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Upon arriving in a new country, the foremost barriers that a new comer is required to overcome, towards enhancing their social capital, is that of the language and culture Handy F, Greenspan I (2009). By being a participant observer and by viewing these barriers from the perspective of an international student in Latvia; one can very easily observe that – as opposed to major destinations for international students – the intensity of the effects of these barriers in Latvia and similar countries is far greater. It is due to the fact that the number of English speakers in Latvia is just above 25% of the total population[1], rendering their proficiency in English language only partially helpful in developing social connections with locals. Previous studies point to the fact that one of the key reasons for the mobility of international students in to a host country is to acquire employment in their host countries (Suter and Jandl 2006). Internationally, it has been estimated that about 15-35% of international students eventually took work opportunities and settled permanently in their host country (Suter and Jandl 2006). Therefore, in view of these traditional aspirations of international students of employment and settlement in their host country, we aimed at contextually examining the barriers to their successful integration in Latvia, alongside the mechanisms that are in place of allowing these new comers to acquire and enhance their social capital.
This brings us to the main theme of this article, i.e., volunteering activities and their potential in allowing for the formation of social capital (e.g., Beyerlein & Hipp, 2006; Putnam, 2000; Bekkers, 2005) among international students in Latvia. Here, volunteering refers to unpaid work that people perform for an organization or individuals (Musick and Wilson 2008). Traditionally, volunteering has been considered as an altruistic nature, which is intended towards assisting the disadvantaged (Gomez and Gunderson 2003). There has been significant research on volunteering in the context of Americas (e.g., Rosenfeld 2000; Musick and Wilson 2008; Gomez and Gunderson 2003), however, there is a wide research gap when it comes to defining volunteering and its potential role in allowing for the formation of social capital among new comers and locals in non-English speaking countries such as Latvia. In this regard, we analysed the experiences of international students who participated in volunteering activities alongside the local participant and organizers of these activities in order to elaborate how their social and human capital as it is evolving in this context due to their active participation in these activities (Bekkers, 2005).
Beginning our review with the rich precedence and scientific literature from the North America, we observed that Immigrants have been seen on the receiving end of volunteer work in the United States Tong, (2010). There is, however, a consensus on the fact that newly arrived immigrants are less familiar with social customs and civil practice, and are more prone to face discrimination from established residents (Musick and Wilson 2008), although they may be active participants of volunteerism in their own immigrant communities (Smith 1999). As a result, we can conclude that the volunteer rate is low among immigrants, despite its proven facilitation in networking and social capital development. In other words, after a newcomer is exposed to the culture of their host country, the process of acculturation or assimilation takes place. Here, according to Alba and Nee s (2003:10) assimilation is defined as: "the decline of an ethnic distinction and its corollary cultural and social differences," where cultural and social assimilation are distinguished as acculturation and assimilation by Gans (2007). Additionally, the classical assimilation theory (Warner and Srole 1945) argued that immigrant assimilation is a function of the time period of an immigrant’s residence in a host country and the number of successive generations, where the measure of time exposure has the advantage of not being contaminated by the behaviour of the individual (Greenman and Xie 2007). We in this regard, analyse the evidence of positive integration and social capital development precedence that is achieved through youth volunteering and is independent of the time period of an immigrant’s residence in a host country.
The novelty that our study adds to the literature on youth volunteering is that we exclusively focus international students who, according to our data, at 75% of the instances expressed their desire to find employment and settle in their host country. Here, international students’ aspirations to permanently settle in their host country is very visible, yet a neglected topic in the study of volunteering. There are of course, studies that mention volunteering with reference to immigrants’: labour market experiences (Schugurensky, Slade, & Luo, 2005; Wilson, 2000); participation in religious congregations (Bankston & Zhou, 2000; Ecklund & Park, 2007); and delivery of programs and services for immigrants in community organizations (Dechief, 2005; Helly, 1997; Ksienski, 2004). However, we could not find a study that focuses on international students with respect to volunteering activities and their role in the development of social capital.
Volunteering, cultural integration and language learning
In the words of the director of the NGO: “I really appreciate the cultural diversity that people bring with them in our events. My organization gives the Latvian youth an understanding of internationalization and multi-culturalism. At the same time, our organization is providing international students who will most likely settle in Latvia, with a unique opportunity to understand the local socio-cultural norms at the very beginning of their arrival”[2]. This NGO had cooperation partners in various other NGOs and was actively organizing events (up to 2 events per week) that involved participants from the local and international youth.
