Abstract
Ethnic identity becomes an important issue during adolescence, especially for ethnic minority groups. This study examines ethnic identities of immigrant and native adolescents who live in Spain, focusing on the ethnic labels they use, their development, and the relation with life satisfaction. Questionnaires were administered to first-generation immigrants (n = 501; mean age 14.6 years) as well as to their native host classmates (n = 501, mean age 14.3 years). Results show that ethnic identification was mainly determined by country of birth; however, in the case of immigrants, having immigrated at an early age favored the use of identity labels of the majority group. Immigrants were more likely to be in the achieved ethnic identity category than non-immigrants, although it was positively related to life satisfaction in both groups. Finally, older adolescents were not more likely to be in the achieved category than younger ones.
Highlights
The development of identity is one of the most important tasks during adolescence
These dimensions are similar to the crisis and compromise components used by Marcia (1966) to set the ego-identity statuses; the combination of ethnic exploration and ethnic commitment are used in the same way to establish ethnic identity statuses (Douglass & Umaña-Taylor, 2017; Yip, 2014); the four ethnic identity statuses are foreclosed, achieved, moratorium, and diffused
Ethnic identification The majority (94.4%) of native adolescents identified themselves using Spanish labels exclusively and 5% did not identify with any ethnic group
Summary
The development of identity is one of the most important tasks during adolescence. Social psychology perspectives (Tajfel & Turner, 1986) present ethnic identity as a social aspect of the self. From the developmental perspective, based on Erikson’s (1968) ego identity model, ethnic identity refers to the subjective sense of ethnic group membership and is conceived as a multidimensional concept that include two core dimensions (Phinney & Ong, 2007), exploration (process of investigating and learning more about the meaning of one’s ethnic background) and commitment (process of deriving a sense of membership and affective connection to ones’ ethnic group) These dimensions are similar to the crisis and compromise components used by Marcia (1966) to set the ego-identity statuses; the combination of ethnic exploration and ethnic commitment are used in the same way to establish ethnic identity statuses (Douglass & Umaña-Taylor, 2017; Yip, 2014); the four ethnic identity statuses are foreclosed (commitment without exploration), achieved (commitment with exploration), moratorium (exploration without commitment), and diffused (not engaged in exploration or commitment). Individuals are expected to move from ethnic identity diffusion to either foreclosure or moratorium and to ethnic identity achievement through adolescence, based on exploration of ethnic identity that characterize the adolescence period (Umaña-Taylor et al, 2014)
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