Socio-Cultural Experiences of International Students in Ireland and the Impact These Experiences Have on Their Self Identity

This paper was designed and carried out in order to examine the socio cultural experiences of international students in higher education in Ireland. The investigation examined the impact of these experiences on a set of key relationships connected with these students’ concepts of self-identity and sense of self (Giddens, 1991). Giddens (1991) theory on reflective self-identity underpinned the theoretical approach to this research. This study was qualitative in nature and a multi site case (Merriam, 1998) was the approach that was taken to best answer the research questions. At the time of publication, it was the only study in Ireland to consider international students in numerous campuses (Dunne, 2008; O’Reilly, Ryan & Hickey, 2010). Focus groups and semi structured interviews were used. The sample of forty seven international students representing twenty six different nationalities who took part in this study were registered in a range of disciplines at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. The attention of this paper is the self identity of the students. This research found that the experiences in Ireland were an integral part in the lives of these students which resulted in an exposure to new opinions, ideas and experiences feeding into the reflexive project of the self.