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.

Paradigm of International Exchange Students in Encountering Culture Shock Stages

Globalization can help people gain knowledge and improve learning about how a diversity of the cultures does not cause any conflict, misunderstand, and share knowledge across the culture peacefully. It can be termed as cross-cultural communication. Based on this paper's aims, this article discussed the theory of multiculturalism (cultural diversity), cross-cultural communication, the types of culture shock, the cases of culture shock experience such as the stages of culture shock and reverse culture shock. Thus, this study aims to discuss the theory of multiculturalism and an overview of culture shocks experienced by the student exchange program. As a result, shock culture experience is found by most of the people who live for some duration times. However, they will face reverse culture shock when returning to their home country, even though some returnees do not experience it.

Return Migration, Reverse Culture Shock: A Critical Analysis of Their Patterns and Particularities Amongst Migrant Nigerian Elites

Migration has remained a constant element of 21st-century changes (Appadurai, 1999; Gillespie, 2000; Georgiou, 2001). The prospects of a continuation are certain with growing gains in technologies of communication, transportation, and the increasing ease with which the world can integrate and function. The place of Nigerian migrants as reflected in some patterns and particularities (Georgiou, 2001; Adeniyi, 2008) of its elites reveals key characteristics useful for the understanding of discourses around migrants’ return and reverse culture shock (Naficy, 1999). While the coming home is often imagined, a few have proceeded to actualizations, and subsequently opening up new pedestals for the understanding of travelling and dwelling (Morley, 2000). This paper attempts a critical analysis of identifiable features and concludes that the revelations will ceaselessly grow in substance. The paper uses critical discourse analysis to evaluate the experiences of some elites, as rendered in formal and informal interviews, while also spicing it up with secondary data, obtained from media reports, and related literature. It eventually ended with a recommendation on the need for concerted development efforts to enable a realization of the likely higher quality lifestyle, which the elite might have left behind in the West.

AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC ACCOUNT OF TWO INDONESIAN ACADEMIC RETURNEES EXPERIENCED OF REVERSE CULTURE SHOCK

In this article, we use an autoethnography approach to reflect on our emotional experiences of re-integrating in academic community in two different universities. We start to explore our experience of implementing new knowledge in teaching and researching, demonstrating how we as junior lecturers often making confrontations with the ‘conventional’ and ‘traditional’ sounded educational system which have been practiced by senior colleagues. In this sense, there has been a conflictual emotion which we should address, utilizing our new knowledge or returning back to the existing norms. Whilst exploring our experiences of dealing with conflictual emotional beliefs, we also examine issue such as identity construction as being an academic returnee responding to the confrontation in academic environment. This study results may resonate the concrete condition of academic returnees re-integrating to their academic milieu in other part of the countries.

“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.

The Impact of Reverse Culture Shock on Gulliver’s Family Life

Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels has been one of the most fascinating works of English literature. It is its suggestive quality due to which it has been read in a variety of different perspectives. Twentieth century critics have read it in the light of different psychoanalytical approaches. This study focuses on an entirely different aspect i.e reverse culture shock. It analyzes the effects of reverse culture shock on Gulliver’s behavior and his interaction with his family through a close reading of the text of Gulliver’s Travels. Gulliver who suffers from an obvious identity crisis fails to cope with the readjustment problems at home after living among different hosts. After every subsequent re-entry, Gulliver’s behavior especially with his family members deteriorates. The imprints of his last hosts remain so deeply engraved on his mind that fails to live peacefully with his family members and has to live in isolation. This is where we can relate Gulliver to people who after living abroad fail to adjust with the people of their native society and family members.