Renegotiation Of Identity Research Articles

REWRITALIZE your recovery: a study protocol for a randomised controlled trial (RCT) examining the effectiveness of the new recovery-oriented creative writing group intervention REWRITALIZE for people with severe mental illness

BackgroundHealth institutions advocate for psychosocial and recovery-oriented interventions alongside pharmacological treatment for severe mental illness. Participatory arts interventions appear promising in promoting personal recovery by fostering connectedness, hope, renegotiation of identity, meaning-making, and empowerment. Despite encouraging findings, however, the evidence base remains thin. Further, results from cognitive literature studies suggest possible impact on parameters of clinical recovery, but this has not been studied in clinical contexts. We developed REWRITALIZE, a structured, recovery-oriented, fifteen-session creative writing group intervention led by a professional author alongside a mental health professional. Participants engage with literary forms, write on them, share their texts, and partake in reflective discussions within a supportive, non-stigmatising environment, designed to promote self-expression, playful experimentation, agency, recognition, participatory meaning-making, renegotiation of identity and social engagement.The aim of this project is to evaluate REWRITALIZE for persons with severe mental illness through a randomised controlled trial (RCT) focusing on personal recovery outcomes. Additionally, an embedded pilot RCT will explore additional outcomes i.e., clinical recovery for a subgroup with schizophrenia spectrum disorders.MethodsThe RCT is an investigator-initiated, randomised, two-arm, assessor-blinded, multi-center, waiting-list superiority trial involving 300 participants (age > 18) from six psychiatric centers in regions Capital and Zealand in Denmark, randomised to receive either the creative writing intervention combined with standard treatment or standard treatment alone. Assessments will be conducted before and after the intervention and at six months post intervention. The primary outcome is personal recovery at the end of intervention measured with the questionnaire of the process of recovery. Secondary outcomes include other measures of personal recovery, self-efficacy, mentalising, and quality of life. The pilot RCT, integrated within the RCT, will focus on 70 of the participants aged 18–35 with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, evaluating exploratory measures related to perspective-taking, social cognition, cognitive function, psychosocial functioning, and symptom pressure.DiscussionThis is the first RCT for creative writing groups. It assesses whether REWRITALIZE, as adjunct to standard mental healthcare, is more effective for personal recovery than standard care. If successful, it would provide evidence for the efficacy of REWRITALIZE, potentially enabling its implementation across mental health centers in Denmark.Trial registrationPrivacy (data protection agency): p-2023–14655.Danish National Center for Ethics: 2313949.Clinicaltrials.gov: NCT06251908. Registration date 02.02.2024.

The Psychosocial Impact of Migration on Family Roles and Identity

Objective: Migration significantly affects individuals and families, reshaping identities, roles, and psychosocial well-being. This study aimed to explore the nuanced psychosocial impacts of migration on family roles and identity, seeking to understand the complexities of adjustment, identity transformation, and emotional well-being within the migratory context. Methods and Materials: Employing a qualitative research design, this study conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 participants from various migratory backgrounds. Theoretical saturation was achieved, ensuring a comprehensive exploration of the experiences and perceptions of migrants. Thematic analysis was employed to identify and categorize the primary themes and concepts emerging from the data, focusing on the psychosocial dimensions of migration. Findings: Three main themes were identified: Adjustment and Adaptation, Identity and Belonging, and Emotional and Psychological Well-being. Under Adjustment and Adaptation, categories such as Cultural Integration, Educational Challenges, Employment and Financial Stability, and Social Networks and Community Support were explored. Identity and Belonging encompassed Family Role Dynamics, Personal Identity Transformation, and Interactions with the Host Society. Emotional and Psychological Well-being included Stress and Coping Mechanisms, Intergenerational Conflicts, Loss and Grief, and Hope and Resilience, each providing insights into the emotional and psychological experiences of migrants. Conclusion: The study highlighted the profound and multifaceted psychosocial impacts of migration on individuals and families, revealing the challenges and adaptations necessary for cultural integration, the renegotiation of identity and family roles, and the emotional and psychological experiences encountered. These findings underscore the necessity for supportive policies and practices that address the complex needs of migrants, facilitating smoother integration and promoting well-being.

