Sunday Onsite Presentation Session 1

Cultural Studies

Session Chair: Zhaoxun Song

10:20-10:45

70167 | Perspectives on Multiculturalism, Migration and Intercultural Communication: The Role of Social Enterprises in Helping Africans Cultivate Cultural Belonging in Taiwan

Charmaine Samakande, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan

Hsiao-Ling Chung, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan

Media-projections, policies, and public attitudes toward migrants often contribute to multiculturalism practices. African migrants in particular, are a poorly represented minority group, frequently criminalized and mislabeled in global media. In Taiwan, African migrants are underrepresented in local media, making worldwide media outlets the prime available information source. Consequently, these negative and inadequate narratives hinder their capacity to adapt, integrate, and cultivate belongingness in Taiwan. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to help African migrants in Taiwan foster a cultural sense of belonging, by identifying their psychological, cultural, and social concerns. Using both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, this study addresses the following issues: (I) The role of Taiwanese policies and media in supporting, framing, and assisting African minority migrants. (II) The challenges African minority migrants experience in integrating to their new lives, (III) The need for social enterprises that cater to their social and cultural needs. (IV) The obstacles social enterprises face while trying to support and assist them in establishing belonging-based communities. Therefore, to address these issues, this research looks into active social enterprises in Taiwan dedicated to helping African migrants, yet due to their limitations, struggle to recognize African migrant distinct and diverse needs. Furthermore, this research identifies the significance of cultivating intercultural communication strategies in multicultural enterprises, encouraging communication, respect and understanding of different cultures through cross-cultural dialogue. Ultimately, through looking at their content marketing and storytelling strategies, this study will develop a social belonging-based enterprise model, which intersects multiculturalism ideology with intercultural content marketing strategies.

10:45-11:10

68805 | Acculturation Strategies and Co-cultural Communication Practices of Hong Kong Drifters

Zhaoxun Song, the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Each year, thousands of Mainland Chinese students, dubbed Hong Kong drifters, come to Hong Kong to pursue their studies. According to acculturation theory, they are acculturative groups in Hong Kong society who are placed in a new culture. Because they are minority cultural groups who have to interact with the mainstream cultural groups according to co-cultural communication theory. Both acculturation theory and co-cultural theory propose their own sets of strategies that these acculturative/minority group members adopt in response to the new/ mainstream culture. Can we make a theoretic advancement by integrating the two theories into one? If yes, how can we make use of the strengths and avoid the limits of these two theories in the integration? This study is carried out in three phases. Firstly, it compares the similarities and contrast the differences of the two theories. Secondly, it regroups the acculturation strategies into co-cultural strategies and co-cultural strategies into acculturation strategies based on the extant literature on the communication practices of the Hong Kong drifters. Thirdly, it develops an integrated model of acculturation strategies and co-cultural communication practices. This interdisciplinary research makes a meaningful and theoretical contribution by integrating the acculturation strategies in the cross-cultural psychology with the co-cultural approaches in the co-cultural communication. It critiques and extends both acculturation theory and co-cultural theory in ways that extend beyond their initial scopes. The association and integration of the co-cultural theorizing framework with Berry’s acculturation model creates a triangulated theoretical approach to the study of such acculturative groups/co-cultural groups as Hong Kong drifters.