Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

Complex Acculturation – The Hidden Cultural Challenge in United Nations Police Missions

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

10-2021

Abstract

United Nations Police (UNPOL) officers who are deployed to United Nations Peacekeeping Missions worldwide must first undergo pre-deployment training. After arrival in the mission area, UNPOL officers go through another week of induction training. Both pre-deployment and induction training provide training and insight into the cultural paradigms of the population of the mission area. The idea being that the UNPOL officers must be prepared to work with host country nationals. The problem is that UNPOL missions are comprised of police officers from dozens of different nationalities. The hyper-diversity of an UNPOL organization means that UNPOL officer will encounter significant cross-cultural challenges simply working with each other. UNPOL officers never receive cultural training to facilitate their ability to work with people from all over the world. This chapter covers the newly identified and described concept of complex acculturation, which is the cultural phenomenon of having to adjust to multiple new cultures simultaneously. An understanding of complex acculturation could be a significant element in the improvement of UNPOL efficiency in peacekeeping missions around the world.

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© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

https://rdcu.be/eLUXE

Publication Title

Police and International Peacekeeping Missions

DOI

10.1007/978-3-030-77900-9_12

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