Politics of Identity and Minority Quest for Self-Rule in Federal Ethiopia: The Case Study of Kabena People in South Central Ethiopia

The ethnic federal system was formally institutionalised in Ethiopia in 1991. This federal system has introduced instrumentalist conceptions of ethnic identity and renegotiation of identity, control of ‘ethnic territory’, and ethnic autonomy. Using the concept of ‘formal ethnicism’ as an analytical frame, the study has analysed identity politics and the minority quest for separate self-rule by taking Kabena People as a case study from the Gurage zone in the period from 1991 to 2022. Methodologically, the study used a qualitative approach and a case study research design. For data collation, both primary and secondary sources were used. This analytical model has been used to analyse how politicised ethnicity in the context of Kabena has led to the renegotiation of identity and a violent quest for separate ethnic autonomy. The study shows that after the formalisation of ethnicity as a leading political order, ethnic identities have been articulated to the extent of inter-group polarization between Gurage and Kabena due to new trends of subsuming a minority group under locally dominant groups without putting relevant institutional mechanism to prevent possible local level marginalization and domination. The findings further reveal that the subsumed status of Kabena has created a fragile and polarized inter-ethnic relation with the dominant Gurage which has been easily changed into inter-ethnic conflict. The key dynamics behind such conflict include competing interests, prolonged contestation, and protracted conflict for separate self-rule at the special woreda level and demand for the ownership of Wolkite town administration, which is the capital city of Gurage zone and located at the historic land of Kabena. The article concludes that the Kabena quest for self-rule took on an ethnic dimension within the context of ethnic politics and formalized ethnicity that hardened inter-group boundaries. Synchronizing the historic trajectory and inter-ethnic relationships with Gurage along with the contemporary scenario; the article tries to shed some light on the dynamics of identity politics, the quest for separate self-rule and control of Wolkite town in the context of Kabena vis-à-vis Gurage, focusing particularly on the post-1991 political order in Ethiopia and its local implications.

Individual’s experiences of adjusting to changes in body image after spinal cord injury: a literature review and thematic synthesis

Purpose To understand how individuals experience and adjust to changes in body image after spinal cord injury (SCI). Methods A systematic search using four databases identified eleven articles that met the inclusion criteria. The studies were critically appraised to determine quality. Interpretative thematic synthesis was used to explore adults’ experiences of adjusting to changes in body image after SCI. Results Three themes described the influence of sociocultural factors on body image: ‘Sociocultural influences’, ‘Responses of others’ and ‘Experience of rehabilitation’. Six themes described individuals’ experiences of body image. ‘Loss and threat of difference’, ‘Discomfort and disconnection’ and ‘Resistance’ negatively influenced body image. ‘Reconnecting with the body and re-negotiating identity’, ‘Support network’ and ‘Challenging beliefs about disability’ promoted positive body image. Adjustment was a dynamic process, influenced by interactions between individual, relational and sociocultural factors. Conclusions The physical impacts of SCI, individual’s perceptions, relationships and sociocultural discourses influenced body image. Rehabilitation professionals could support adjustment to changes in body image by considering individual, relational and systemic influences. Furthermore, it is important to include an individual’s support network within their care as social factors influenced body image experiences. Peer support could promote hope and challenge negative sociocultural beliefs about disability.

