Cultural Self-Identification and Orientations to Cross-Cultural Mixing on an Australian University Campus

ABSTRACT

Australian universities are sites of growing cultural diversity, with large numbers of international students joining domestic students, many of whom come from migrant backgrounds. The literature indicates that the opportunities this creates for cross-cultural mixing and intercultural learning are often not embraced. This paper reports results of a study of orientations to cross-cultural interaction and learning among first year students, focussing on the relationship between such orientations and cultural self-identification. The findings indicate some ambivalence among the students, including a widespread general positivity towards the idea of cross-cultural interaction, but reticence to make personal efforts to take up these opportunities. Cultural self-identification was related to students’ openness to diversity. Students who identified as Australian tended to be less interested in engaging across cultures, whereas those with culturally different (migrant), and more complex ‘Australian + other’ identifications, appeared more open. Implications for studies of cross-cultural mixing, and for higher education institutions, are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Australia
• cross-cultural interaction
• cultural diversity
• intercultural competence
• internationalisation
• multiculturalism
• tertiary education
• cultural self-identification

Acknowledgement

We would also like to acknowledge the research assistants who helped to collect the data.

Notes on contributor

Farida Fozdar is Associate Professor in Anthropology and Sociology at The University of Western Australia. Her research focuses on social inclusion and migrant settlement, racism, citizenship and nationalism, and issues to do with refugees and asylum seekers. Simone Volet is Professor of Educational Psychology at Murdoch University. Her research focuses on cognitive, metacognitive, motivational and social aspects of learning at university, and issues related to internationalisation of higher education, social cohesion and learning and teaching in culturally diverse contexts. She has published widely in international and national peer reviewed journals.

Simone Volet is Professor of Educational Psychology at Murdoch University. Her research focuses on cognitive, metacognitive, motivational and social aspects of learning at university, and issues related to internationalisation of higher education, social cohesion and learning and teaching in culturally diverse contexts. She has published widely in international and national peer reviewed journals.

Notes

1. We distinguish between cross-cultural, referring to the act of interpersonal interactions across cultural difference, and intercultural, referring to attitudes, learning or orientations.

2. Note that international and local students are aggregated in all analysis for this paper, as the focus was on the significance of cultural self-identification (discussed shortly) rather than visa status designation.

3. Australian universities have undergone a change in the last few decades resulting in students being less focussed on the social side of their university lives, and spending less time on campus due to work and other commitments (James et al. 2010). This is particularly so for mature-age students, such as significant proportions of our sample, and those only studying part-time, often due to other commitments. A general lack of interest in on-campus interaction is likely to mean a lack of interest in cross-cultural interactions specifically. Indeed, we found that across all students, there was a small but significant correlation between responses to questions about how important it is ‘to interact with people from cultural backgrounds different from your own' and ‘to interact with other students outside class' (r = .304, p < .001) more generally, indicating that the importance of socialising more generally mediates the desire to socialise with those who are culturally different.

4. The Bogardus Social Distance Scale measures people's willingness to engage in social contact with diverse groups (usually racial or ethnic groups) at varying degrees of closeness, including marriage, close friendship, as neighbours, co-workers, fellow citizens, and visitors to one's country. Results generally show declining inclination to engage in cross-cultural interaction the more intimate the relationship.

5. It must be noted that the very low proportions of students likely to seek out those who are culturally different to share accommodation may reflect the high proportions of mature-age students at the research site who are more likely to already be in settled accommodation. The lower proportion inclined to mix for informal study also may indicate that students do not engage in group-based informal study generally, rather than a preference for culturally similar study partners.

6. This is a category used by the New Zealand Bureau of Statistics.

7. All analyses comparing groups were conducted with and without the ‘other’ category. The results were very similar. Hence, since the ‘other’ category did not represent a homogenous group and included a range of non-‘cultural' bases for identification, the ‘other’ category has been excluded from this analysis.

8. Due to the unequal size of the groups, these results should be interpreted with caution.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported under Australian Research Council's Discovery Projects funding scheme (project number DP0986901), and Future Fellowship FT100100432.