The discourse of immersion is prevalent but little analysed in the field of study abroad. Linked generally to learning-by-doing, this discourse has significance for "intercultural education". Based on text analyses of three guidebooks on study abroad, this article suggests four effects of the discourse of immersion: It justifies study abroad as different from, if not better than, classroom learning and tourism. It emphasises the difference between students' home and host cultures and constructs each society as internally homogeneous. It constructs study-abroad students' home societies as globalised and their host societies as immobile and parochial, creating a hierarchy when globalisation is valorized. Finally, it exoticises the learning-by-doing "teachers"--the host people--by portraying them as parochial "cultural others". This article suggests an uneven process where the call for production of "global citizens" through study abroad constructs host societies as parochial and risks reproducing a colonialist hierarchy of exoticism through intercultural learning-by-doing. (Contains 1 note.)