Ballet and the Renegotiation of Identity among Jewish Orthodox Women in Israel

This article explores how competing images of Jewish corporeality and gendered identity are emerging in Israel through classical ballet by religious girls and women. It traces the cultural, political, and religious implications of this in the context of masculine Zionist ideals of the valorization of the corporeal. Focusing on a group of pioneering Israeli women it traces how they have reshaped the study of ballet into a liberatory yet modest practice for Orthodox women across a range of Israeli religious communities. The revolutionary efforts that linked the founding of the state of Israel with a new body are viewed through a revised feminist perspective, one within the paradigm of a religious counterrevolution. Just as the laboring body of the secular folk dancer of the Yishuv has stood for socialism, egalitarianism, and muscular Judaism while relegating the religious body to the sidelines, it is possible now to read an image of the return of the religious, via the feminized body of classical ballet, as emblematic of the new Jewish woman of Orthodox communities. I argue that through the study of ballet a politics of piety is operating among Orthodox Jewish women making it a medium through which they are changing assumptions about agency, patriarchal norms, and nationalist politics.

The Pliable Page: Turn-of-the-21st-Century Reworkings of Villaverde’s Cecilia Valdés

This essay examines turn-of-the-21st-century responses to the foundational 19th-century novel by Villaverde, Cecilia Valdés, pointing to the ambivalence toward textual authority and migration as key elements in Cubans’ relationship to historical memory. The analysis of two plays, a puppet show, a novel, and works of visual and performance art, all of which have a textual element and were produced between 1994 and 2006, demonstrates the ongoing use of the Cecilia story to question key elements of Cuban historical memory. While contesting the legacy of the colonial and nation-building era, these contemporary works open a dialogue regarding narratives about Cuban migration, from the 19th century into the present. They unpack the established narratives about Cuba’s colonial period—slavery, race, socioeconomic class, and sexuality, and also contribute to new narratives about migration. The relationship between movement, authority, and textuality in these responses to Villaverde’s novel points to how 19th-century historical memory, and intertwined with that migration, are central to the ongoing renegotiation of Cuban identity. By re-working Villaverde’s novel—figuratively or literally manipulating the pages of Cecilia Valdés—Cuban writers and artists participate in a ritual of resignification that redefines lo cubano.

Renegotiating Identity and Agency in Everyday Oppression: Experiences of Forced Migrant Youth in Malaysia

This study explored how forced migrant youth in transit renegotiated their identity and agency after fleeing their homes and sociocultural connections, and while enduring ongoing precarity in a new, oppressive sociopolitical environment in Malaysia. As Malaysia is a non-signatory state that denies legal status to forced migrants, youth face significant structural barriers that constrain their capacities to participate in society and explore their identity. Using an innovative Peer Mediated Storyboard Narrative method (PMSN), thirteen adolescents visually depicted and then explained how their experiences of forced migration affected their sense of self, belonging, and future. Participants were receiving non-formal education and services from a migrant-serving agency in Malaysia while awaiting UNHCR adjudication of their application for resettlement. Youths’ transcribed narratives were the focus of analysis using constructivist grounded theory (CGT). Youth described a process whereby renegotiating identity was inextricably linked to (re)claiming agency, if only in situated ways, as they navigated oppression, discrimination, and rejection. Their renegotiation of identity involved (re)evaluating loss and opportunity, (re)constructing belonging, and working through prescribed identities. As youth renegotiated identities, they continuously sought to recreate agency, or a sense of ownership, over their experiences and stories. Their agency was situated within seemingly ordinary assertions of preserving and expanding their identities, forging spaces of belonging, and defining their own narratives rather than accepting prescribed identities. Perceived family support, duration of stay in Malaysia, and experiences as a girl or boy within their communities were key elements that shaped youths’ negotiation. Far from being passive recipients of circumstance, forced migrant youth strategically navigated systemic oppression and actively strove to reconstruct their identity and ownership over their experiences.

