In the introduction of a book on transcultural experiences between Asians and the ‘west’, Cadman and Song [1] quote an international student of Chinese background who expressed his huge disappointment after studying in Australia by declaring that “Multiculturalism is a big fat lie”. If this utterance reveals “the failure of the Australian education process”, it also raises the interesting question of the student’s expectations prior to his international experience and how they have been generated and/or reinforced. Obviously, this student had prepared to live in some kind of a multicultural environment: he had constructed an idealised representation of what this means, of how his destination (Australia) would look like and what he would experience. He had prepared himself to deal with it. Perhaps this whole process could even have been his goal, but I can only assume here.

There is a need to understand what this student meant by multicultural. Australia is a society that professes multiculturalism [2], and even if the use of the word is controversial, it is now part of Australian identity. The concept culture, without being always clearly defined [3, 4], enters into a series of compounded words with the prefixes multi, inter, trans or cross which often overlap and may carry a similar meaning [5]. For example, Wolfgang Welsch [6] refutes the use of intercultural for its essentialising stand and pleads for the use of cross-cultural and Xianlin Song and Kate Cadman [7] prefer using transcultural, both terms used with a meaning which is similar to the co-constructivist intercultural concept of Adrian Holliday [8] or the notion of interculturality of Martine Abdallah-Pretceille [9, 10] and Fred Dervin [3]. I suggest that the aforementioned student may have simply meant that he lacked intercultural interactions during his sojourn, a concept which has become central to the international experience of students [11, 12]. In this article, intercultural refers to identifying processes whereby individuals adopt strategies in order to negotiate the self in relation to the other [5, 13]. It is a fluid [14], constructivist approach in which “culture is a verb” [15], i.e. individuals are doing culture rather than being framed in a cultural, often national box [16].

However, my focus here is not theoretical per se but also empirical. I intend to analyse how prospective international students prepare for the host destination, how they conceive intercultural interactions with individuals in the host countries prior to their departure and how their representations of the other eventually shifts by critically analysing their discourses once in situ. Prior to getting ready for the international experience, international-students-to-be have already constructed a certain representation of the host country and its population. During their preparation, this representation may be reinforced or eventually challenged through two main channels: an institutional training in the form of language courses or a special preparation programme, and/or unsupervised research on the host country under the student’s own initiative. Students may also seek the advice of other family members or peers regarding their life in the host country and how to get along with local population.

Meet the ‘Locals’: a Sword of Damocles?

The desire of international students to meet individuals from culturally different backgrounds is described by many researchers as a “key component of the study abroad experience” [17]. The failure to engage in successful intercultural interactions would be perceived as a feeling of having missed out on something important, for which either the student or the locals are blamed through assertions like “They [= the ‘locals’] are difficult to befriend or communicate with” or “I am too shy to talk to them” [18]. Consequently, international students claim that it is easier to stick to their own community [19]. Asian students, in general, and Chinese, in particular, are often blamed for lacking interactions with members of other communities supposedly because of their Confucian heritage [20].

The insistence of researchers in trying to explain why Chinese students fail to integrate to the local population is, for example, symptomatic of the discourse of otherness [21] and a hegemonic institutional discourse on culture shock [22] which concerns all migrant populations, even if it is not always explicit. Instead of insisting on facilitating factors for adjustment and highlighting the success of such individuals, international students and local populations are systematically opposed [18]; they are framed in cultural boxes, and their cultural belonging becomes the lens through which their behaviour is explained, regardless of individual motivations, gender, age or social status. Of course, Chinese students abroad are not the only ones who socialise within their community. A research project involving international students from diverse nationalities and linguistic backgrounds living in Malaysia on their representation of the national language (Malay) [23] has shown that the presence of a larger community that shares the same language did indeed restrain the need to learn the local language. With the availability of speakers of the same language, mingling with locals does not appear as a necessity to them. For example, Farsi and Arabic speakers who come to Malaysia en masse to study were more reluctant to learn Malay than native speakers of lesser-spoken foreign languages (such as Amharic) and students tended to regroup within the linguistic community of their country or region of origin.

