Adjusting to Life in a New Country

In today’s trend toward globalization, international companies, educational institutions, military services, and governments around the world are relying more and more on employees and their families to live and work in a foreign country. Whether such a foreign assignment is six months to a year or longer, having the opportunity to work and live abroad can be both a daunting and very exciting prospect for expatriates and their families. When moving to a foreign country, expatriates have opportunities for learning about other cultures, for challenging themselves in new ways and for living more adventurous lives. Along with those new opportunities, however, comes a whole host of dilemmas, such as being away from family and friends, adjusting to the norms and vales of a new country, and learning a new language.

It has been recognized the importance of offering cross-cultural training to employees and their accompanying families when they relocate to other countries. These training sessions help the employee and his/her family to quickly and smoothly adjust to a new place, thus resulting in a higher efficiency and productivity of the transferred employee. Families who move to a new community in a new country often have different perceptions of social and cultural events in their new host country that can cause misunderstanding and can interfere with their personal adjustment. Additionally, the inability to make one’s perceptions understood also affect interpersonal relations with host nationals resulting in isolation and different degrees of stress.

Adjusting to Life in a New Country is a program that offers training sessions to international newcomers and their families to help them to navigate the challenges of the new culture within a context of cross-cultural exploration and adult learning. Our program is unique in the fact that it provides a safe place where newcomers can share their experiences, ask questions, and receive information in an environment of mutual respect. More importantly, the program utilizes the intercultural training sessions to help newcomers overcome signs of cultural shock by building confidence and helping them to adjust to their new community more easily. This allows them to rapidly become productive members of the community.

Liliana Busconi and Andrew Miser conducted Adjusting to Life in a New Country in Brookline, Massachusetts, from the Fall of 2008 to the Spring of 2011.  Please visit the website, Adjusting to Life in Brookline, which describes the work Andy and Liliana did with international newcomers in Brookline, Massachusetts.  Recently, the program has been recognized as one of five successful programs in the 2011 Families and Global Transition Conference in Washington, D.C..

To learn more about the Adjusting to a New Country Brochure program, read our brochure.