Identity formation and patriarchal voices in theatre translation

Shaping fictional characters is an important part of story-telling and the forces which shape identity are worth examining as they add to pragmatic theorizing on identity construction. The paper suggests that translation practice offers multiple contexts where the various workings of identity formation through discourse may be explored. The study uses Bucholtz and Halls's (2005) identity formation principles in two Greek versions (1947, 2017) of the same playtext to heighten awareness of alternative identity representation patterns, which employ various identity formation principles. Results show a significant shift in the translators' shaping the identity of the father figure, through target discursive options assuming a shifting gender position in the target societal environment and a different perception of societal values. Questionnaire respondents favoured certain target options probably for the intensity they created. The paper concludes that an integral part of a character's identity is conveyed through the non-/offensive value of items which regulate the translators' renegotiation of the character's identity. The paper advances understanding of pragmatic aspects in fictional identity formation and im/politeness through translation. It shifts attention to cross-cultural pragmatics, highlights the relational dynamic in the characters' communication, and the translator evaluation intention manifesting how intra-cultural variation affects the translator's task.

Renegotiation of Identity in Women Pre-Retirees: The Case of Secondary School Teachers

Renegotiation of Identity in Women Pre-Retirees: The Case of Secondary School Teachers

Repairing Infrastructures: The Maintenance of Materiality and Power by Christopher R. Henke and Benjamin Sims (review).

Reviewed by: Repairing Infrastructures: The Maintenance of Materiality and Power by Christopher R. Henke and Benjamin Sims Stefan Krebs (bio) Repairing Infrastructures: The Maintenance of Materiality and Power By Christopher R. Henke and Benjamin Sims. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2020. Pp. 216. In their short, engaging book, Christopher Henke and Benjamin Sims revisit some of their previous studies on repair, conducted from the late 1990s on. They draw, for example, on Henke's study on maintaining the air conditioning in university offices and Sim's work on retrofitting the San Diego–Coronado Bridge. However, they do not simply reread their work in the light of recent discussions in the growing field of repair and maintenance studies, like David Edgerton's call for a history of "technology-in-use," Andrew Russell and Lee Vinsel's plea for a history of technology "after innovation," or Steven Jackson's exercise in "broken world thinking." Instead, they draw on their own studies to make a public appeal for repairing repair itself. To this end, the authors "provide a set of tools and concepts to make sense of how repair and maintenance keep infrastructures in working order" (p. 2). Rooted in the academic tradition of analyzing infrastructures as sociotechnical systems, Henke and Sims are most interested in how repair maintains not only technological but also social order. They further scrutinize how infrastructure repair is also related to social conflicts and power relations. Their "toolkit" is built on three main concepts: materiality and discourse; power and invisibility; and scale. The last of these also provides the structure for the book: from local to national and global infrastructures and their repair practices. On the local scale, Henke and Sims introduce some of the concepts they developed earlier, like the networked body of repair workers and the importance of their working knowledge. The authors argue that "repair as maintenance" is a sort of emotional labor that could be the basis for an ethics of care to preserve material and social order. On the next scale up, the authors use repair as a metaphor to describe how local residents appropriated the space under the Coronado Bridge that was erected next to their neighborhood. Turning this vast and empty space into a cultural meeting place is described as "repair as transformation"—transformation not only of the material environment but also of power relations that had to be respected when engineers later started to plan the retrofitting of the bridge. [End Page 1256] On the national scale, Henke and Sims turn more towards infrastructures than repair when they analyze how huge infrastructure projects like water supply and road networks helped the emerging nation state maintain its centralized power. They further emphasize the role of experts and their body of knowledge in this process of building a national infrastructure. Finally, on the global scale, the authors turn towards global infrastructures and their devastating environmental impact. "Repair as maintenance" tends to preserve the material and discursive investments in global infrastructures and prevent necessary changes. This is why the authors plead for "reflexive repair" to fix the environmental impact of the Anthropocene. Drawing on Ulrich Beck's notion of "reflexive modernity," they argue that reflexive repair is a mode of repair that takes the limitations and potential unintended consequences of infrastructure repair into account. Furthermore, reflexive repair aims to bridge the interconnections between the multiple scales of repair tackled in the book. Readers who are expecting to learn more about the repair of more traditional infrastructures like water supply, road, and communication networks will be rather disappointed. At one point, Henke and Sims ask a number of fundamental questions—how much money is spent on maintaining infrastructure, how many maintainers are involved, and how has this developed over time—but they do not offer any answers. This also has to do with the very broad notions of repair and infrastructure they use. For Henke and Sims, repair is much more than a practice to fix material or social order; it is a metaphor for the renegotiation of power and identity, or the reflexive fix for repair itself. Moreover, infrastructure seems to refer to everything from office air conditioning and garages to bridges and the nuclear...

