Page 434 - Cultures and Organizations

Intercultural Encounters 399

ist philosophies, compounding the migrants’ adaptation problems through
primitive manifestations of uncertainty avoidance: “What is different is
dangerous.”
Particular expertise is demanded from mental health professionals
dealing with migrants and refugees. Ways of dealing with health con-
cerns and disability differ considerably between collectivist and individual-
ist societies. The high level of acculturative stress in migrants puts them
at risk for mental health disorders, and methods of psychiatric treatment
developed for host country patients may not work with migrants, again
for cultural reasons. Most countries with a large migrant population such
as Australia recognize transcultural psychiatry (and transcultural clinical

psychology) as a special field. Some psychiatrists and psychologists special-
ize in the treatment of political refugees suffering from the aftereffects of
war or torture.
Not just host country citizens can be blamed for racism and ethnocen-
trism; migrants themselves sometimes behave in racist and ethnocentric
ways, toward other migrants and toward hosts. Living as they do in an
unfamiliar and often hostile environment, the migrants can be said to have
a better excuse. Some resort to religious fundamentalisms although at home
they were hardly religious at all. Fundamentalism is often found among
marginal groups in society, and these migrants are the new marginals.

Intercultural Negotiations

Negotiations, whether in politics or in business and whether international
or not, share some universal characteristics:

■ Two or more parties with (partly) confl icting interests
■ A common need for agreement because of an expected gain from such

agreement
■ An initially undefi ned outcome
■ A means of communication between parties
■ A control and decision-making structure on either side by which
negotiators are linked to their superiors or their constituency

Books have been published on the art of negotiation; it is a popular
theme for training courses. Negotiations have even been simulated on com-
puters. However, the theories and computer models tend to use assump-
tions about the values and objectives of the negotiators taken from Western