'People and things are increasingly out of place', James Clifford suggested in his book The Predicament of Culture (1988). In the twenty years since he wrote that, the tempo of movement has accelerated further. It has never been as easy as it is now to cross borders physically. More people than ever before are living 'away from home'. But at the same time, we are discovering that the most heavily policed frontiers are not physical but linguistic and cultural. These borders are embedded in the everyday life of ordinary people and we ourselves do more to police them than any security force could hope to achieve.

In this context, Joseph Shaules's book is a timely intervention in the field of intercultural communication and the forms of learning that underpin it. It takes issue with existing approaches that construe intercultural learning as a largely linear process and argues that things are considerably more complex. The extent to which a visitor resists, accepts or adapts to a host culture may vary considerably over time, but in ways that are neither homogeneous nor predictable. A great deal rests on the 'habitus' of individuals: the dispositions, attitudes and values they bring to an encounter. But intercultural relations are rooted in dialogue and interaction, where individuals have scope to choose the ways in which they will engage with their cultural environment. Long-term sojourners can thus shape their engagement, and familiarity may breed contempt as well as affection.

To a significant extent the responses to intercultural encounter are personal and subjective, easier to guess at than to analyse, and frequently discussed on the basis of anecdotes rather than evidence. Joseph Shaules has achieved valuable access to evidence, through detailed interviews with a sample of informants, and has teased out the patterns of intercultural development they reveal. In this way he has been able to delve beneath the surface of their behaviour and the way they themselves view it.