In order to improve international student enrolment, universities have to tackle challenges of ensuring satisfying experience of enrolled international students that is perceived to greatly impact future recruitment. Accordingly, this research aims to provide valuable insights into Chinese international students’ cultural identity conflict that hinders their obtainment of a positive overseas experience. An online survey assessing a range of predictors of cultural identity conflict involving personality traits, ethnic and host cultural identity strength, intergroup factors and strategies of negotiating ethnic and host cultures, and how identity conflict and various identity negotiation strategies influence intercultural competence, was distributed to the entire pool of Chinese students enrolled in a New Zealand university and an Australian university. A total of 255 students completed the survey. Multiple regression analysis revealed that conscientiousness, secure attachment, commitment to ethnic identity, low perceived discrimination, easy access to academic activities with host students significantly protected Chinese students from experiencing cultural identity conflict, whereas preoccupied and fearful attachment, assimilation strategy increased the risk of identity conflict. Additionally, Alternation between cultural demands as one of variations of integration strategy was surprisingly found to exacerbate identity conflict and led to lower levels of intercultural sensitivity, while the other variation, blending strategy significantly resulted in greater intercultural sensitivity. Managerial implications for educational institutions were discussed based on these results. To advance this field of study, limitations of the current research and future research avenues were also presented.

There exists a fundamental difference in how today's Hopi youth are growing up from that of their parents and grandparents--Hopi youth are not acquiring the Hopi language. This sociolinguistic situation raises many questions about the vitality and continuity of the Hopi language.Two key findings emerged from the study of three Hopi young adults. First, the study showed that cultural experiences are key to developing a personal and cultural identity as Hopi, but a linguistic competence in Hopi, especially in ceremonial contexts, is fundamental to acquiring a complete sense of being Hopi. Secondly, the effect of modern circumstances apparent in behavior and attitude among Hopi is evidence of another shift--a move away from a collective maintenance of language as cultural practice to the maintenance of language and cultural practice as a personal choice of use.

This thesis presents a qualitative study of the experiences of a sample of Afghan refugees who have settled in Canada. The concepts of structure and agency, as articulated in Anthony Giddens’s structuration theory have been deployed as the theoretical framework of this study. I focus on the concept of culture, as both an “enabling” and “constraining” structure and the role it plays in the life of the refugees who form the study group for this thesis. The interviews explore how the respondents use culture as a means to express and explore their agency. Several themes emerge from the interviews, which are analyzed in dialogue with the literature on refugee and immigrant settlement. In light of the research findings, the role of the refugees in Canadian immigration policy is discussed, and it is suggested that there is room for a broader and more comprehensive role for refugees within national policy. / The settlement experience of Afghan refugees in Halifax, Nova Scotia

Cemeteries serve as repositories of history and memories of the local community, as well as afford the living population an opportunity to connect and learn about a culture’s past. Accordingly, the cemetery as a place and the rituals associated with death and remembrance that it holds, not only communicate and express the ideals of a collective identity, but also undergo modifications with time and geography. Through the study of burial rituals and funerary traditions of the multicultural community in the City of Richmond in British Columbia, this thesis seeks unifying qualities within the diversity of practices that will offer strategies for the design of ritual spaces that not only communicate the cultural identity within each community, but also serve as a place in which new ritual practices are born and integrated for the greater community of Richmond.

In 2004, Métis Nation offices began to register and issue identification cards to Métis citizens who met certain criteria. While many Métis people did register, and are registering, there are many who have not, and will not. As a result, some question the validity of the registry because it is unclear how it can reflect an accurate picture of the culture when not all Métis are represented. Through in-depth, unstructured interviews, my reflexive ethnography traces the accounts of six Métis citizens in southern Saskatchewan. I explore their stories about their Métis-ness, and their experiences with the registry. I also explore my own experiences with the registry and my journey to un/discover my own Métis-ness. The findings are presented in a creative non-fiction essay. The conclusions suggest that identification cards cannot grant someone admission to a culture; rather, cultural identity requires time, effort, intent, active participation, and meaningful connection with others.

