Diverschance_East – Global competence development and diversity challenges in an innovative Europe

The central concept of the research project is intercultural competence, which is understood as the ability to behave efficiently and appropriately in intercultural situations (Genkova, 2019). Research on intercultural competence focusses on the question of which characteristics, attitudes, and skills are important for exploiting the potential of intercultural cooperation. An interculturally competent person recognizes and uses interaction situations characterized by cultural diversity more successfully (Malau-Aduli, Ross & Adu, 2019). When teaching intercultural competences, it is important to ensure that they are designed in a way that prevents discrimination (Krings, 2018).

In Ukraine there is not only immigration, but also strong emigration, which poses challenges to society and economy. According to the United Nations Department for economic and social affairs (UN Department for economic and social affairs, 2019), Ukraine is one of the countries that will be affected by strong population decline due to low birth rate and emigration. Thus, the population is predicted to decrease by 20% by 2050. At the same time, Ukraine is becoming more and more politically and economically oriented towards Western Europe. This highlights the cultural specificity of the situation. In order to work out these aspects and to bundle the transnational European goals, diversity attitudes and intercultural competence play a major role.