Making Identity, Proculturation In-between Georgianness and Westernness

Exploring experiences of proculturation in international students during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…The other subtheme, development of fused I-positions, demonstrates other aspects of the proculturative process. Gamsakhurdia (2019bGamsakhurdia ( , 2019c explains that opposing selfconstructs creatively fuse familiar and unfamiliar signs leading to the development of new meanings. Virginia's experience seems to reflect this, as her I-positions informed by the social representations of the different settings did not align with her native or host culture.…”

“…It follows semiotic ruptures, referring to when the present I-positions cannot inform in the meaning-making process of unfamiliar signs. While in DST conflict between I-positions is addressed by moving in a linear progression of an I-position’s dominance over another, which arguably leaves the conflict still unresolved, proculturation is a circulinear shift of the opposing identities, where I-positions may change or fuse with each other, or completely new I-positions may be created to address the rupture ( Hermans, 2001 ; Gamsakhurdia, 2019c ; 2020a ). Proculturation offers the opportunity to explore the experiences of immigrants from the sought-after holistic approach rather than the traditional positivistic one ( Gamsakhurdia, 2018a ).…”

Proculturation shaped by social representations of academic migrants from Italy to the United States

“…In this study, the proculturation framework (Gamsakhurdia, 2018(Gamsakhurdia, , 2019a(Gamsakhurdia, , 2020 is applied to understand the wellbeing of workers in academic settings who migrated to the United States from Italy, taking into account their I-positions in various scenarios. Overall, the results revealed that participants had quite high levels of satisfaction with life (falling under the two top categories of "satisfied" and "extremely satisfied, " out of a total of seven categories), which is a component of the hedonic wellbeing (Diener, 1984).…”

“…This paper uses the theoretical foundation of the process of proculturation ( Gamsakhurdia, 2018 , 2019a , b , 2020 ) featuring the dialogical self-theory ( Markova, 2000 , 2003 ), as a key approach in the realm of social representations theory ( Moscovici, 1961/1976 ; Moscovici, 1984 ; Moscovici and Markova, 1998 ; Moscovici, 2001 ), in order to explore the characteristics, wellbeing, achievements, challenges, and goals of academic migrants from Italy to the United States.…”

“…Understanding wellbeing of academic migrants through the lenses of proculturation and social representations has so far been a relatively unexplored territory. More broadly, proculturation has been applied to understanding experiences of migrants and transnational families, especially in relation to their ongoing subjective construction of self ( Gamsakhurdia, 2019a , 2021 ), perceived loneliness and intergenerational belonging ( Albert, 2021 ), negotiation of identity ( Campill, 2021 ), and cultural identity ( Ogoro et al, 2022 ), to mention just a few examples. Introduced by Gamsakhurdia (2018, p. 556), proculturation has been defined as “the process of reconstruction of the self after meeting and dialog with any kind of innovative cultural elements,” with the emphasis on the dynamic and continuous nature of this process.…”