Abstract
ABSTRACT As one of the primary means for identity construction (see DE FINA, 2015), narrative has recently been examined in relation to immigrant and refugee movements. Having at our disposal elicited, written autobiographical narratives of immigrant students living in Greece, we investigate the identities they construct therein. Our sample consists of 118 essays collected from 8 different lyceums situated in different parts of the Peloponnese, Greece. The students who wrote the essays were bilingual immigrants of various origins (mostly from Albania). The broader theoretical framework of our study is that of Critical Discourse Analysis. One of the most important research issues within Critical Discourse Analysis concerns the investigation of the relationship between the macro-level of dominant discourses and the micro-level of the individual (in the present case, narrative) positionings towards dominant discourses (see VAN DIJK, 2008). For the analysis of the narrative positionings of the immigrant students we employ the model of three dilemmas proposed by Bamberg (2011) in combination with the concept of face threat (BROWN and LEVINSON, 1987). The analysis shows that the decision of some immigrant students to reveal their victimization, due to racist behaviors by majority people, constitutes a threat against the collective face of majority people. We support the claim that these immigrant students position themselves in a complex manner towards the national, xenophobic and homogenizing discourse by projecting themselves as victims and victimizers simultaneously, and thus constructing hybrid resistance identities.
Highlights
As nation-states all over the globe have so far been the standard way of the institutional organization of a country, national mixtures are avoided, and the maintenance of national homogeneity is a continuous and persistent goal. Having this assumption as our starting point, this study focuses on the construction of hybrid identities by immigrant students in Greece
Further concentrating on the micro-level of analysis, we present the analytical tools which will allow us to trace the positionings of the immigrant students of our sample towards the dominant national discourse and, subsequently, their identity construction processes
The question arises about the kind of agency and the way of handling their difference: Do they comply with the directives of the dominant national discourse or do they attempt to resist against them by preserving aspects of their difference? Our working hypothesis is that, whereas most immigrant students of our sample comply with the directives of the national discourse, by constructing legitimizing identities, some attempt to threat the collective face of the majority in a mitigated manner by using specific discursive means in their narratives
Summary
As nation-states all over the globe have so far been the standard way of the institutional organization of a country, national mixtures are avoided, and the maintenance of national homogeneity is a continuous and persistent goal Having this assumption as our starting point, this study focuses on the construction of hybrid identities by immigrant students in Greece. The broader theoretical framework of this study is that of Critical Discourse Analysis, which investigates how social (racist, sexist, etc.) inequalities are (re) produced through discourse It highlights the forms of resistance against the naturalized perpetuation of social inequality through discourse (see VAN DIJK, 2008). We will claim that, by revealing their victimization (due to majority racist behaviors against them) through specific narrative means (sections 1.2.3 and 1.2.4), some immigrant students threaten the face of the majority victimizers, constructing hybrid resistance identities (sections 3 and 4)
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