The insistence on meeting the locals is conditioned by how individuals consider their mobility and what they perceive as a social and institutional requirement. The analysis of motivation letters of prospective international students in Finland [24] has revealed that candidates for mobility tended to repeat a hegemonic discourse where meeting the other held an important place on motivation scale. Some of them also insisted in their letter on a (sometimes invented) particular connection with the host destination in order to meet imagined selection criteria in hopes of being selected by their institution. However, such criteria were lacking in the feedback of administrative staff in charge of international exchanges.

This dichotomy between home and host country (both presented as homogeneous entities) often omits the presence of other international students who similarly come from diverse backgrounds, with the exception of highlighting the internationalisation of campuses, whereby they suddenly become very visible. Research has proven that these linguistically and culturally diverse communities provide a space for another type of socialisation [25] and that similarities between international students (living in a foreign country, lacking proficiency in the local language, sharing accommodation, etc.) will encourage the creation of temporary ‘cocoon communities’ [26] once in the host country.

By analysing the intercultural experiences of international students between three campuses of the same university, Nadine Normand-Marconnet [27] posits that “ethnocentrism coupled with a low level of cultural awareness undermines the benefits of the intercultural experience, regardless of the duration and modalities involved”. She concludes that there is a need to implement a short module aimed at improving intercultural competence. The analysis of the discourses of Taiwanese [28] and Middle Eastern [29] students in Malaysia as well as Malaysian students in France [18] indicates that their prior knowledge of the host country, in which the processes of othering were significant to them, served as a grid for them to analyse their intercultural experience. In the following data analysis, I argue that although the participants may be culturally aware, this awareness often relies on a differentialist approach and does not necessarily improve their intercultural competence.

Participants

The data analysed below have been collected over the last 3 years (2012–2015) and come from three different research projects on the adjustment of international students from diverse backgrounds in the host country. The projects were not focusing on the students’ preparation but rather on their life in the host country. However, during the interviews, many participants referred directly or indirectly to their prior knowledge of the host community. I will now proceed to analyse these representations.

The first project dealt with the sojourn abroad of Malaysian future teachers of French. Six Malaysian nationals who studied in France were interviewed after their return to Malaysia. They were asked to tell their story, how and why they had been selected/they chose to study in France, recount their memories upon arrival in the country and evaluate their experiences once back in Malaysia. Preliminary findings have been presented at a conference on academic mobilities organised in Malaysia in 2012 (ICAMM3) and were thereafter published in a book chapter in French [18]. Participants gave great emphasis on othering processes and analysed their experiences from the perspective of national boundaries, polarising a Malaysian us to a French them. This polarity sometimes conflicted with a desire to distance themselves from national categories and merge into French communities.

The second project includes four Taiwanese students graduating in Chinese studies who participated in short-term (or credit) mobility in Malaysia for one semester. Interviews with them were conducted in Chinese by Chinese Malaysian research assistants, transcribed and then translated into English. Their cultural adjustment in the country has been analysed, and results have been published in 2014 [27]. Participants, who were all Chinese (Mandarin) speakers, insisted on their difficulties to meet the locals because of linguistic (imagined) boundaries which were reinforced by cultural (national) representations. They ignored the fact that they could have interacted in English most of the time as many Malaysians speak that language. Moreover, approximately one quarter of the Malaysian population is of Chinese origin and most of them speak Chinese although a slightly different one [Malaysianised].

The third project focuses on PRC Chinese students who are pursuing a full degree in Malaysia. They were registered in diverse programmes in a local university at the time of the interview and were interviewed in English. They were asked to discuss their daily life on and around campus.

All participants had volunteered for the respective research projects. They had been informed of the nature of the research, and their consent was sought. As mutually agreed upon, all names have been changed to guarantee their anonymity. For this article, I have selected excerpts that deal with the preparation of students in the home country after they had been selected for mobility (Malaysians and Taiwanese), or had taken the decision to study abroad (PRC Chinese) and prior to their departure from their home country. All excerpts selected here reflect the participants’ representation of the host destination and how it was constructed/negotiated before taking off.

