In recent decades, globalisation (as well as glocalisation), with its various associated phenomena such as the growth of international travel and the development of information technology, has increased the rate of international mobility and intercultural contact. This forum aims to explore the challenges of intercultural communication in a globalised world, with particular focus on the Asia-Pacific region and its intercultural dynamics. The discussion will endeavour to explore the conjunction and mutual impact of three problem areas delineated below: the internationalisation of education, ethnicity, and ideology.

Internationalisation of Education
Increasingly, students and scholars migrate in their career paths across international borders. What once was the attainment of the privileged few is now the aspiration and reality of many – an academic degree from another country, or a year abroad on academic exchange, or a gap year, or a semester-at-sea, or a plum job in a foreign land. With the fluid migration – often back-and-forth, or in diagonal trajectories – come multiple challenges of communication. For example, the bureaucracies of academic institutions, and the governmental bodies overseeing their institutional structure, may be less mobile than students and scholars themselves, and thus the institutional structure may pose more rigidly entrenched expectations and constraints on communication than the somewhat fluid mindset of sojourners and expats. Likewise, the native end-users of the provision of academic services – for example, local students of a publicly-funded college in the US/ Canada, UK/ Ireland, or Australia/ New Zealand – may have different expectations of college life than international students or scholars hosted by the institution. Conversely, with the phenomenon of reverse brain-drain, returnees from abroad, such as overseas Chinese or foreign-educated Chinese, may experience reverse culture shock. The challenges of intercultural communication are also handed down to the next generation of “third space” children, “heritage learners”, and students of “international schools” which cater to a mix of local and expat children. This phenomenon, in turn, can lead to an intra-family inter-generational communication gap, compounding the family unit’s challenges within both their immediate and wider environment (e.g., in a widening circle, the home, neighbourhood, school, workplace, locality, province, country, global region).

What are the challenges facing, on the one hand, government and educational institutions, and, on the other hand, individual educators and students, in adapting to an increasingly internationalised educational environment?

Ethnicity
Ethnicity continues to play a differential role in stereotyping and mutual perceptions. Narrower than nationality and more clearly demarcated than race, ethnicity is nevertheless a social and cultural construct. Within the context of a nation-state, an ethnic group can constitute a majority or a minority, e.g., Han vs. Uyghur in China. Ethnic demarcation may not correspond to racial demarcation, e.g., Korean vs. Japanese. A nationality, e.g., American, Chinese or Australian, may subsume multiple ethnic and racial groupings. Ethnicity thus overlaps and intersects with other group identity markers, such as nationality, race, but also gender, generation, profession, etc. However, these groupings generate perceptions of belonging vs. non-belonging which are formative of construals of self vs. other. In this regard, the social and cultural constructs of groupings generate the possibility of stereotypes, mindsets, and policies.

What are the challenges of intercultural communication vis-à-vis these invisible (or partly visible) constructed boundaries that intersect society, even in today’s increasingly fluid, dynamic, hybrid and globalised world?

Ideology
At the bottom of the cultural iceberg are historically layered underpinnings of ideology. For example, in mainland China today, there are historical layers of Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Western liberal democracy, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”. In the last few decades, different state ideologies of the various nations within the Asia-Pacific region have created a whole array of problems and challenges for intercultural communication among and between the peoples of these countries. As with the constructs of nationality-ethnicity-race, it is difficult to delineate the distinguishing boundaries between ideology, religion, and political philosophy. Arguably, ideology in its broad sense includes elements of all three, and generates or informs the value systems of the social groupings of nation-ethnicity-race (among other groups), and of the individual members who variously constitute these groupings. These value systems lie at the bottom of the cultural iceberg in that they may be the least clearly visible but also the most generative or directive of behaviour(s).

What challenges to intercultural communication, as individuals/ cultures/ groups interact with each other, are posed by ideological considerations, which may not always be fully conscious or explicitly articulated, but which are nevertheless powerful forces affecting decision-making behaviour?