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"Culture shock."
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From east to west and back again: the effects of reverse culture shock on female Saudi Arabian university students studying abroad
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of Saudi Arabian university students returning home after having spent time away studying internationally. The investigation focused exclusively on female students who for diverse reasons were unable to complete their studies abroad.
Design/methodology/approach
A thematic analysis was applied to analyze the seven in-depth interviews conducted by the authors. By using an open coding method analytic patterns across the entire data set were identified and then analyzed.
Findings
The findings suggest that the students experienced reverse culture shock reintegrating and assimilating into their former lives in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its conservative culture. This was especially surprising considering not one of the participants experienced culture shock when they first traveled to their host country – the USA, Canada or England.
Research limitations/implications
The study is limited to a small group of seven female undergraduates who are comparatively well educated and come from a middle and upper socioeconomic demographic. As a result, without additional research, the findings cannot be extended to groups outside of this demographic.
Practical implications
Students who have studied abroad need improved academic and social support networks when they return home, according to the findings. The authors want to raise awareness about the difficulties that students face upon their return. Teachers, counselors, and advisors need to be on the lookout for the symptomatology associated with these types of problems.
Social implications
Female Saudi students returning home after an extended period of study abroad face a variety of problems. They must fit into a restrictive, partriarchal culture in which they are not legally equal to men.
Originality/value
To date, there are no studies that shed light on reverse culture shock for students who returned to Saudi Arabia without a degree. Due to the large number of Saudi scholarship holders who study in English-speaking countries with government support, the study is the first attempt in this direction.
Journal Article
Reverse Culture Shock among International Business Administration Exchange Students
Reverse Culture Shock (RCS) is concerned with the readaptation process to the home country the expats go through upon their return after leaving the host country. The purpose of this research is to understand whether the respondents faced reverse culture shock upon reentry and to establish the relationship between RCS and demographic factors of the respondents. A cross-sectional survey design is used to fulfill the objectives of the study. Primary data was collected from 136 respondents by completing an online questionnaire adopted from (Austin, 1986; Church, 1982; Freedman, 1986; Koester,1985; Martin,1984; Sussman, 1986; Uehara, 1986). The data is analyzed by the use of SPSS 25 using independent t-test and one-way ANOVA. The results indicate that the Business Administration/ MBA international students who participated in exchange programs and went back home differ significantly in their RCS regarding their education level. However, they do not differ significantly in their RCS in terms of gender, age, length of trip, and time since returning home.
Journal Article
“We Are Back”: Reverse Culture Shock Among Saudi Scholars After Doctoral Study Abroad
The experiences of individuals returning to the most conservative countries from abroad are not being recorded. The present study explores how Saudi scholars working in the higher education sector readjust and reconnect to their workplace after completing their doctoral scholarships abroad. The study has adopted a narrative approach and used the transformational learning theory to account for reverse culture shock. Six assistant professors (three males and three females) from three Saudi universities were recruited and they underwent 30- to 50-min-long semi-structured in-depth interviews. The data were analyzed through thematic analysis and the developed themes included emotional adaptation to home culture, adaptation to their work in their home culture, adaptation of families to home culture, and reentry coping mechanisms. The results depicted how the participants readjusted to their context after extended study abroad. They returned with new identities shaped by their life and education abroad and by their exposure at university to people from different cultural backgrounds. They had also become used to a more comfortable lifestyle in their host countries. The study concludes that there is a need to prepare and organize programs that could assist Saudi new returnees to readjust and reconnect to their context again. Moreover, it would be useful in helping universities prioritize their staff’s well-being and design rehabilitative courses for new returnees helping them integrate into their workplace.
Journal Article
Development of a Scale to Measure Reverse Culture Shock in Fresh Foreign Degree Holders
The study was carried out to develop a scale for the assessment of reverse culture shock among foreign degree holders in Pakistan. For this purpose the study was divided into two phases. In first phase, on the basis of existing literature of reverse culture shock, five semi-structured interviews and two focus group discussions were conducted with both men and women from different academic fields. As a result various themes were generated including work related problems, attachment with the host culture, social withdrawal, feelings of alienation, feelings of insecurity, attachment with home culture, positive regard and welcoming attitude of family and friends. Item pool was generated and sent for the experts' review. After receiving their feedback 70 items were finalized. In second phase, psychometric properties were determined by applying the Reverse Culture Shock Scale (RCSS) on 194 fresh foreign degree holders. Factor analysis revealed a unifactor solution for this scale. Content and construct validity, as well as split-half reliability were established. In addition, demographic differences were also explored. Participants who were single scored significantly high on reverse culture shock than married participants, while non significant gender differences were found. Age inversely correlated with reverse culture shock.
Journal Article
INTERCULTURAL CONTACTS: A CRITICAL READING OF ACCOUNTS OF SOME MOROCCAN IMMIGRANTS
This article revolves around immigration and cultural encounters on the basis of the life stories of a number of immigrants belonging to the same Moroccan geographical area. Most of them were interviewed in the August of 2015 when they were back 'home'. The point of departure strives to address culture shock and its main symptoms and how it is coped with. Mobility compels the following questions: What happens to the individual migrant when s/he is placed in immediate juxtaposition with a new environment and peoples? How does s/he react when s/he inhabits a cultural space s/he is unfamiliar with? His/her endeavor for acculturation is met with numerous hurdles due to communication difficulties and the nature of culture encounters which are not usually biasfree. While literature maintains that culture shock is a fleeting psychological unrest that fades away with time, I have come to realize that this is not the case with my informants. Far from being cured, this feeling of stress and anxiety is merely palliated. It remains quiescent in their subconscious and is triggered by encounters in which they think that they are relegated to the margins of otherness. Analyzing the migrant's oral narratives against the backdrop of Foucauldian discourse analysis, I come to infer that they are imbued with some ambivalence where the text involuntarily fluctuates between what it manifestly states and what is nevertheless constrained to mean. The Moroccan migrant is at times confused as to where to place his/her hosts. Do they represent an object of attraction or repulsion? This semantic undecidability evokes Homi Bhabha's interstit ial perspective since most of the migrants find themselves located on the cusp between two ways of life that are not necessarily antithetical.
Journal Article