Here A few theories for you to understand
the content of this website
New culture, new opportunities! |
Carmel Camilleri, a tunisian sociologist, considers culture as the meaning a group of people gives to things and to life. The physical environment in which we evolve shapes the way we relate to one another and the way we perceive things. The "social glasses", which impact our visions of life are transmitted through education. Their influence is so strong that we cannot be conscious of it.
When moving out, we bring with us all our representations and ideas and transfer them to a different environment. In this new environment, they might not be appropriate. We then have to adapt them and develop new ones. We need to develop new tools to read our environment differently. According to Camilleri, the challenge of migrating lays on the fact that the individual has to make a synthesis between who he is and who he has to be to fit his new environment. In other words, there is a duality between his culture and the one he is surrounded by. In order to solve this situation, Camilleri argues that he should not reject one or the other but rather adopt elements of both. In the one hand, he must do what it takes to live in harmony with his new environment. On the other hand, he must stay true to his value to be in harmony with himself. On this website, we will try to provide you with a range of tools and ideas you can use to make the best of the culture you're about to encounter. We will offer you ideas and tips we found, however the main goal will be for you to use our experience to come up with your own strategies.
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LIVING OUTSIDE THE box! |
In the section "adapting to culture", you will find informations about creativity and creative thinking. The link between creativity and moving abroad may not be abvious at first, however, there are powerful interactions between those two concepts.
On the one hand, creativity can have an impact on your life abroad. As you will learn when going through the website, using creative thinking is a great day to solve everyday issues you are going to encounter! Your environment is going to be different, as a matter of fact you will need to come up with different responses and solutions. On the other hand, living abroad also has an impact on creativity. Therefore, these two concepts are interconnected. This is what Professor Adam Galinsky, from Kellogg found out. During his study, he used the Duncker candle problem and found out that the longer the people had spent living abroad, the more likely they were to find the solution. These results were only found when taking into account the time living abroad, and not the time spent abroad travelling. This may be linked to the fact that what allows creativity to improve is the encounter with everyday issues and the need to face and solve them. Being aware of the benefits that come with living abroad, and especially with the difficulties you may and probably will encounter, you can now get ready for your new life! |