Data show that a larger number of students than ever are participating in learning experiences abroad. However, such programs are not always as immersive and intensive as participants, faculty, program directors, and administrators would wish. This study examines the ways in which students created sustained opportunities to interact with members of the host community as well as episodes of cultural clash, miscommunication, and misunderstanding experienced at the intersection of two cultures that led to diminishing willingness to interact with members of the host community. The article concludes with recommendations for pre‐departure experiences that are designed to help students become more aware of their sociocultural identities, cultural values, learning goals, and program expectations as well as to invest in their own learning and prepare to engage in sustained and meaningful ways with members of the host culture.

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Neoliberal discourse has seeped into various practices of higher education and study abroad (SA), emphasizing the value of human capital development through international education and foreign language learning. Applied linguists have been strongly critiquing neoliberal ideologies, and how they reproduce social inequalities. In this study, the examples of Albert, Theresa, and Rebecca, three U.S. undergraduates in Spain, exhibit how elements of neoliberal discourse and the consumerist notion of second language education as a commodity perpetuate social inequalities abroad and at home. These students were part of an ethnographic study (2007–2008) that included 117 U.S. undergraduates enrolled in four academic SA programs in Spain. The stories of Albert, Theresa, and Rebecca are significant because they had traction within their SA cohort. The consumerist notion of education as a commodity was employed as the analytical framework in conjunction with Bourdieu’s concept of capital (1986). This study problematizes the neoliberal logic and the promise of human capital development associated with language learning through SA. It calls for more diversity, equity, inclusion in SA. A social justice pedagogical paradigm is discussed as a valid, alternative approach to help students emphasize humanistic imperatives over individualist imperatives, gain global understanding, and contribute to world justice.