Chapter 3: Trainees’ Cultural Identities in Tense Times

In the previous chapter, I presented an analysis of the conditions and processes in Transcultural Seminars that allow participants to decenter themselves and consider different perspectives on the situations discussed during the meetings. The manuscript focused on issues related to interprofessional collaboration, for instance, cultural differences in terms of professions and organizations, and demonstrated how addressing these tensions also contributed to participants’ improved intercultural competence with respect to other types of cultural differences, such as those associated with ethnic groups or other communities. While the discourses studied in the previous chapter were collected during Seminar meetings and research focus groups, the next chapter reports on an analysis of participants’ narratives that were expressed in a more intimate context through one on one interviews with me. In this third chapter, I focus on the participants’ lived experience of the Seminars, notably the verbalizations of their cultural identities and the affects and cognitions that the meetings invoked. The context of the analysis is local and rooted in issues of social polarization as expressed in Montréal, Québec, Canada; however, the findings can translate to other contexts. The manuscript documents the benefits of a Community of Practice approach, as seen in these Transcultural Seminars, which help support practitioners who are increasingly facing tense social contexts, including those related to cultural identities and inter-community relations. The provision of a culturally safe enough space during Transcultural Seminars makes it possible to address these sensitive issues. Similarly, the culturally safe enough space of the interviews allowed for the sharing of difficult experiences, making it possible to identify “misconceptions and a wish for reciprocity in cultural safety” as a central theme in intercultural training. It is likely that this sharing occurred because of the proximity in terms of cultural identity between interviewer and interviewee. Additionally, it is interesting to note that some of these disclosures concerned situations that took place during Transcultural Seminars; thus, in the presence of colleagues concerned with these issues. However, this result echoes what I have also been given to experience and observe as a researcher – instances of being othered myself, as a woman and as an ethnolinguistic minority – even among cultural psychiatry experts. This highlights that no one is immune from being the target of stereotyping or discrimination or from using it themselves, including those who work in the field of interculturality.