Uncovering Chinese International Students' Negotiation of Cannabis Use in Canada through a Culturally Fusional Perspective

Background and Purpose: The legalization of recreational cannabis use in Canada has caused a cultural conflict for Chinese international students, as cannabis is stigmatized and criminalized in China due to historical (e.g., national humiliation resulted from the losses of the Opium Wars) and cultural (e.g., drug use is a misconduct in the collectivistic culture) reasons. This cultural conflict, alongside Chinese students’ uncertain immigration intention to Canada, may engender a complicated negotiation of cannabis use in Canada. However, prior literature rarely examines such negotiating process. Cultural fusion theory (Croucher & Kramer, 2017) provides a framework to explore how individuals navigate the entanglement of cultural interactions by fusing different elements based on their adaptation needs. Guided by this theory, this study aimed to unpack how Chinese international students negotiate cannabis use in Canada.

Methods: The study used Charmaz’s constructivist grounded theory (2006), as it allows researchers to delve into participants’ lived experience through in-depth interactions with participants and gradually construct new theoretical insights into understanding their experience. Through purposive sampling, 18 adult Chinese international students (Mage = 24.11, SD = 4.00; 12 [66.7%] female) were recruited for online semi-structured interviews. These participants had been studying in Canada before the pandemic, to ensure that they have sufficient social exposure to this substance prior to the COVID-19 lockdown. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. Initial coding and focused coding were conducted in sequence to gradually refine various codes. Techniques such as constant comparison, memo writing were also used throughout the research to ensure its rigor, so that potential new theoretical insights can emerge and help to understand these students’ negotiation of cannabis use.

Results: Four themes emerged from the analyses. The first is realizing differences in two contexts. This theme symbolizes the onset of cultural fusion, as participants started to realize differences in cannabis use between these two cultures. The second theme is reflecting on cannabis use in the Chinese context. This theme shows how social (e.g., the negative social attitude to drugs in China) and individual (e.g., young age) factors in China shape participants’ original understanding of cannabis. The third theme is negotiating with the Canadian context, as it shows how this fusional process involves receiving influences of Canadian culture (e.g., individualistic culture that justifies substance use). Reasoning and making decisions is the fourth theme. This theme emphasizes Chinese international students exercising human agency in fusing different cultural elements when facing cannabis use. While most of them acknowledged that they have a more objective understanding of this substance, there are still concerns about cannabis use resulted from Chinese identity and culture.

Conclusions and Implications: Focusing on cannabis use, the study elucidates how Chinese international students negotiated with the cultural conflict from a culturally fusional perspective. Findings from this study help to inform the understanding of adaptation by international students and newcomers. Social work researchers and practitioners should consider the intertwined influences of cultural and geopolitical factors and individuals’ subjectivity when working with international student and newcomers to navigate different cultural practices.