Negotiating second-language identities in and through border crossing

Abstract

In this article, I describe the ways in which two British university students negotiated their identity as second language learners during a year abroad in Italy and the extent to which their struggles helped them to ‘fit in’ into the new social and cultural contexts. Building upon the lived experiences of the two participants, I follow a poststructuralist discourse on identity, which considers identities as dynamic and in continuous evolution. In this article, I argue that the extent to which individuals are prepared to negotiate second-language identities, or conversely to resist them, can be directly influenced by the ways in which they perceive their relationships to the new contexts and by the ways in which such relationships are constructed over time and across space. I also argue that the continuous evolution of identities tends to change more rapidly in new sociocultural contexts, such as those embedded in specific experiences of border crossing.