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Description
The ongoing process of acculturation constitutes a significant part of refugee students' interactions with volunteers. Communication functions to empower and create meaning for each individual in this relationship. My research was designed to investigate the ways that refugee students construct resiliency through their communication with members of U.S. and international communities. The relationship between refugee students and tutors is explored through thirteen interviews with students and tutors, one focus group discussion with students and tutors, and ethnographic observations of students' and tutors' communication behavior. Observations before, during, and after tutoring sessions focused on interactions that were designed to assist refugee students in the college preparation and navigation process. The results of this research indicate that refugee students' construction of resiliency plays a vital role in their adjustment to college, and implicitly, U.S. culture. Through expressions of affiliation, diligence, and connectedness, refugee students and their tutors communicatively construct resiliency. Each of the three expressions offer theoretical implications: affiliation reflects the tenets of social support, diligence exemplifies empowerment in action, and connectedness relates to the intercultural theory of uncertainty reduction. I posit that the findings of this study encourage all educators to communicate in a culturally competent way with refugee students, thus fostering students' construction of resiliency, and consequently, such students' smooth transition into the U.S. system of higher education. Future research could focus on a quantitative comparison between refugee students' and tutors' language and behavior within and outside of college preparatory programs to show the similarities and differences between students who have and have not received additional aid in their navigation of higher education.
