Bridging Cultural Identities: Examining Newcomer’s Post-Secondary School Integration Experiences Through an Arts-Based Ethnographic Approach

Abstract

Many modern emerging adults undertake the task of identity development while navigating life on a post-secondary campus, where they assimilate to new social and learning environments. Emerging adult newcomers (i.e. immigrants) must navigate additional developmental challenges as they reconcile their cultural, ethnic, and personal identity development simultaneously while facing systemic barriers to post-secondary integration. We employed an arts-based engagement ethnography to investigate the post-secondary integration experiences of 10 emerging adults from a person-first perspective. Through cultural probes, individual semi-structured interviews, and focus groups, we identified four key structures to participants’ integration experience: fitting in (through assimilation and accommodation), biculturalism, managing familial expectations, and being a newcomer in the classroom. This research clarifies the key experiences shaping young newcomer identity development and highlights the profound ways in which young newcomers negotiate and reconcile their intersecting identities while integrating into new education contexts following migration.