Small Business in Distress:

The character of postwar small business associations in Greece was indelibly stamped by the authoritarian democracy that was constructed between 1945 and 1967. The integration of Greece in the process of European economic unification in the early 1960s was the fuse that sparked the accumulated frustrations into strong collective action, leading some tradesmen and artisans to question the political status quo and identify with centrist and left wing parties. This socio-political ferment led to the renegotiation of petit-bourgeois identity and attempts to link it to a new political context.

Our Shared Japan: Contemporary Spaces of Love and Exoticism in Irish Women’s Poetry

The aim of this paper is to analyse the new perspectives on the locus amoenus put forward by contemporary women poets in Ireland, in particular those by the female authors included in the anthology Our Shared Japan, edited by Irene De Angelis and Joseph Woods (2007). This paper argues that these writers provide alternatives to traditional pastoralism that trigger new reflections on women’s identities and subjectivities. As Donna L. Potts asserts, some constitutive aspects of the pastoral tradition are “the relationship between nature and human nature, and between the present and the mythicised past, the motif of transformation, etc.” (9). These aspects will be scrutinised in the context of travel to the new, exotic space of Japan. The alterity that the poetic voices meet with in their travel provides them with new perceptions of themselves and their affective life in relation to the environment. This renegotiation of identity is mostly made through the body, which becomes a tool for knowledge and communication. The heterotopia (Foucault) of the trip, therefore, provides the perfect space for the poetic subjects to interact, change and reflect about their identity, their sense of belonging or alienation and the impact of travel on their emotional life.

Manipulating the Voice of the Other: On the Sagapò Army, Italiani Brava Gente, and Other Italian War Rumours of the Second World War

ABSTRACT The article discusses the story of the armata sagapò as a war rumour, putting it in relation to three other unverified stories of the Second World War that circulated in post-war Italy, i.e. the anecdote of the Soviet dispatch number 630, the speech attributed to Churchill on the performance of the Folgore divisions at El Alamein, and the myth of Italiani brava gente. It shows that all the considered narratives were structured around a common process of ventriloquisation and, by relying on the sociological scholarship that has investigated the phenomenon of rumours, argues that the formation and circulation of these pieces of hearsay were related to the process of renegotiation of Italian identity that followed the collapse of Fascism. While doing this, the article questions the veracity of the story of the sagapò nickname putting forward a new explanation for its creation.

From Bad Apples to Zombies? Walking Dead Leadership in the Contemporary University

Leadership remains an open sewer of assumptions, ego, platitudes and potential. When contextualized within an international university sector struggling and grasping to find a purpose, leadership becomes toxic and dangerous. This article reactivates, challenges and then transforms Ulrich Beck’s zombie concept and applies it to university leadership, management and administration. I probe the renegotiation of power and identity, with particular attention to recent scandals and appointments of university ‘leaders.’ This article also signals a movement from cosmopolitan sociology to claustropolitan cultural studies, repositioning leadership in universities at the end of the world.

Professional Identity as Gateway to Critical Practices: Identity Negotiations of Public Librarians in New Zealand with Implications for LIS Education and Practice

ABSTRACT Librarian professional identity can be understood as a developmental process occurring over time and is indicative of a renegotiation of identity through experiences. This process transpires with or without cognitive grappling of identity and its influence on behaviour, making the renegotiation process either explicit or implicit. Among these experiences, education is a key developmental phase in which entrants begin to define conceptualisations of the profession and their identity within it. Critical, reflective, and reflexive practices can be understood as forms of identity negotiations relating to the practice of a profession in society. Effecting change within a profession through these practices requires first an examination of professional identity to understand the influences upon it. This paper reports on selected findings from interviews with practicing public librarians in New Zealand. It introduces the umbrella term critical practices for critical, reflective, and reflexive practice, defined as identity negotiations within the context introduced by this paper. In order to better effect critical practices, results suggest provision of cognitive spaces in educational settings can encourage explicit grappling with professional identity. Such spaces could encourage self-awareness of the identity process for entrants and begin the explicit recognition of the relationship between identity, behaviour, and practice.

