Socio-cultural connectedness: experiences of foreign students in Serbia and Serbian students abroad

Apstrakt

This paper aims to contribute to understanding the challenges and opportunities of socio-cultural connectedness with the environments of origin and destination through the experience of international students, that is, Serbian students who have studied abroad and international students who study in Serbia. This paper’s qualitative analysis relies on broader empirical research results. The results show that the respondents were faced with numerous challenges and attained different levels of socio-cultural connectedness in the process of intercultural adaptation in a transnational context, depending on their positioning in the new environment. The respondents who developed positive strategies regarding their positioning relative to other people in the discourse have demonstrated a greater determination to learn about other cultures while also considering the possibility of staying in the destination country when asked about their future. Some respondents have developed only partial socio-cultural connectedness with the new environment and/or limited competences for accepting multicultural connectedness and, from their perspective, a different way of life. Insufficient knowledge of the local language has significantly limited their opportunities for interactive positioning, stressing the need for social support in the process.