Adjustment requires identity strategies

"I’m from Gabon when nobody speaks to me. I’m from Gabon only when no one wants to recognize me, when it’s only French society that is speaking, outside the company where I’m recognized. In reality, however, my work, my studies in Paris, in the Netherlands and the United States, with my postings and mobility, mean that I’m the only one who knows who I really am. In the midst of several cultures. It isn’t easy! It causes a lack of understanding within my family and amongst my friends because, quite simply, I don’t want my value to be reduced to the colour of my skin and country of origin (which was colonised by the French), or even to my social identity, which is that of a person with money and power within the firm where I have been working for more than sixteen years."
Interview with expatriate in Fernandez et al 2006: 57

Identity conflict is a natural companion of humans living in cultural contact zones. Tensions can appear along different fault lines, for example:
§ Between the identities one claims and those assigned or attributed: in this case strategies aim at repositioning oneself, manipulating categorisations.
§ Along incoherence of identities corresponding to different sub-cultures one is immerged in (e.g. simultaneous handling of company culture, local culture, expatriate culture etc.)
§ Between pragmatic and ontological functions of identity, i.e. its faculty to create links with the social environment and to give sense to the world (Camilleri 1985)
Identity strategies are efforts to answer such tensions, in order to integrate different facets of a multiple identity, overcome incoherence, and regain self-esteem and re-establish desired social relations. Identity strategies can comprise a wide range of conscious and non-conscious actions: how we present ourselves in interaction (including body appearance), how we explain ourselves and with whom we chose to spend time, and what activities we perform.
. There were many attempts to catalogue identity strategies employed by immigrants in general (see Camilleri et al 1985, Fernandez et al 2006)

Adjustment is about learning to bridge the differences. Cultural learning perspective.

Even if we are fabulous stress managers, if we go on breaching the same taboos, shocking and getting shocked over and over again with the same behaviours, we’ll waist lots of energy on coping and feeling ashamed. Indeed it seems dull not to try to adapt to the behaviour of the locals. Long before our scientists came to talk about stress, old wisdom already phrased the prescription: ‘when in Rome…’ Furthermore, ignoring behaviour adaptation would be really awkward, as it often happens automatically, effortlessly. Four times you’ll be greeted with four kisses; it is likely that the fifths time you’ll be used to it. At the same time ‘behavioural adaptation’ is a shaky ground, as it recalls that practice of intercultural training, which is based on sketches of stereotyped behaviour. Are we adjusted when we bow exactly the same way as Japanese? Or play karaoke the same way? That would be a lifelong learning experience.

Then, how to conceive adaptation?
Socio-cultural adjustment occurs, when we are able to participate in the new environment: interact, make friends, but also work, get entertained, do whatever is needed for a full functional life. No wonder, many models were drawn up with the ambition to summarize the complexity of behaviours into a couple of basic dimensions.

Adjustment is about emotion. Dealing with uncertainty stress and conflict

Stress is a usual travel-mate in missions abroad. Why is it so? First of all, because international transitions imply life-changes that are typically stress provoking (Ward et al 2001:73). Indeed, life changes themselves are considered inherently stressful, even without any trans-cultural element (p 48). A new environment is by definition not decipherable, not predictable, and not completely foreseeable. And stress is nothing but our reaction upon estimating that we cannot handle a given situation.

But then, if cross-cultural transition is basically stress, what is adjustment?
For scholars working in the stress perspective adjustment occurs when we have overcome stress and are ‘psychologically fit’ again. Here adjustment is used in the sense of readjusting some inner psychological indicators to a desired level. Accordingly, to measure the level of adjustment, measures related to general psychological wellbeing areemployed, such as Zung’s (1965) Self-Rating Depression Scale (ZSDS) used by Ward and her colleagues.

What about individual differences in adjustment?
While many external factors influence adjustment, there are also individual differences, which mainly summarize in the different coping styles. Coping strategies are our ways to deal with psychological distress. Stress-researchers have identified a variety of different coping strategies, and the challenge is to find out which strategies are more employed amongst sojourners, and which result in better adjustment. Ward and Kennedy (2001) for instance found two coping styles that seem to support adjustment: “Using humour to cope with stress and employing an approach coping style, which included planning, active coping, and suppression of competing activities” (p 640). They also found that the avoiding strategy was particularly strong in predicting poor adjustment. This coping style implies “behavioral disengagement, denial, venting of emotions, the inability to see the potentially positive aspects of change, and mental disengagement” (p.640). While coping seems to dwell too deep into psychological phenomena, beyond the scope of intercultural competences, the correspondence between some coping strategies and adjustment can be instructive. E.g. the Ways of Coping Scale of Folkman and Lazarus (1985), which identifies 8: problem solving, wishful thinking, detachment, seeking social support, positive thinking, self-blame, tension reduction, and withdrawal.

On culture shock

Culture shock – sometimes referred to as “critical incident” (Cohen-Emerique) contrary to the general belief does not only strike the prejudiced and the narrow-minded. It can happen to the most aware and sensitive person and it is not even worth to try hard to avoid it: it is an exceptional learning opportunity, a privileged perspective on the other, but also on our own culture.Indeed our own culture is usually invisible to us, so much we are used to it. Most probably we don’t see it much better than the fish see the water they swim in. It is only in the encounter with the culturally different, through the contact that it becomes visible.
All in all, culture shock is not necessarily something bad, if we learn how to handle it. And it is surely not a sign of any personal shortcoming. If it has a bad connotation, it is because it si usually accompanied by feelings of stress, anxiety, anger, sometimes even physical pain. And while we can't do anything to avoid experiencing culture shock (merely because we are all cultural beings socialized into one or several cultures, but not all) we can do a lot to prevent its bad consequences.

Participation

There are three ways you can help the research and participate.

1. Wherever you are on the globe, you can help through sending written accounts / cases of critical incidents you have experienced. Please go to section participation in the collection of critical incidents.

2. If you now live in Paris, you can participate in a series of 3 interviews to map your identity
or
3. You can fill out a questionnaire that helps me understand what competenes and skills facilitate the adjustment process.
Please see the following sections for further details:
Participation through tests
Participation in the longitudinal study