Encountering Cultural Diversity in Family and Counselling Centers: Qualitative Longitudinal Research Study on Challenges and Opportunities

Thanks to international migration, contemporary societies are experiencing demographic and societal transformations, as well as an increase in cultural diversity. To enhance mutual respect, to build bridges across cultures and to promote social cohesion, it is essential that sociological research devote attention to intercultural encounters, their ongoing challenges, intertwining dynamics, and opportunities.

Our qualitative longitudinal research investigates these challenges, dynamics, and opportunities of intercultural encounters between refugee families and social work practitioners. To this end, semi-structured in-depth expert interviews were conducted in family and counseling centers, providing informal education services for parents, in Bavaria, Germany. The same 33 centers were interviewed in three waves—in 2016, 2019, and 2023—in order to gain insights into the perceptions and repercussions of intercultural dialogue. For the analyses, a decentered research approach has been adopted, embracing our different disciplinary approaches and different ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds.

Analyses show that encountering cultural diversity proved to be challenging due to different communication styles of high versus low context cultures and to different norms and values (e.g., regarding hospitality, punctuality, or gender roles). Further, the heterogeneity of different cultural (sub)groups and their (perceived) diverse needs are overwhelming for some practitioners. Additionally, limited resources constrain practitioners' ability to meet the high demands. Nevertheless, over the course of time, the majority of centers have implemented innovative methods to strengthen cross-cultural encounter and dialogue. These include inter-religious events, low-threshold language cafés, and cultural-sensitive parenting programs designed to enhance familial resilience, to name but a few. These strategies offer opportunities to foster intercultural awareness and understanding, connectedness between people from different cultural backgrounds, as well as social integration and cohesion. Despite the presence of numerous cultural misunderstandings and uncertainty, we identified an increasing reciprocal empathy and cultural sensitivity which led to more perspective-taking of other individuals’ backgrounds.