A Cultural-Historical Approach to Children’s Development of Multiple Cultural Identities

Abstract

This chapter falls in two parts. In the first part the concept of cultural identity is discussed from a cultural-historical developmental perspective. In the second part this discussion is the foundation for analysing interviews with young persons from immigrant families. Cultural identity is seen as an aspect of children’s psychic development that is created through their participation in everyday life in institutional practice. The primary institutions during childhood are the home, day-care and school. This conception of development of identity as multiple cultural identities is based on a theory of children’s development as dependent on the conditions and demands children meet in the home, day-care and school settings and how they engage in activities in the different practices in which they participate. Both the general conception that guides daily practice and the children’s concrete ways of acting in their historical concrete family and school creates the practice traditions of which a specific child’s life becomes a part. A child’s development of cultural identity is related to these diverse institutional practices and his/her personal identity is grounded in how problems between cultural traditions are tackled and how they proceed, giving room for the child’s forward-oriented activities. In this development the interconnections between a child’s social relations, capacities and motives are central. In the concrete research project presented here young persons, from Turkish cultural minority families that had just finished 9 years in a Danish school were interviewed about their experience and conceptions of school life – subject matter, friends and teachers. The analysis focuses on the problems they experienced as children of immigrant parents and how these problems contributed to their identity, i.e. who they are today. In this regard how the children tackled these problems can be seen as developmental or as a hindrance – for their feeling of happiness in relation to who they are – and for creating future plans for education and life.