Syftet med studien var att undersöka personers upplevelser av att ha varit tvångsomhändertagna enligt LVU som barn. Detta har genomförts med en kvalitativ ansats där fyra kvinnor intervjuades med stöd av en utarbetad intervjuguide. Denna täckte frågeområdena bemötande, skolgång, relationer och identitetsskapande. Resultaten tolkades utifrån livsmodellen, som är en del av den ekologiska systemteorin, samt utifrån kognitiv teori. De mest framträdande resultaten var att informanterna sällan känt sig hörda i utrednings- eller beslutssammanhang vilket medförde att deras åsikter sällan tagits i beaktande. Det påvisades även att de sällan hade en fullföljd utbildning, men ändå var självförsörjande vid intervjutillfället. Vidare framkom att de hade haft en trygg relation till någon vuxen under placeringstiden samt att placeringstiden renderat i en positiv identitetsutveckling. / The aim of the study was to investigate people's experiences of having been forcible custody according to LVU as children. This has been studied by a qualitative method and four women were interviewed using a interview guide that covered the question areas: treatment, education, relationships and identity formation. The results were interpreted by the life model, which is a part of the ecological system theory, as well as by cognitive theory. Prominent findings were that informants often felt that they were not heard in any investigation or decision context, and that their opinions seldom were taken into account. Further, few informants had not completed their education, however, at the time of the interviews they were all self-sufficient. Finally, it was also found that they had a secure relationship with an adult during the investment period and that this had rendered in a positive identity development.

Contents: Introduction; Post-Conflict Re-emergence and Identity; Cambodian Nationalism(s) and Identity; Discourses of Identity in Post-Conflict Cambodia; Locating Agency in the Development Discourse: Women and Spaces of Dissent in the Silk Sector; Conclusion: Problematizing Post-Conflict Approaches to Identity in Cambodia; Works Cited

Between 1938 and 1940 approximately 18,000 Jews from Central Europe went to the Chinese city of Shanghai to escape Nazi persecution. While almost every nation in the world refused to accept these desperate refugees, thousands found refuge in Japanese occupied Shanghai, which was an open port and one could immigrate there with no visa or passport. In an incredibly short period of time the refugees were able to develop a vibrant Jewish community. Relying primarily on the testimony of former refugees, this thesis seeks to address three main questions: What did exile in Shanghai feel like for the refugees? How did they handle and react to the circumstances of their new surroundings? In what ways did their common exile unite the group and bring about changes in personal identity?

This thesis intends to investigate the ways in which the changing perceptions of landscape during the nineteenth century play out in Kipling’s treatment of Kim’s phenomenological and epistemological questions of identity by examining the indelible influence of space— geopolitical, narrative, and imaginative—on Kim’s identity. By interrogating the extent to which maps encode certain ideological assumptions, I will assess the problematic issues of Kim’s multi-faceted identity through an exploration of both geographical and narrative landscapes and the various chronotopes—Bakhtin’s term for coexisting frameworks of time and space—that ultimately provide a new reading of identity-formation in Kim.

Like most ethnic and multicultural narratives, Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club revolves around the development of an identity in which immigrant experience and all the questions of ethno- cultural identity that attend to it play central roles. The aim of this essay is to investigate the process of identity formation of the second-generation Chinese immigrant daughters who encounter Chinese culture at home while having the immediate experience of living in America, with a focus on the cultural, language and generational gaps that exist between the Chinese mothers and their American- born daughters. This study is guided by a theoretical framework that combines postcolonial theory and a number of established theories of identity construction including the concept of hybrid identity in order to analyze and explore the American-born daughters’ identity creation. Based on this analysis, this paper presents evidence that an identity formation process that involves cultural hybridization has occurred and the outcome of this identity formation is that of a hybrid identity.

In this study, the particular identification process of Gypsiness is discussed on the basis of socio-economic conditions. Certain occupations, i.e. scrap-dealing, belly-dancing and musicianship are selected in the case of Gypsy/Roma community from Tepecik, Izmir as key markers of identity. Whether there is an organic relation between the long lasting occupational positions of Gypsy/Roma and their self-identity perception and if so, how it is perceived by each occupational category is considered as significant in the analysis of Gypsiness and its diverse interpretations. In addition to the discussion of identity with references to certain socio-economic conditions, cultural and social codes significant in identification are discussed. Particular perceptions towards the Kurdish group, the Gorgio group, as well as the &quot / Gypsy&quot / group are also considered as key markers in identity formation process of Gypsy/Roma. In this context, a field study is conducted in Tepecik, Tenekeli neighborhood using in-depth interviews.

