Intercultural communication strategies for cultural adaptation of services for Beca 18 scholarship recipients in Lima

Abstract

This study is linked to the Beca 18 social program, developed by the National Scholarship and Educational Loan Program (Pronabec), through which the State awards a full university scholarship to young people living in poverty or extreme poverty. This research answers the question: What are the intercultural communication strategies within the framework of the cultural adaptation of the services offered by universities and Pronabec to migrant beneficiaries of the Beca 18 program? For this study, a primarily qualitative methodology was applied, which included interviews with the three main actors involved: Pronabec, the universities, and the scholarship recipients, who come from culturally distinct backgrounds. The results reflected significant obstacles to the implementation of the intercultural approach in universities. These were: discrimination, feelings of inferiority on the part of migrant scholarship recipients, questioning of their own identity, and the state of communications within the program. Finally, based on the fieldwork, proposals based on intercultural communication for the management of cultural diversity in universities were generated.