In 1991 the Indian government officially sanctioned the country’s definitive entry into the global market and into a new era. This study focuses on the generation that epitomizes this new era and is based on fieldwork among young English-speaking, educated, Delhi-based men involved in occupations such as tourism, Internet, multinationals, journalism and sports. These young men construct their role in society by promoting themselves as brokers in the ongoing exchanges between India and the outer world. Together they constitute a heterogeneous whole with different class-, caste- and regional background. Yet, they can all be seen as members of the ‘middle class’ occupying a relatively privileged position in society. They consider the opening of India to the global market as the key-event that has made it possible for them to live an “interesting life” and to avoid becoming “boring people”. This exploration into the life-world of these young men addresses in particular how they construct their identities facing the messages and images that they are exposed to through work- and leisure-networks. They understand themselves and what surrounds them by invoking terms such as ‘India’ and ‘West’, ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’, mirroring the debates on change that have gone on in India since colonization. Yet, they imaginatively re-work the content of these discourses and give the quoted terms new meanings. In their usage ‘being Indian’ is turned into a ‘global’, ‘modern’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ stance while ‘being Westernized’ becomes a marker of ‘backwardness’ and lack of sophistication. Their experiences mark out the popularity of notions of ‘Indianness’ in contemporary metropolitan India. The study focuses on how social actors themselves experience their self-identity and how these experiences are influenced by the actors’ involvement with international flows of images and conceptualizations. It will primarily approach cultural identities through labels of belonging to abstract categories with shifting reference (referred to them as ‘phantasms’) such as ‘India’, ‘West’, etc. The study suggests that the ‘import’ of trans-national imagination into everyday life gives birth to sub-cultural formations, new ‘communities of imagination’. Their members share a similar imagination of themselves, of Delhi, their country and the world.

How do we understand ourselves? How do we relate with others? How do we build communities? These are some questions David Velleman’s theory of mutual interpretability appears to answer. In Foundations For Moral Relativism, Velleman argues that self-understanding is interlinked with one’s ability to understand others; in other words, with one’s ability to be mutually interpretable. However, being mutually interpretable requires that a person share some set of beliefs or a perceptional framework with another person that would allow the two to interact successfully with one another. Thus, communities are simply a collection of individuals whose shared beliefs enable them to more or less understand one another and engage in successful interaction Although Velleman goes on to use this theory to argue for the existence of Moral relativism, I analyze how this theory affects a bi-cultural or multi-cultural person’s self-understanding and personal identity. In other words, I explore how a multi-cultural person that learns to be mutually interpretable in more than one place forms self-identity and learns to understand him or herself.

No description available.

Global diasporas caused by wars carry many streams of people - in the 1970s one of these streams contained orphans from Vietnam delivered to white parents in the West. On arrival, the social expectation was that these children would blend seamlessly into the culture of their adoptive parents. Now some adoptees, as adults, reflect on their lives as 'Asian' or racially 'Other' children in white societies, charting the critical points in their maturation. This thesis interrogates their life histories to explore the role of birth-culture in the self-definition of people removed from that culture at birth or in childhood. Thirteen adult adopted Vietnamese participants were interviewed. These interviews provided qualitative data on issues of racial and cultural identity. These data were developed and analysed, using a framework drawn from symbolic interactionism and cultural studies, in order to reveal the interpersonal dynamics in which people were involved, and the broader cultural relations that sustained them. The findings reveal that in early childhood the adopted Vietnamese identity process was shaped by a series of identifications with, and affirmations of, sharing their adoptive parents racial and cultural identity. Such identifications were then challenged once the adoptees entered society and were seen by others as different. The participants' attempts to locate a secure sense of self and identity within the world they are placed in are disturbed by numerous uncertainties surrounding racial and cultural difference. One of the most crucial uncertainties is the adopted Vietnamese knowledge about their cultural background. While most felt they lacked positive knowledge about Vietnam and racial diversity, their sense of identity was unsettled by experiences with racism and negative cultural stereotypes throughout their late childhood to adolescence. As their recognition and acceptance of their difference develops in adulthood, they experience a degree of empowerment due to their being able to access more knowledge about their cultural background and a greater appreciation of racial diversity. Many participants have formed closer ties with other people born in Vietnam, most notably other adoptees; most returned to visit Vietnam. The thesis concludes that those adoptees who were able to develop an understanding of the Vietnamese and other backgrounds to their complex identities, tended to be more integrated as adults than those who either rejected or were unable to come to terms with their Vietnamese ancestry.

No description available.