Being Taught What to Expect

In 1990, Carlson, Burn, Useem and Yachimovicz [30] published an article in which they highlighted the interest of foreign language students in the USA in participating in international and intercultural activities. Subsequently, Goldstein and Kim [17] “predict that higher levels of interest in foreign language would be associated with participation in study abroad”. As a matter of fact, students graduating in French in Malaysia would fall under that category, unlike students of English, a language perceived as a second language in the country [31] and, thus, not the tool for internationalisation [32].

An article analysing discourses on interculturality among lecturers of French in Malaysia [33] concludes with a critical statement: native as well as non-native lecturers of French adopt solid [14] and Janusian [5] approaches to teach culture, which reinforce stereotypes, and ignore individualities and personal agencies. Teaching taboos or what to do/not to do is seen by participants as a way to develop intercultural skills [33], when, in reality, it fixes representations of the intercultural act by essentialising the other, i.e. assigning cultural expectations to French speakers because of their alleged community membership [34].

Parallel to local universities, the Malaysian government has opened institutes to prepare selected students for mobility such as the Malaysia French Institute or the German Malaysian Institute [32], where students receive intensive language training in order to join a European university. Future Malaysian teachers of French currently undergo a similar programme, whereas previous programmes provided a more or less lengthy language training prior to departure [18, 35]. In the following interview, the first participant, Mohd, followed the latest programme—2 years of preparation in Malaysia followed by 3 years in France in Besançon and 1 final year in Kuala Lumpur to become a French teacher in high school. The interviewer is a French national who had been living and working in Malaysia for more than 8 years at the time of the interview. In Excerpt 1, Mohd clearly identifies the source of his representations about France, i.e. his teachers and textbooks:

Excerpt 1

Interviewer: Do you have the feeling that your perception of France changed over the two years where you were studying here, before leaving for France?

Mohd: Quite a lot indeed. I learnt a lot about France and its culture….

Interviewer: So before leaving, you had a certain perception of France and French people?

Mohd: Yeah…. So funny. I was said in class that French people dress that way, or that they behave this or that way, but all those are only impressions….

Interviewer: Whom were they coming from?

Mohd: First of all from teachers of course…and from textbooks. I like to observe so I was looking at pictures in textbooks….

Interviewer: [And] what did you observe then….

Mohd: [And] I imagined often France….

Interviewer: …once there?

Mohd: Fashion. I looked at the way they dress, what they eat, the way they talk with others among themselves.

Interviewer: How is it different from books?

Mohd: Quite often in books French people wear a ‘beret’….

At first, the origin of these perceptions is unclear: “I was said in class…”. Yet, when asked to identify the source, Mohd cites his lecturers and textbooks. The elements selected by Mohd (dress, food) reflect an identification process dating from the rise of nation states of the eighteenth century when an imagined national identity was solidified in the context of the rise of nationalism [36]. I would have liked to say that clothing in the textbooks have been modernised to adapt to social changes, but Mohd’s reference to beret shows the opposite. A beret is a regional Basque (Southern France) flat hat dating from the nineteenth century; it is used as an identity marker of the Basque Country and is far from being representative of contemporary France as a whole. Rather, the reference to this hat indicates a folklorisation of the French identity which is consolidated in a modern ideology of the nineteenth century. This representation is merely a traditionalist and naive image d’Epinal [Epinal print].

Thus, Mohd is looking for some sort of fixed behaviour while in France (“the way they…”). This behaviour is associated with othering, as the repetition of the pronoun they implies. His prior training appears, thus, as a reinforcement of a solid, folklorised identity of French people (he will later refer to the French baguette), which is consistent with Chin’s findings [33] and the ‘culturalist temptation’ of Malaysian lecturers of French [37]. His cultural lenses had been set up by his training in Malaysia, and the insistence on fashion/clothes/what they wear reiterates a widely spread stereotype of France.

Malaysia obviously belongs to the Anglosphere. This former British colony where more than 80 languages are spoken and English is the second language has strong educational ties with English-speaking countries [29], and French language teaching faces many difficulties to exist in this ‘saturated environment’ [32]. Most representations of France are thus channelled through language lecturers [33] or through teaching material and textbooks, which usually provide a biased representation of the country where they were produced [38]. Very often, these two discourses combine and convey an idealistic image of the country which, for example, prompted Liz, another Malaysian who studies in France, towards daydreaming:

Excerpt 2

Liz: The teacher showed us pictures and a map of France. He spoke about Besançon and during his courses, I was dreaming of castles, forests.

