Identity in a Globalized World: How Second Generation Ethiopian and Eritrean Youth Expand Social Work Education and Research Agendas

Background & Purpose: Refugee, Diaspora, Transnational scholarships have produced an understanding of complex processes that immigrants’ undergo to adapt to their new homes and maintain ties to their homeland. A review of the literature revealed a gap in critical analysis of how second-generation immigrants create meaning and build their lives. This study explored the acculturative process of second-generation Ethiopian and Eritrean youth in Toronto, Canada and the ways they fashion their identities. The concept of identity is complex and forged through the interplay of individual, familial, socio-political and economic factors. Children of immigrants are impacted by their parents’ ongoing acculturative process as parents’ continue to negotiate their shifting identities. For parents, along with their desires of eventual repatriation, their process of acculturation is informed by the relationships they forge within and across more than one country. Questions arise about how this transnational involvement impacts and informs how youth develop their identity. With a focus on identity process, this grounded theory study explored how the identity development of twenty youth is informed by their parents’ transnational engagement and elocution of eventual repatriation to their country of origin.  

Methods: This grounded theory study consisted of working with a youth led non-profit organization serving Ethiopian and Eritrean youth in Toronto. Using a combination of purposive and snowball sampling twenty youth aged 18-25 were interviewed. Taking into account that participants’ identities are formed in ‘hybridity’, the following interrelated queries were explored:  (1) what are the meanings of hybridity, diaspora, (2) in the context of a multicultural society how has race, nativity, ethnicity, gender, class informed their identity formation and retention, (3) how does the nature of their identity differ and/or is similar to their parents and (4) what is the nature of their knowledge and/or interests in their heritage and parental homeland. There is a dialogical relationship between data collection and analysis in the tradition of grounded theory therefore, evaluations of data were ongoing and consisted of the analysis of twenty semi-structured interviews along with informal and formal discussions with youth.

Findings: Analysis of in-depth interviews presented three categories: (1) pathways of acculturation where in participants’ formative years parents’ parallel their acculturative methods influencing participants’ ethnic self-identity trajectories and repertoires; (2) influence of transnational practices and  multiculturalism on this process; and lastly, (3) the impact of these proceedings leading participants’ to identify as ‘Habesha’ (supra-national ethnic term). Findings reveal how intentionality on the part of parents and secondary socialization intervene on intergenerational cultural continuity to transform participants’ to reject ethnocentricity yet yearn for native country affiliation.

Implications: Research in the Canadian context mostly engages in exploring second-generation immigrants’ adjustments/adaptation into Canadian society. This leaves a myriad of unexplored possibilities in research that can stand to inform practice. A focus on the process of identity construction within a transnational field elucidates the importance that youth place on their ancestral place of origin. This contributes to generational research on transnationalism, social work curriculum and has the potential to inform models of practice with immigrant communities.