Untellable tales and uncertain futures: the unfolding narratives of young adults with cancer

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we examine the use of creative methods for understanding the experience of young adults aged between 16 and 30 years over a year following a cancer diagnosis. Exploring the renegotiation of identity, the narrative, longitudinal research design of the study demonstrated the unfolding process of the narrative work between participants and researcher. We used a combination of visual, spoken and reflexive psychosocial approaches to understand emergent narratives, many of which do not always find symbolisation in language. Our methodological approach focused on the difficult and sometimes ‘unspeakable’ nature of the young adults’ narratives, demonstrating the importance of different modes of communication in articulating complicated relations with uncertain futures. In this respect the links between narrative, social action and the imagining of possible futures are precarious. In this paper, we explore how untellable issues were explored, and the challenges of doing so.

Renegotiation of identity in young adults with cancer: A longitudinal narrative study

BackgroundDespite increasing international awareness of the impact of cancer on young adults, to date there has been limited in-depth research to understand their experiences following a diagnosis using a qualitative and longitudinal perspective. ObjectivesTo explore the impact of cancer on young adults’ evolving sense of self and identity over one year from the time of diagnosis. In addition, to contribute further to an understanding of innovative research methods used to examine this experience. DesignThis was a longitudinal narrative study using visual methods and a psychosocial lens. Narrative was used to re-present experiences over time. Setting and SampleRecruitment was from a Principal Treatment Centre for Teenagers and Young Adults with Cancer and a Cancer Centre for Adults in the United Kingdom. Total population sampling was used over a six-month period, recruiting 18 young adults aged between 16 and 30, one to three months from a diagnosis of bone cancer, lymphoma or leukaemia. MethodsIn depth, free association narrative interviews at three-time points over a year were undertaken. Photographs were used to help with story-telling. Extensive reflexive field notes, debriefing and the use of a psychosocial research group, also formed data sources. Forty interviews were conducted with 18 participants: eight took part in three interviews, six in two interviews and four in one interview. Analysis focused on the holistic ‘case’ of the individual temporally. In-depth, visual images were analysed from discussion in the narrative text. Through memoing, coding and comparison, themes were developed across all cases and a conceptual framework developed. ResultsThe conceptual framework illustrates the renegotiation of self over time through narrative. This was ‘biographically’ during young adult development and across ‘cancer time’; through the core components of: the inner world, (psyche, emotion and coping); self as embodied; self as relating to others, and self as relating to place. Stories indicated that there was a constant inter- relationship over time between the renegotiation of identity and adaption of biography. ConclusionsThe focus in this paper is on ‘the temporality of cancer’ through the first year from diagnosis, and the juxtaposed process of managing biographical and developmental milestones. The importance of developing health care and research which enables narrative and the patient's voice has been highlighted. It emphasises the need for professionals to ‘be with’ and ‘walk alongside’ through the intensity of a biographically and identity changing illness.Using longitudinal narrative, visual & psychosocial methods to describe the impact of a diagnosis of cancer on young adults’ sense of biography and identity.

Identité, langues et savoirs dans Riwan ou le chemin de sable de Ken Bugul

This paper, which draws its analytic and hermeneutic postulate from epistemocriticism, studies the mechanism of renegotiation of identity in Ken Bugul’s Riwan ou le chemin de sable (Riwan, or the Sandy Path). It demonstrates that the narrator decides to return to her native land because she is afraid of losing connection with herself. The study analyses the return to native land not as a withdrawal to one’s identity but as a kind of poetizing of one of many various ways of life found within contemporary Senegalese society. The paper explores different forms of representation in cultural Senegalese knowledge through the perspectives of savoir-être (knowledge of how to behave) and savoir-dire (knowledge of how to express) which take into account taboo and customary rituals. These articulations of traditional knowledge are the keys from which the narrator reconnects with her origins and thus manages to reconstruct her ethnic identity.