Volunteering and personal well-being of youth
In the interview with the head of this organization, we discovered various dimensions of well-being at the personal level for youth. For instance, we were told about two cases where a youth from India – with severe inferiority complex due to their appearance – had gain a greater self-confidence by interacting with the local Latvian youth. She says “this person had apparently been bullied or mocked at for his appearance and we could see that he was more comfortable with himself when he was interacting with the Latvian volunteers than his home country volunteers. That person came forward with his issues and how a mere appearance (height, skin colour, body weight, hairs) can be a cause for shame and life-long name-calling in India. At the beginning, this person never shared his feelings with us, however, after participating in various volunteering session and getting to know the local youth, he was confident to share his ordeal. He is now more comfortable about himself, as a human being, and I am really glad that his personal issues were addressed via volunteering”. Thus, as the standards of how, ideally, a person should look like compared with their actual appearance was found to be a serious issue among youth. On similar lines, we also heard the stories of the local youth, where volunteering allowed for a greater self-confidence and a ground for accepting imperfections among humans.
Volunteering and language learning
As mentioned above, globally, 15%-35% of the international students aim at settling in their host country upon completion of their higher education. In this regard, for a prospective permanent settlement plan to really work, learning the host country language was found to be a major challenge throughout our interactions, interviews and discussion session for this project. In this regard, one of the most frequently reported issue that the international students face in unpopular destinations, or rather in countries with unpopular language, such as Latvian, was that of the shortage of language teachers with proficiency in English language. According to our field work, 100% of the third country international students were proficient in English language, and were pursuing their studies in English, however, finding a language teacher with similar proficiency in English was reported as “difficult to find”. It is an issue which is often over looked and requires attention, if more third country immigrants will be arriving in Latvia in future. As a spin-off of this project, we aim to assert that there is a shortage of, English proficient, Latvian language instructors in Latvia. Most of the language instructors, due to their traditional bi-lingual backgrounds (Russian and Latvian), are not well proficient in English to teach Latvian language to in-migrants with no prior knowledge of Russian language. Here, interestingly, the head of the NGO firstly blamed the international students for showing a lack of interest in learning their host country language, such as “we do organize free language introduction sessions and invite students, however, they show enthusiasm at the beginning and later just do not attend these classes”, to which we cross-questioned them about the medium of instruction for these sessions, which was revealed as “of course, the teachers are not very well trained in teaching individuals in English language”, which reveals why international students and general in-migrants do not frequent the free language courses offered by the state and NGOs.
Here, however, with specific reference to volunteering, we found a great deal of interest among the international and local youth towards language exchange. Latvian language, being one of the very scarcely spoken languages in the world, is not as popular as Russian or French languages and therefore, the youth of Latvia, with knowledge of English language, are in a very good position to popularize this language among international students and general in-migrants. We met two frequent volunteers from India who had learned Latvian language in a matter of a year and had advanced level proficiency.
Volunteering and cultural integration
Lastly, our in-depth interview, participation in activities organized by this organization and interaction with participants revealed that volunteering played an important role in developing social capital and trust among the newcomers and locals.
During the course of our study, we met few of the international students who had little to no social connections with the local youth. These individuals appeared to be clueless in terms of the socio-cultural make-up of their host country. However, there was a clear difference among those students who had interacted with the local youth during the volunteering activities. An Indian student stated “At the beginning of my arrival in Latvia, I had heard stereo-types that Latvians are racists and that they do not appreciate Indian immigrants. By the time I met with local youth through this NGO, I realized that I had developed a stereo-typical image of the locals in my mind. This, combined with little to no social interaction with the locals reinforced my stereo-typical image of the locals. However, now I have come to know that just by interacting once or twice with local youth, we became good friends and understood each other”.
On the other end of the spectrum were students who had been living in Latvia but did not know about such initiatives that exposes them to locals. A student from Sir Lanka reported, “I have a very nice apartment mate and she helped me a lot when I lost my wallet at a super market. At first, I was scared to initiate conversation with her because I had not had any local friends. The day I lost my wallet, I was speaking to a student from Sri Lanka in my apartment and she over heard me and offered help. It was then that she went with me to the police station and translated all the details of the incident in Latvian language. We are now good friends and I think that if I had interaction with more Latvians, I would be able to have many more friends”. Thus, generation of this trust through the social capital by repeated interactions between locals and newcomers is a key constituent of successful cultural integration. We had numerous interesting accounts about how pre and post volunteering perceptions of the international students changed drastically. Some have developed a passion for the Latvian language, other wish to explore the culture, literature and heritage, while other are looking forward to an increase in such volunteering activities.
Thus, we conclude our study by highlighting that issues related with cultural integration and assimilation of in-migrants in a host country have been studied extensively in the context of major destinations for in-migration, such as western Europe and the broader Anglo-Saxon world, however, there is very little knowledge of the contextual strategies that could allow for a successful integration of in-migrants in complex socio-cultural settings, such as in Latvia. In this regard, by analysing the experiences of international students with volunteering in Latvia has allowed us to discover a new avenue of the achievement of social capital, which in turn leads to successful integration. [1] https://languageknowledge.eu/countries/latvia [2] The interview with the director of NGO TREPES was conducted in Latvian language by the author and their narration has been edit transcribed and translated into English by the author.