Exploring Social Identity and the Acculturation Process of Venezuelan Undergraduate Students at a Midwestern U.S. University
This multiple case study sought to explore the process of acculturation on stress levels, coping strategies, and social identity choices of six international undergraduate students from Venezuela studying at a Midwestern U.S. university. This study analyzed the personal experiences of three male and three female participants who have been studying from 1-4 years in a Midwestern university. Findings explicated that all participants experienced some degree of acculturative stress including difficulty with the English language, practicing new cultural behaviors, and in some cases, discrimination from the host society. All participants engaged in retaining and forming social networks as a method to cope with these stresses. The majority of the participants reported feeling a more familial social bond with co-nationals during their sojourn, although participants actively established social networks with host nationals as well in order to learn about or integrate into mainstream U.S. society. Social mobility between co-national and host national social groups in various social contexts was also reported. Thus, this study found that international students from Venezuela studying at a Midwestern U.S. university experience acculturative stress as a result of intercultural contact and manage this stress by both retaining and forming social identities with co-national and host national social groups within the new sociocultural context of the U.S.
Education, Educational Psychology, International students, Acculturation, Social identity, Acculturative stress, Coping strategies, Chavez, Venezuela
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