Page 18 - Never Too Far Away? The Roles of Social Network Sites in Sojourners’ Adjustment
P. 18
to pursue occupational or academic careers, either based on personal goals or in accordance with their organization’s (such as multinational corporations or universities) development programs (Altbach & Knight, 2007; Hippler, 2009; Scullion, Collings, & Gunnigle, 2007). In 2017, there were about five million students who were studying outside of their home countries. The number of international students is expected to reach eight million by 2025 (ICEF monitor, 2017). Considering the global implications of these current and projected developments, there is a growing need for a better understanding of the factors that could facilitate a smooth transition and adaptation for international sojourners (Alghamdi & Otte, 2016; Safdar & Berno, 2016).
Understanding Sojourners’ Social Interactions and Adjustment
To provide a comprehensive and holistic theoretical grounding of sojourners’ experiences, the present dissertation builds on knowledge from theories, models, and research from various disciplines such as media and communication, cross-cultural psychology, acculturation psychology, clinical psychology, social psychology, and migration studies. This multidisciplinary approach reflects the development of theorizing in the study of migration, as more recent research takes into account how modern communication technologies impact sojourners’ experiences.
Much of the earlier research in sojourners’ experiences was done in domains such as cross-cultural psychology, particularly in a subspecialty field acculturation psychology. Seminal studies in these disciplines characterized international sojourn primarily as an acculturation or a cross-cultural transition (Berry, 2003, 2006; Berry & Sam, 2016; Ward et al., 2001). Generally, transition is the process of change between one previously established context and another (Mikal, Rice, Abeyta, & De Vilbiss, 2013). This entails adaptation to contextual norms and outcomes in the new context. Specifically, in cross-cultural transition, international sojourners face the challenge of adapting to a new country with a cultural background that might vary slightly or tremendously from that of their home country. Therefore, the main goal in cross-cultural transition is to achieve adaptation or effective adjustment in the new cultural context2 (Berry, 2003, 2006; Berry & Sam, 2016).
2 The two terms, adaptation and adjustment have been used in the literature interchangeably. For this dissertation, I will use adjustment for consistency.
16 Chapter 1