Youth Experiences of Cultural Identity and Migration: A Systems Perspective

Abstract

This chapter examines youth’s cultural identity in a multicultural and immigration receiving metropolis. We develop a systems conceptual framework to explicate youth cultural identity as shaped by the external environmental factors of social systems and youth’s individual factors and lived experiences. Our framework is informed by a social ecological perspective and by the Immigrant Youth Cultural Identity Project, which employed quantitative and qualitative methods. The sample population consisted of English speaking youth between 17 to 22 years who lived in a large Canadian city and were immigrants from Afghanistan and Iran, and descendants of immigrants from Italy and Portugal. Participants explained cultural identity as a fluid, complex and contested concept that cannot be reduced to one fixed definition. Implications for practice and research from micro, meso to macro system levels are provided.