Interpreting Lecturers’ Discourses

Stereotypes of the other do not appear out of a vacuum, as the self is often used as a benchmark. In the following excerpt, Zul constructs his representation of France in opposition to his experience in Malaysia although he had not travelled to France before his sojourn in Europe. Zul had no experience of university life in Malaysia: he had been selected after passing the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (or SPM, which is an equivalent to O levels) to undergo this special training. He compares life as a teenager in a Malaysian institution and life as a young adult in a French university:

Excerpt 3

Interviewer: Last year I interviewed students who were leaving for France and they depicted France and their sojourn as they imagined it. What were you imagining before [you left]?

Zul: Humm… Freedom compared to life…and studies which are lighter than here…. When I say lighter, I mean less stressing, roughly the atmosphere I like to study […].

Interviewer: And how was it once you are there? Did it match your expectations?

Zul: I imagined rules which are less stressing, before leaving I imagined this would be less stressing in the French atmosphere. Here, you need to be on campus at a particular time, there are campus rules. We cannot do this or that…. Roughly, yes it was matching my expectations….

The origin of Zul’s representation is unclear. His local lecturers in Malaysia were trained in France. Native speakers of French also teach in this programme. Zul and Mohd belong to the same batch of students, and it is highly probable that Zul’s representations of France similarly come from his lecturers. At different moments of the interview, Zul referred to French nationals in particular when he was addressing French people’s adaptation in Malaysia and mentioned that “no French individual wants to stay [in Malaysia]”. He apparently ignores here that his interlocutor is a French national himself and that he has been living in Malaysia for a longer time.

Zul compares France and Malaysia using shifters («here» in opposition to there) and many comparatives: «compared to», «lighter» and «less stressing» (three times). Life in France is idealised, and comparisons between the two entities lead to an obvious hierarchy where France appears in a much higher position (more freedom, less stress) than Malaysia. Indeed, Zul reproduces a discourse on Asian students which is common in Europe, especially in French media: Asians are hardworking (hence France is less stressful) but lack individual freedom and originality [39]. Zul has completely endorsed these French stereotypes on Asian students. The analysis of the interview shows at several moments his desire to distance himself from fellow Malaysians and be closer to the (French) interviewer.

Mohd and Zul followed a special programme in which the goal is to prepare Malaysian students to study in a French university. If there was no special module dedicated to intercultural competence such as that suggested by Normand-Marconnet [27], the 2 years spent on learning French and preparing for a designated higher education programme in a predetermined institution can logically be seen as a long-term training, whereby cultural knowledge is prominent. Indeed, Mohd and Zul are completely aware of cultural differences, which they reinterpreted through their own lenses as an interest for an imagined fashion sense and the strategic use of cultural difference to get closer to the interviewer, respectively. In both cases, French people have been essentialised. This does not contribute to a better intercultural competence but, instead, forces individuals into cultural categories [3] under the influence of their lecturers and imported textbooks. Yet, as international students often do not go through this kind of training, they have to count on the most available resource—the Internet.

Internet, the New Guru

The Taiwanese students who were interviewed for the second project are the first participants of a mobility programme to a Malaysian university. They did not receive any special training for mobility prior to their departure. They were graduating in Chinese studies in Taiwan and were taking courses in a similar programme in Malaysia. A first batch of Malaysians had already studied in their home institution, and they had the opportunity to meet the locals. However, several Taiwanese students relied on the Internet to gain information about their future host country. The first thing they looked for when going online was taboos [28] or a fear of cultural misconduct. As lecturers in Malaysia emphasise this aspect during their teaching [33], students adopt a similar attitude when left on their own: get ready for the worst. We have provided a critique on how highlighting taboos locates mobile students in an uncomfortable position by stressing on improbable or rare gestures such as “you should greet a Malay not using the left hand” [28]. It generates a latent fear of committing a culturally incorrect act which puts a lot of pressure on the culturally different other (here, the mobile student).

