Drawing on the Notion of Symbolic Resources in Exploring the Development of Cultural Identities in Immigrant Transitions

Abstract

This paper examines the processes by which cultural identities develop through the use of symbolic resources (Zittoun, 2006). The notion of symbolic resources provides a framework that enables one to consider developmental transitions between practices and between historical times. For Portuguese students, these transitions initially involved a rupture, a loss of social resources and linguistic resources, which resulted in a cultural awareness. This cultural awareness led to alterations in the positioning of their cultural selves, either by themselves personally or by others. Social resources mediated access to new symbolic resources, and this included experiencing the ‘other’ as constructive and meaningful to the self. This ‘other’ became symbolic and thus the physical presence of that person is not necessarily needed. We argue that in order to comprehend cultural identity development, the notion of symbolic resources can be extended to include the social resource as that which is ‘symbolic’.