Loneliness and International Students: An Australian Study

By E. Sawir, S. Marginson, Ana Deumert, C. Nyland, G. Ramia. 2008

819 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In a study of international student security, consisting of 200 intensive interviews with students, resident onshore in Australia, it was found that two thirds of the group had experienced problems of loneliness and/or isolation, especially in the early months. According to Weiss, students experience both personal loneliness because of the loss of contact with families and social loneliness because of the loss of networks. Both forms of loneliness are at times exacerbated by their experiences in institutional sites. The article discusses the coping mechanisms that students use. It identifies a third kind of loneliness experienced by international students, cultural loneliness, triggered by the absence of the preferred cultural and/or linguistic environment. This can affect even students with adequate personal and social support. Thus, same-culture networks are often crucial for international students. Yet same-culture networks are not a universal panacea: They cannot substitute for adequate pastoral care by universities or ensure satisfactory engagement with local cultures, so some causes of cultural loneliness often remain. The article concludes that the creation of stronger bonds between international and local students in the educational setting, helping international students to remake their own cultural maps on their own terms, is key to a forward move on loneliness.

Subfields: Communication, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d80656aecd82119cf70c5a943f12fd449b0c6966

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Communication

1. C. Glass
2. H. Stallman
3. Michael Hammond
4. Wenli Wu
5. N. Khawaja

In Social Psychology

1. N. Khawaja
2. Elizabeth Kociolek
3. Summer Cong
4. R. Lynch
5. Rachawan Wongtrirat
6. H. Stallman
7. C. Glass

Citations in the corpus

• Uneven Experiences: The Impact of Student-Faculty Interactions on International Students' Sense of Belonging. (2015, background): “…and host students in predicting persistence and a stronger sense of connection is well-established (Hendrickson et al., 2011; Kashima & Loh, 2006; Sawir et al., 2007); this study suggests that positive interactions with professors, characterized by affective concern, also matter in creating a…”
• Challenges of university adjustment in the UK: a study of East Asian Master’s degree students (2011, background): “However, Sawir et al. (2008) did not see same nationality support as a panacea for addressing the loneliness of overseas students in Australia, and Zhang and Brunton (2007) saw constraints on social participation as difficulties for Chinese students in New Zealand.”
• Understanding the Coping Strategies of International Students: A Qualitative Approach (2011, background): “(Bradley, 2000; Poyrazli & Grahame, 2007; Sawir et al., 2008), the students in this study recalled that they encountered homesickness and many practical challenges of settling in.”