Immigrants & New Cultures: Katharina Lefringhausen at TEDxIEUniversityMadrid

Thank you. Right, so I'm from Germany and I've lived in London for around three years. Not too long ago, I was sitting together with one of my British friends when he asked me, Kata, do you want a penguin? Yeah, I like animals. Penguins are cute. Is that legal? Can I have an elephant instead? But then he gave me one of these looks, you know, that make you feel stupid. So, obviously, I was missing out on something. And he said, Kata, I meant the biscuit and not the animal. So, apparently, penguin is a quite known biscuit brand in the UK. Well, sorry, I didn't know that. So, you can imagine this was a quite irritating moment. So, may I ask here, who's living abroad or has international friends or work colleagues? Just raise your hand. Right, so almost everyone. So, you might have experienced something similar to that. Though, what I realized in that moment is that locals still exclude themselves from an ongoing societal change, what he often referred to as multiculturalism. So, this is why I'm here today to advertise a different perspective on this matter in the hopes that we all in the future can experience less of these very irritating moments. Because right now, when you're going to ask a local anywhere, so, what do you think multiculturalism, diversity? Usually, they're going to say, well, I live here in my country. And migrants don't. They come from outside to my country, so they should adapt to my culture, to my way of life. True. Yet, that doesn't exclude that locals could adapt as well. As a matter of fact, we are mixing, due to the internationalization of trade and business, a rise in student mobility who study abroad, just like me, as well as a rise in English language acquisition, again, for business, for education, to listen to TED Talks. And even if not face-to-face, you can live in your own country and work on a project where you have to Skype, email, WhatsApp or Facebook with colleagues, with friends, from all over the world, on a daily basis. So, we mix. And it seems like when locals would adapt to that, it might benefit them, actually, quite a lot. Well, when I talk about adaptation, let me explain you. Can you all feel your heartbeat? Just checking. You feel your heartbeat? Okay, just, you know. When was the last time you actually felt your heartbeat? You listened to it? Probably before I just asked you, you're not consciously aware of it, because it's an automatic body function you only pay attention to when you experience some kind of difference, when we go jogging, for someone to see Justin Bieber. Yet, imagine you see this dog. Based on your internalized values and beliefs, you're going to express an automatic response. For me, oh my God, that was a cute dog. And I won't question my reaction when everyone else will have the same reaction. But I might question my reaction when they don't. I might adapt, meaning I'm either going to change my attitude, leading to new behavior, or I'm going to add another attitude and behavior to my repertoire, becoming more cognitive, flexible. Or we already heard this, empathy. So, when we mix and we're all going to adapt to each other's culture, migrants and locals, where is it going to lead us? Something like a global culture? Well, even if it does, the bigger question would be, does that mean that locals are going to lose the traditional national culture? Quite a scary thought. Yet, decades of research from anthropologists and psychologists and migrants have shown people can integrate, meaning they can fit and endorse more than one culture. But I see not everyone is really convinced of that thought. Well, just think of your own identity repertoire, which can be quite contradictory. For example, it's considered to be German when you eat meat, you watch football, and you drink beer. Yet, I'm a vegetarian, and I'm an ice hockey fan, and I drink cider. But I'm also German. So, back to the research on migrants. Because not only can they integrate, they actually feel pretty good about this. Especially they feel a lot better than those who would say, oh, let's separate. Take me as a German who would move to Spain as an example. If I say, oh, Spanish culture, not my thing, don't fit into that, but I still live in this country, that would simply mean that as soon as I will try to meet some friends, and I show up exactly at 3 p.m., and they come an hour or two or three later, I will be frustrated. And I will be frustrated with them, I would think they do this on purpose to make me frustrated. Or if I would assimilate to a culture shared in Spain, that simply would say, whenever I'm in contact with my friends and family back home, they're probably going to kill me if I show up two hours late. So they won't make me happy either. And last but not least, if I would be confused, what we call marginalization, I wouldn't fit anywhere, and obviously that would make me really lonely because I won't manage to meet anyone. So when migrants have the ability to endorse and fit into more than one culture, why shouldn't locals be able to do so too? And why shouldn't they feel pretty good about this? So as a cross-culture psychologist, I did what we do, I collected data from all around the world, asked locals about the traditional national culture, multiculturalism, and the effects on their well-being, life satisfaction, stress levels, comfort amongst internationals. And literally what I found, yeah, locals just like migrants can endorse more than one culture. And more, they feel pretty good about this. Actually, they feel a lot better than those who just say, ooh, I stick to my traditional national culture, and that's my comfort zone and nothing else. So in summary, where does that leave us? Well, next time, when you hear the term multiculturalism, maybe we're going to think of, yes, it includes migrants that adapt to the new culture surrounding. But it also includes locals that can integrate. So maybe it's time to think of new measurements and training methods to address them. Because maybe we're going to see perspectives to open the door to opportunities that we haven't even considered yet. Or in short, next time when I hang out with my British friend, and he's asked, you want a penguin? He's going to add, and I mean the biscuit.