Transcending the Culturalist Impasse in Stays Abroad: Helping Mobile Students to Appreciate Diverse Diversities

Abstract

This article presents a study based on research carried out on various aspects of student mobility in Europe and aims to go beyond the ‘myths’ related to study abroad and examine how mobile students can develop competencies that can aid them when dealing with various aspects of the experience. This article calls for a change in the manner in which we consider intercultural communication, by adopting an approach which concentrates solely on the analysis of identity (co-)construction—a key element in the development of noticing strategies used by interlocutors to “dramatize themselves.” This article rejects the idea of encountering cultures meeting which is based on a culturalist approach that has been increasingly criticized for reducing individuals to mere “robots programmed with ‘cultural’ rules” (Abu-Lughod, 1991, p. 158). As Philipps asserts, culture is not delimited, it is not homogeneous and it is continually being produced by individuals.