Beyond cross-cultural adaptation: Exploring international students’ communicative resilience during educational sojourns in the United States

Abstract

This study explores how international students use communication to develop resilience while adjusting to the United States’ educational context. We draw from literature on cross-cultural adaptation and the communication theory of resilience to challenge previous models of acculturation that focused on stress and coping and (re)conceptualize resilience as a discursive practice that allows international students to flourish in a new cultural context. Using focus group discussions with 41 international students, our findings suggest that participants experienced four resilience triggers—sociocultural and linguistic barriers, structural obstacles, difficulties forming relationships, and issues related to identity management—and enacted five resilience processes to manage these challenges—using alternative logics to reframe cultural diversity, foregrounding productive action, establishing and maintaining communication networks, affirming identity anchors to embrace their international identity, and enacting other-resilience to make a collective change. We expand current theorizing on communication resilience and offer practical implications for international students’ cross-cultural adaptation.