Intercultural Communication, a key to integration

Abstract

Gothenburg University is a culturally diverse place and students come to study in this university from almost all parts of the world with very different cultural backgrounds. Difficult relationships and dialogues and following it misunderstandings can occur if the students are unprepared to handle these differences. The problem occurs when the students of different cultural background are not able to communicate and interact in a meaningful way in their large and diverse classrooms. Accordingly they find their social lives hard and their process of integration gets much longer than expected. Many international students face challenges and hinders in integrating into the Swedish academic environment. Intercultural communication might be a way to facilitate integration of foreign students. This paper studies the relationship between intercultural communication and integration by studying the case of Iranian students in Gothenburg University.