The New Media, the Youth and Renegotiation of Ethnic and Religious Identity in Nigeria

Abstract Among others, the new media platforms are endowed with the capacity to reach wider targets of different demographic orientation; scattered at different geographical location. They also enable interaction between people; irrespective of location, religious divide and cultural inclination; ultimately for collaboration and socialization. For a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society like Nigeria which has unfortunately endured unending ethno-religious tensions from the onset, this paper attempts to examine the extent by which the new media (particularly the social media) provide the platform for such collaboration and socialization; particularly in removing the boundaries of ideological isolations and exposing young Nigerians to differing ideological worldviews which could help them renegotiate their ethnic and religious identity; moving from bigotry to tolerance? To answer this question, this paper investigated the new media usage patterns of young Nigerians with the view to assessing how much their use habit may have exposed them to this sort of socialization. Situated within the framework of the uses and gratifications theory, the study combined survey and focus group discussion (FGD) methods. A questionnaire was issued to 400 university undergraduates while two FGD sessions were carried out with 6 discussants in each session. Results showed that the Nigerian youths’ use of new media has exposed them to contact with ethnic and religious groups different from theirs, and that new media facilitates cross-ethnic and cross-religious learning as well as ethnic and religious tolerance among the youths. Hypotheses testing showed that the more the youths use the Internet the more they will be exposed to contact with ethnic and religious groups different from theirs and that the more the youths are exposed to online contact with such groups the more they will be tolerant towards them. It was concluded that the Internet could be a strong impetus for identity negotiation and renegotiation given that it affords the space for multicultural interaction and cross-fertilization of ideas, and so could serve as a potent tool for fostering cross-cultural understanding, tolerance and harmony in a multicultural society like Nigeria. The study recommended, among others, that efforts to achieve crossethnic and cross-religious tolerance and harmony in Nigeria shouldexplore the opportunities presented by the new media in this regard. Consequently, policymakers and other concerned institutions should work towards maximizing online cross-cultural contact and learning especially among the youths.

UNDERSTANDING ETHNIC IDENTITY IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERNAL MIGRATION: A CASE STUDY OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS OF ETHNIC MINORITY ORIGINS IN URBAN BANGLADESH

Although much scholarly attention has been given to the historical and contemporary struggles of ethnic minority communities in Bangladesh especially related to the politics of indigeneity, this study specifically seeks to obtain a holistic understanding of the process of renegotiation and maintenance of ethnic identity as experienced by university students of ethnic minority origins in Bangladesh who have migrated from their ancestral home to urban centers.  An ethnographic approach based on key informant interviews and focus groups was employed to collect qualitative data. Findings suggest that the notion of ethnic identity is not static; rather it is complex and dynamic. Although the sense of belonging to a distinct ethnic group is very important to all study participants  whenever issues affecting all ethnic minorities in Bangladesh came up by dissolving inter-ethnic boundaries, participants constructed a rather homogenous ethnic identity primarily underpinned by their historical and contemporary marginal status. It is also found that ethnic migrant students with higher levels of previous ethnic involvement better maintain their ethnic identity compared to students with less previous group involvement. By revealing the importance to consider agentic forces, this finding contradicts with social identity theory which has traditionally undermined individual’s agency. Earlier studies have shown that ethnic students with higher previous ethnic involvement completely replace their previous social support network by creating a new one in the new environment. However, participants in this study simultaneously retained and accessed both their old and new social support networks depending on situational demands and opportunities. Findings also indicate that ethnic students who felt negatively about their ethnic group in the new environment showed lower self-esteem and increased alienation from their ethnic group. Relevant policy implications and future research directions have been outlined based on the study findings and discussion.