Strategies of Sociocultural Adaptation of Russian Students, Who Are Studying in Germany

<p>The study analyzed the strategies of sociocultural adaptation of Russian students, during their Bachelor or Master study in Germany. The present paper examined the questions of the strategies of adaptation among young Russians who live and study in Germany for different time periods.</p><p>The main objective of this paper was to find out the strategies of sociocultural adaptation that use students from Russia.</p><p>The qualitative research design via analysis of diaries in Internet (&ldquo;Live Journal&rdquo;) was utilized as the first method of the research. This electronic journal contains large number of diaries in which individuals write about their everyday life. We supposed that this qualitative method could help us to gather the information about various aspects of their life: university life, communication with other alien or local students, routine home life etc. The most important thing of the this research method involved in the fact that individuals write about their life in foreign country from their <em>subjective</em> perspective.</p><p>As a second method of our research we have chosen to conduct <em>semi-formal interviews</em> with the students from Russia currently living in Germany. Because of the impossibility to provide interviews face-to-face, we have used &lsquo;Skype&rsquo; as a helpful electronic tool in our research. With the use of this qualitative method we hoped to achieve the results, we need. We believed that exactly this method could give us the information not only about the different practices of their everyday life activities and behavior, but also help us to understand the connections between their behavior and outside conditions in Germany.&nbsp;</p><p>Thus, we conducted interviews per Skype using an interview schedule as a tool. The students were selected by the snow ball sampling method.</p><p>As a result, we obtained the following outcomes: there are 7 students out of 15 who are using &laquo;integration&raquo; as the strategy of sociocultural adaptation in Germany.&nbsp; 4 students out of 15 are using the following strategy of sociocultural adaptation - &laquo;ghettoization&raquo;. Other 4 students are combining characteristics of different strategies of sociocultural adaptation, because of this fact we have decided to include them in the group of students with the &laquo;mixed&raquo; strategy of sociocultural adaptation. &nbsp;</p><p>We have anticipated the results of this study &ndash; we have obtained the information about sociocultural adaptation, its stages and students who are using one of the types of strategies of sociocultural adaptation. &nbsp;</p><p>We believe that this work will be helpful for the next researches that deal with the sociocultural adaptation and for researchers who are interested in human behavior in different and new conditions: countries, cultures, social valuables etc.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>