Political Socialization of International Students: Public-Issue Discourse and Discussion on the College Campus

ABSTRACT

This study examined international students’ interests in public issues in the U.S. and motivational factors behind their discourse or avoidance of such issues. In-depth interviews with international students revealed that they discuss certain public issues in the U.S. to gain or exchange information and knowledge, because these issues are relevant to themselves and others, or due to the misconceptions that others have about their country. Moreover, international students tend to avoid certain public issues because of the level of their knowledge and lack of interest in such issues and in order to avoid dissonance caused by the public issues.     

International assignments: The role of social support and personal initiative

This study adapts components of Fay and Frese's nomological network of personal initiative (2001) and Caligiuri and Lazarova's model (2002) for the influence of social support on adjustment. Based thereon, a model for the relationship between personal initiative, social support and work adjustment was developed and tested. One-hundred twenty-seven expatriates answered an online questionnaire during and after their foreign sojourn. Results suggest that personal initiative of the expatriates and social support received from supervisors - but not from their co-workers - predicted job satisfaction, job stress and job performance of the expatriates. Social support and personal initiative have a strong relationship with successful work adjustment. Personal initiative moderates the relationship between social support from co-workers and job performance. There are practical implications for companies that send their staff on international assignments. Implications for the concept of personal initiative in expatriate adjustment research are discussed.     

Open- and closed-mindedness in cross-cultural adaptation: The roles of mindfulness and need for cognitive closure

Individuals who are high, relative to low, in mindfulness are more open when ascribing meanings to new experiences and more resilient under stress, suggesting that mindfulness may play an important role in cross-cultural adaptation. In contrast, those high in need for cognitive closure (NCC) seem to close one’s mind to new cross-cultural experiences. We tested these contrasting effects of mindfulness and NCC by examining Asian international students (n = 233) who study at an Australian university using several measures of psychological and sociocultural adjustment. The study found that more mindful sojourners develop greater sociocultural skills and superior knowledge of a unique local culture. The role of need for cognitive closure (NCC)―closed-mindedness spurred by a desire for clear-cut understanding―was found primarily in the domain of psychological adjustment. The results highlight the importance of these dimensions of open- versus closed-mindedness during cross-cultural adaptation.     

Social network sites and acculturation of international sojourners in the Netherlands: The mediating role of psychological alienation and online social support

Acculturation of short-term international sojourners, such as expats and international students, has received considerable attention from scholars in the past decades. Acculturation is commonly defined as the interplay between cultural maintenance, the sojourner’s desire to maintain their home culture identity, and host country participation, their desire to initiate contact with members of the host society. The present paper focuses on the role that Social Network Sites (SNS) play in the acculturation process of this group. Through a survey, we examined how 126 short-term sojourners in the Netherlands use SNS to interact with relations in both home and host country, and how this affects their cultural maintenance and host country participation. Furthermore, we examined psychological alienation and online social support as possible mediators. Our results show that on the one hand SNS contact with home country relations is positively related to online social support. On the other hand, it is also related to psychological alienation, which in turn is related to cultural maintenance. This shows that sojourners who keep in touch with friends and family at home also experience more loneliness and homesickness, and place more emphasis on their own cultural heritage. Finally, we found that SNS contact with host country relations predicts host country participation. Through online activities, sojourners are able to foster social interaction and strengthen friendships with locals.