A Study On Acculturation Of African Business People In China

Acculturation refers to cultural and psychological changes arising from constant contact among two or more different cultural groups or individuals.Acculturation has received great attention from western scholars as the trend of globalization is accelerating,and more and more international migrants are emerging,presenting a more and more interrelated world.This paper,based on previous research,studies the acculturation of West African business people and acculturative stress Africans are confronted with by employment of Berry's bidimensional acculturation model.To better understand their acculturating situation,the relationship between acculturation type and acculturative stress is explored through correlation analysis.Moreover,this thesis analyzes the potential variables that might cause acculturative stress from the perspective of intercultural communication based on previous research.Based upon the questionnaires designed by previous scholars,the author modifies them to form a unique questionnaire for this dissertation,and has in all collected 95 valid questionnaires for final analysis.The data collected are loaded into SPSS21.0.Descriptive statistics is employed to present and analyze the demographics,general acculturating situation,acculturative stress and intercultural situation of West African businessmen.And Person Correlation analysis is conducted to see the potential relationship between intercultural factors and acculturative stress.The result reveals that separation is the predominant situation West African businessmen are experiencing,followed by integration,while assimilation and marginalization is the least likely model or situation they are to experience or choose.West African businessmen are suffering from some acculturative stress,the most significant stressor is homesickness and the stress felt by Africans to a totally different society.Demographic variables would influence the choice of acculturating models.And there indeed exists some positive or negative relationship between acculturative stress and acculturating situations.What is more,intercultural contact factors would actually influence acculturative stress,among which social support is a very important factor that might cause the acculturative stress.Finally,this dissertation advances some useful suggestions to better help West African businessmen in Guangzhou to adapt into Chinese society and culture and to help government better manage such a special African migration group.What is more,some limitations of this dissertation are also presented.