Multicultural contact and learning: the experience of international students in Portugal

What is it about?

This paper is about the experience of international students in Portugal and it gives a different perspective on the ways in which people from different cultural backgrounds relate to each other. Rather than focusing on the difficulties frequently related to life in a different country, this paper shows that there is a much more positive side to living in a foreign country. Based on the narrative accounts of 12 international students in Portugal, this paper shows that multicultural learning arises as an outcome of the actual experience of living and studying abroad.

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Why is it important?

This work is important because it provides a different view on the way in which people interact in multicultural environments. Contrary to previous research that gives account of limited contact across different cultural groups, in this paper almost all interviewed international students had culturally diverse interactions and friendship networks.

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