Deprived of any preparation module, this Taiwanese student reverted to the Internet, which replaced teachers, in order to get ready to travel:

Excerpt 4

Interviewer: can you tell me more about how did you prepare to come here?

Tan: erm, the preparation we made to come here? Like…erm…. At first we filled in some of the basic application that our school prepared, at that time…at that time we faced a lot, like about the passport preparation, because some of them are still underage, that is under 18 years old, then when they need to prepare the passport, they need…they need a guardian, then they also need other stuff, we didn’t know at that time, besides we are studying far away from our hometown, all are for away from our hometown, and if we need a guardian, we need to travel very, very far, and then if causes a lot of problems for us, this is about the passport preparation, about our own psychological preparation, about this we prepared ourselves, separately, like for instance we would search the web and find out what types of things we need to prepare to bring over.

Tan’s preparation revolves a lot around material factors: getting a passport, the necessary visa, preparing what to take, etc. He only briefly mentions his ‘psychological preparation’ without elaborating on what he means by that and what he did in order to get ready. Tan was quite young at the time of the interview (18 years old), as were the other Taiwanese students of his group. In applying for mobility, he went through a lengthy process which included an interview. A big part of his apprehension lies in his moving to a new place, rather than on meeting the other.

Many contributions about Asian students abroad focus on the lack of intercultural interactions [40] and forget to mention that these mobile students are also often teenagers/young adults who leave their country for the first time and need to settle down in a new environment. International students’ experiences need to be analysed as moving beyond a cultural approach that insists on their motivations and difficulties as teenagers/young adults, and take into consideration their social status, their gender, their racial and ethnic identification to integrate real diversities of their backgrounds [41]. As Henri Besse [42] puts it:

We can imagine that there are many more common elements between a Chinese learner of French and a Norwegian learner of French who have both chosen to come to France to study than between this Chinese learner of French and a middle-class Chinese individual who wishes to learn French at the Alliance française for pleasure, for their own knowledge [my translation].

However, if Tan mentioned that “we prepared ourselves, separately”, some other Taiwanese students reported having interactions with Malaysians in Taiwan. Similarly, Malaysians in France and PRC Chinese in Malaysia mentioned the discourses of peers or family members which contributed to their imagination about the host country.

Peers’ and Family Members’ Influence

When Taiwanese students applied for mobility, a group of Malaysians was studying in their institution; they were registered for the same programme and became course mates. Prior to leaving the country, Taiwanese participants had the opportunity to ask these Malaysians how their life would be. Two students, June and John, reported that they met a Malaysian student in Taiwan. They did not elaborate in detail what constituted the topic of their discussion, but the focus seems to have been on material and administrative requirements. In fact, the discussion with the locals only appears as a formality to follow, alongside the application for a passport, purchase of a flight ticket, preparation of luggage, etc.:

Excerpt 5

June: It’s the same for me after knowing the situation, I filled in a few applications the school prepared, gave some details, then sent them over, and then after that I prepared my passport and dealt with my flight ticket problems, the date, and then I discussed with the student in this school and then I came over.

Excerpt 6

John: I also asked the students here what should I bring, they told me and they also asked me to bring some things from Taiwan for them….

Only one of the participants enlightened us about her discussion with her Malaysian counterpart and how she prepared for interacting with the locals. Mei, from Taiwan, related the discourses of her Malaysian friend who initially opposed Taiwan and Malaysia but assured her that there would “be no big problem with communication” [28]. We do not know what other topics were discussed, but the fact that Mei mentioned this remark indicates that the locals (i.e. Malaysians) are sought for relieving the anguish that the international experience generates. The existence of a Memorandum of Agreement between both universities creates a flow and the availability of people which do not exist when students move out of their own will. For example, in the case of the PRC Chinese participants, mobility often appears as a family project and Malaysians are not directly involved. Not surprisingly, family members influence the student’s choice of destination. Hence, Yinglin’s choice was guided by her mother, who intends to live in Malaysia with her:

Excerpt 7

Yinglin: Oh yes, Malaysia is my first [choice] because my mother lived in Australia for five years, she said Malaysia is very good and nice, so she thinks…. I go to Malaysia is very safe. […] I think uh, because I love my mother, so if she wants to live, because she has idea what she wants to live in Malaysia, so if she wants to live in Malaysia, I will study in Malaysia, and if she wants to live in Australia, we will go to Australia.

