However, this is not exactly what I'd say exactly scientific quality qualitative work, but it's more or less sort of in that spirit, roughly speaking. Very roughly. It's not quantitative, anyway. That, I can vouch for beyond a doubt.
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The first article is not going to take much time here:
Sandhu, Daya, & Asrabadi, Badiolah R. (1994). Development of an acculturative stress scale for international students: prelimary findings. Psychological Reports, 75, Part 2, 435-448.
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"Since Factor One, Perceived Discrimination, captured the highest percentage of total variation (38.3%), we can conclude that perceived discrimination and alienation are of the most concern."
This was what the international students in the US colleges that were tested agreed most consistently with that this area gave them stress. I wasn't a foreign student living in the U.S., but I'll try it on for size for myself.
Did I feel like I was discriminated against and feel alienated when living abroad? I think the hardest was in S. Korea because I didn't know the language, but I didn't really feel discriminated against. Fortunately there were a lot of people that knew English, but not a majority, I don't think, so there were still a lot of placed where not knowing Korean was a challenge, like getting my hair done. The hair dresser was very nice, though, and worked with me and did a fine job. It really went against the grain of my values to not know the language and it really bothered me to not know it. I started to learn though.
In S. Korea there was another principle that was discriminating. They had a social structure that I think of as sort of a lose caste system. In their social order the step-wise system goes like this: Men-women-foreigners-children. I first taught at a women's university in Seoul and in a conversation class the comment was made one time that that might be the only time in their lives they'd ever be able to have leadership - i.e. in college, because they're all female. So the Korean women feel the discrimination too, not just me, a foreigner.
Then one time, maybe a couple weeks after I'd attended the African church I stopped a U.S. African-American soldier (we were near a U.S. base in Seoul) and I asked him where he felt more discrimination, there in Seoul or in America, and without hesitation he said in Korea. That's what I thought he'd say, but I wanted to hear it coming from him. So it wasn't just me. Of course, he's a foreigner too, but the thing is, that I was treated a lot better than he was. On the other hand, my boss at the second place I taught was taught way better than I was because he was a man. So to be a white man was almost as good as being a Korean man. I had a class of women who were maybe 5 years my senior, not much. But I had more education than them, I'm sure (I had 2 master's degrees). But they kept harping on their ages to make sure they got the proper respect and to make sure I understood my place. I respected them, as I do all my students, but I'm not one to be cowtowed, in case you didn't notice. Well, I shouldn't say I'm immune to it, but it has to be an unusual circumstance.
So back to the discrimination. It was interesting how the response to my work changed when I introduced myself to Koreans between my first and my second job. The first job was at a university and the second one was at a language school, where I could teach adults (and use my adult education degree). Unfortunately, however, Koreans think very highly of working in universities and very lowly of working in language schools. They tend to hide their reactions only partially, I found, so I could tell the difference between their responses. It didn't make any different to me beyond that, but it could have. I found out there was not a single University in S. Korea that had a degree in Adult Education and I checked around too. So there's not proper respect for it.
I think Korea is only place I can say I was discriminated against at all and you can decide for yourself from the above descussion as to what might count as discrimination. A lot of it was just society wide and depending on what type of person you were (Korean, foreigner, white, black, child, adult, male, female, etc.) you got certain kinds of treatments and discriminations. Of course, not everyone was in agreement with this and I know some people who disagreed with some of these societal things and operated differently, so I think that maybe there's a crack in the discriminatory monolith.
As to alienation, which I think is not the same as discrimination, at least as relates to me. I was alienated from the Vienna mission very badly, so that I was living in Vienna, and I don't think I was ever alienated from Vienna, even when the mission succeeded in finally getting me to go to the English speaking church. But I was alienated from the mission. It's strange, but that alienation was just fine with me because at that point it wasn't like I had any desire for anything otherwise. Once I left there I never had any wish to go back at all, so the alienation from the mission was not a problem for me. What was a problem was that they had just torn me a part into pieces and left me in shreds. So that's how I returned home. I went to Vienna a whole, vivacious, enthusiastic individual and came home a devastated, torn apart, trashed individual who has never ever been the same since. Then I tried to go to Russia for ministry on my own and had political problems and the problems continued at least until I came home from Russia in 1997.
When I got that post card from the two leaders of the mission - my boss and his boss - about 6 months after I returned home from Vienna I don't know what they were thinking, but they should know that when I left Vienna I never ever looked back, I never ever regretted leaving, I never ever thought I made a mistake in leaving. Ever.
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"Three major elements of alienation, feelings of powerlessness, meaningless, and social estrangement as defined by Burbach (1972) , are characteristic of foreign students' perceived sense of alienation." (p. 444)
So you understand, this is going to be about me and the Vienna mission. It's the only time I can think of when I ever felt alienated - really. I'll take these descriptors one by one.
Feelings of powerlessness. I felt powerless because I felt like the only thing I could to was to do my work (such as it was) well and be pleasant. But all the things I was thinking I couldn't say and then the pressures they were putting me under I felt that most of them I couldn't say anything about. I knew they were smart but I didn't know what they were really all about or how far they'd go or what they're real aim was or why they were doing this to me. It felt at the time like it might be a power game though. At least I felt comfortable in Vienna and knew German. Anyway, I could go on and on, but you can see, it was really rough and I really felt powerless in a lot of ways, although not completely. Maybe they wanted to drive me to that. I don't know.
Meaningless.The Vienna mission probably came close to driving me to this, but I don't think quite this far. I don't really like the word meaningless to describe how I felt.
Social estrangement. I felt social estrangement at the end of my time with the Vienna mission because they were estranging me. Even their kids were, and my mom saw it too, because she was there to help me pack up and leave. So it wasn't just what I felt it was actually happening to me because it was something they did to me. All of a sudden I'd become public enemy number 1.
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It's after 9 p.m. and I haven't had dinner yet, so I'm going to end here. You're getting a little bit of a hodgepodge on culture shock, I guess.
