultural awareness and appreciation, right?
That’s not necessarily the case.
In our heavily connected world, we still have issues of communication on a global level. This could not be any more obvious than with the recent discussions of climate change that happened at COP26 only a few months ago. On an issue that affects everyone across the world, one might expect each and every nation to be willing to step up and take responsibility for their country’s actions. What really happens is larger nations fumbling to agree with new ideas and smaller nations pushing blame away from them. No one is willing to take the fall or step up when they need to, and I believe this is in part due to people’s rigid idea of who they are at the base of things.
A person’s identity is the very core of who they are. As Martin and Nakayama put it, “identity is our self-concept, who we think we are as a person” (2008). These views of ourselves change over time as we grow and experience the world; it does not happen all at once where we wake up one day and suddenly discover something new about ourselves. We can have multiple different personalities, making them very dynamic, and we are influenced by the society around us that we must adapt to.
In a world becoming increasingly more globalized, I think a major issue is people refusing to leave their comfort zones and go explore the world outside of the social circles that are familiar to them. It’s scary to explore the unknown and to be sometimes thousands of miles away from home, but refusing to see what the world has to offer stunts your personal growth and might even affect your career. Because of international interconnectedness, it has been studied that up to 92% of employers prefer to hire someone who has experience abroad over other candidates. Staying home is only going to hurt you in the long run.
A good way to overcome the issue of identity is to study abroad. When someone is out in the world and thrown into a culture that is nothing like where they come from, their personal identity is challenged. It may not always feel great to begin with, as one study found that students abroad sometimes felt angry, annoyed, and vulnerable when they first integrated into a new culture (Young, Natrajan-Tyag & Platt, 2015). The same study found that those experiencing these negative feelings quickly began to overcome those feelings until they felt like they were a part of the new culture they were experiencing.
Time and time again, stories are shared of people living in new cultures and changing because of their experience. Blankvoort et al. found that students had experiences abroad “which contributed to personal and professional development, greater confidence in the students’ own professional identities, as well as an increasing sense of cultural awareness” (2019). These experiences are important not only because a personal identity can change, but the global identity of someone can shift as well. In a study of American students who had been sent abroad to South Africa, it is noted from interviews of the students that they weren’t only introduced to the South African culture, but also to the cultures of other international students studying abroad at the same time. These other students came from all walks of life including places like China and Singapore, one American student commenting that, “‘It is nice that… people from different backgrounds can still be friends’” (Willet, 2013). These students had the ability to interact with clothes outside of even the culture they were being immersed in, allowing them the unique perspective of what it means to be an American abroad. It is an experience that can both strengthen your identity while also altering it to be more open to the world.
If we ever wish to be in a world that is peacefully connected and understanding of one another, we have to be open to other cultures and the differences those cultures bring with them. Studying abroad is a great tool to aid in the journey of cultural awareness, and it is something that is happening more and more as time goes on. While most of these accounts come from students of higher education and their experiences in other countries, nothing is stopping someone who has already graduated or even high school students from experiencing the world through complete immersion. To help change the world, we must first change ourselves.
Sources:
Blankvoort, N., Kaelin, V. C., Poerbodipoero, S., & Guidetti, S. (2019). Higher education students’ experiences of a short-term international programme: Exploring cultural competency and professional development. Educational Research, 61(3), 356–370.
Deutsche Welle. (2021). COP26: ‘not yet where we need to be’ on climate, Merkel says – as it happened: DW: 01.11.2021. DW.COM. Retrieved December 7, 2021, from https://www.dw.com/en/cop26-not-yet-where-we-need-to-be-on-climate-merkel-says-as-it-happened/a-59683494.
Martin & Nakayama (2008). Experiencing Intercultural Communication
Matthews, K. (2017, December 7). Want a job? new research shows studying abroad may get you hired. HuffPost. Retrieved December 7, 2021, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/want-a-job-new-research-p_b_8474418.
Willet, M. (2013). Tools & Resources. University of South Carolina. Retrieved December 7, 2021, from https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/research/news_and_pubs/caravel/archive/2018/study_abroad.php.
Young, J. T., Natrajan-Tyagi, R., & Platt, J. J. (2015). Identity in Flux: Negotiating Identity While Studying Abroad. Journal of Experiential Education, 38(2), 175–188.