Yinglin’s mother justifies her choice by the fact that the country “is very good and safe”. As a result, Yinglin imagines Malaysia as a very safe place and decides to apply to study in this country. Yinglin has completely endorsed her mother’s discourse which is pre-conditioning her. Even if several international students mentioned security issues during interviews, Yinglin’s discourse has remained positive at all times.

Similarly, Zul from Malaysia has been encouraged to apply to study abroad, in France in particular, because of a family member:

Excerpt 8

Zul: …France was a bonus, because it has always been my dream to go there…. I was watching my father’s pictures, and it really encouraged me to go there.

Interviewer: Your father lived in France?

Zul: Yes. He was working for [Name of company] and he travelled quite a lot.

Without consciously aiming for it, Zul’s father prepared the way for his son to study in France. Kaufmann [43] claims that those pictures individuals select to show to their friends/family/etc., are a constructive act by which the person chooses what ‘makes the cut’ in the process of presenting a certain image of themselves. In this case, Zul’s father constructed a certain representation of his French experience and, indirectly, of France. This re-created story impacted his son’s choice, as Zul had cultivated a priori positive attitudes towards a country that he only knew through family pictures. This predisposition would prove later to be a guide in his life during his stay in the country, and all Zul’s recounted experiences during the interview would bear a positive tone.

The need to be in a familiar environment is not limited to the preparation process. Most of the future Malaysian French teachers study in the same university in Besançon, in Eastern France. Even if they did not enter in contact with their seniors prior to arriving in France, they expect to meet them upon arrival and their co-nationals will guide them in their installation in situ [18]. Malaysian future teachers of French participate in a long-term mobility and usually return to Malaysia after they have received their degree. They are sent by the Malaysian government to the same university (with the exception of one programme) from which more than 90 % of French teachers in the country have graduated. Even lecturers who prepare the new batches studied in Besançon, and this supervised mobility facilitates their installation from a logistic point of view [44]. Even if they do not mention it during interviews, life in Besançon is at the core of their language training in Malaysia and their institution organises numerous opportunities for discussion with in-service French teachers on their sojourn in France.

Conclusion

Several academic studies blame the difficulties of Asian students in adjusting to their new environment on a lack of preparation or even on their lack of interest in the host country. This is definitely not the case of the Asian students whom we have interviewed and who prepared themselves through a formal training (Malaysians in France) and personal research though Internet (Taiwanese) or by gaining information about the host destination through family members (PRC Chinese and Malaysians) or fellow students (Taiwanese).

We have recounted the difficulties encountered by Taiwanese in Malaysia [27] and Malaysians in France [18]. Their prior knowledge about their destination or their cultural awareness did not mean that intercultural interactions were smoother once abroad. Here, it is imperative that we raise questions of the quality of input that mobile students receive. Personal online research efforts do not constitute proper training without guidance, as the web is packed with documents and videos that promote the intercultural. An analysis of documents available on YouTube in French, English and German has shown that speakers make abundant use of outdated cultural stereotypes, and their discourses are often connected to the promotion of a book at a training programme [45]. A 2-year intensive language learning is similarly problematic if lecturers are not sensitised to interculturality and reinforced national stereotypes which are already found in textbooks.

When Normand-Marconnet suggests the implementation of an intercultural module for prospective mobile students [27], one needs to be very careful about its contents. The success of such a module would not reside in its existence, but in a critical approach of its content which needs to be challenged in terms of commonly accepted stereotypes, and move beyond methodological nationalism to include fluidity and personal agencies [16, 46]. Only then will the pressure which is put on Asian students abroad to perform better and which creates a discrimination against them be lifted. This would also encourage a real intercultural approach from which all parties, mobile students as well as locals, would greatly benefit.