This dissertation presents findings from ethnographic research conducted with members of the Sociedad La Unión Martí-Maceo, established by segregated Black Cuban cigar workers in Ybor City in 1904. For decades, Tampa officials have initiated numerous urban revitalization projects aimed at developing a world-class tourist destination and metropolitan center. Often, these efforts have centered on highlighting the ethnic history of Ybor City, from which the participation of Black Cubans and the Martí-Maceo Society have been actively excluded or ignored. The main issues related to contemporary Afro- Cuban identity in Tampa and which will be examined in my dissertation, include the changing nature of the Afro-Cuban community in Tampa in light of increases in migration of Cubans and other Latinos of color to the area; Martí-Maceo members’ struggle to reclaim an Afro-Cuban heritage within Tampa’s larger historic preservation efforts over the past decade; and an examination of the Martí-Maceo Society as a voluntary association that appears to have outlived its usefulness in present-day Tampa despite efforts by elderly members to sustain and expand it.

Despite prohibitions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad strictly forbidding the practice of dramatic acts of public mourning, Muslim women have persisted in wailing performances throughout history and across boarders. Pashtun social ethics require women to participate in visitation exchanges commemorating sorrowful and joyous events experienced by members of their social circle known as gham-xadi exchanges. These exchanges, which involve performative mourning rites, affirm a woman’s place in society through the maintenance of complex social networks. This research examines the role ritualized mourning performances play in the construction and maintenance of ethnic and religious identities among Pashtun women living in Pakistan. It explores the opposing pressures of Islamic prescription and Pashtun traditions regarding funerary rites and women’s mourning, arguing that social changes taking place in recent decades have caused these pressures to come into increasing conflict with one another. While urbanization and the shift from an agrarian to an industrial based economy in Pakistan has led to the amplified importance of wailing performances, globalization and growing exposure to the West has revitalized anxieties surrounding proper religious practices. The process of Islamization occurring through constitutional and educational reforms in Pakistan compounds this anxiety. These tensions have created an identity crisis among Pashtun women in Pakistan who are then forced to reconcile these disparate demands resulting in the layering of their identities. / text

This study explores how young Maltese women give meaning to the music they listen to and how this music is incorporated in everyday discourses and identities within the differing local contexts of their lives. This area of research has not attracted the attention of researchers and this study starts to fill this gap. The research was carried out in Malta, a post-colonial island with a population of approximately 400,000 people. Through purposive sampling and snowballing, 20 in-depth interviews were carried out with young Maltese women aged 16-34, from different social backgrounds. By looking at young Maltese women’s identities through their engagements with music, this study shows how girls experience the tensions between the opposing forces of Maltese traditional music and more modern globalised musical forms. Music was found to be a means of conspicuous leisure as well as a means of maintaining social difference and distinction. Musical taste and the social practices associated with that particular music was found to be a primary indicator of social class for Maltese girls. The significance of this study lies in the exploration of a topic that has not yet been properly researched. It combines the Maltese context and the gendered nature of identity formation in Malta’s music scene. The framework of categorisation of respondents is also significant since rather than categorising respondents according to the music they listen to, it categorises respondents through the ways in which they engage with their music. By developing Willis’s (1978) analytical framework, participants were placed into four categories of Fully Committed, Committed, Active Drifters and Passive Drifters. For each category, the most prominent characteristics of participants’ music identities are analysed. These include their understandings of social and cultural capital, structure and agency, negotiations of social boundaries and identity formation. The idea of distinct music subcultures is questioned as, in their everyday lives, young women in Malta rarely conform with distinct cultural groups but form parts of multiple groups within the contexts of their lives. Moreover, processes of hybridization seem to have erased what might have been understood as a subculture’s distinguishing characteristics. These have often become adopted and eventually absorbed by mainstream culture making distinct subcultures problematic. The findings of the research imply tensions between traditional and modern lifestyles that are, in turn, associated with different strata of social class.

This thesis deals with the connection between archaeological sites and processes of identity formation in Southern Africa, as expressed in relation to the Twyfelfontein rock art site and Great Zimbabwe, and, to some extent, the White Lady site. The aim is to understand in what ways people think of, and identify with, archaeological monuments. The Twyfelfontein rock art site is presented in the form of a case study, based on my own fieldwork of 2004, while the descriptions of the other sites derive from literary sources. The theoretical discussion on identity, and ethnic identity in particular, is central to this thesis. In analysing the conditions of the different archaeological sites, a discursive approach is taken in order to highlight the way perceptions of the past, and people’s identities, are dependant upon social and political processes.