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.

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The published works that form the basis of this PhD are a selection of hip-hop songs written over a period of six years between 2010 and 2015. The lyrics for these pieces are all written by the author and performed with hip-hop group Stanley Odd. The songs have been recorded and commercially released by a number of independent record labels (Circular Records, Handsome Tramp Records and A Modern Way Recordings) with worldwide digital distributionlicensed to Fine Tunes, and physical sales through Proper Music Distribution. Considering the poetics of Scottish hip-hop, the accompanying critical reflection is an autoethnographic study, focused on rap lyricism, identity and performance. The significance of the writing lies in how the pieces collectively explore notions of identity, ‘outsiderdom', politics and society in a Scottish context. Further to this, the pieces are noteworthy in their interpretation of US hip-hop frameworks and structures, adapted and reworked through Scottish culture, dialect and perspective. Reflecting the multi-disciplinary nature of hip-hop studies, an autoethnographic framework (Monaco, 2010; Munro 2011) is combined with poetic analysis, musicological discussion and social and cultural studies toexamine the pieces that comprise the published works. Through a consideration of poetics, linguistics, sociological issues and cultural considerations, a schematic emerges, describing a construct of lyrical techniques, signifying practices, social interactions and outsider narratives that speak to (re)imagining, (re)creating and (re)constructing local culture by expressing it through hip-hop and vice versa. This study demonstrates new knowledge regarding global and local intersections in Scottish hip-hop, identity construction and negotiation, and creative approaches to rap storytelling.

This study utilizes Lave and Wenger’s (1991) communities of practice (COP) model to explore how ELLs navigate their positions within and between their many language learning communities. Drawing on Norton’s (1995, 2013) work on ELLs’ identity negotiation and Wenger’s 1998 work on the reinforcing impacts of identities between multiple COPs, this study explores what adults consider to be their COPs, how they perceive themselves within and between them, and how past, current, and imagined or possible COPs impact each other. A constructivist, multiple case study design was used to focus on participants’ perceptions of their identity negotiation processes through their own narratives across three interviews and weekly audio-recorded self-reports. Eight adult ELLs participated in the study, and their narratives revealed the temporal and situational nature of their connections to past, present, and future identities as English learners, as professionals, and as members of their communities. They experienced persistent explicit and subtle barriers to participation in their COPs with native English speakers, including a range of linguistic gatekeeping strategies. The study revealed several themes of COP membership, in particular an identification with a larger, less concrete, immigrant group that lead the participants to focus their narratives and English-learning efforts on their ability to advocate for themselves and for other immigrants in the United States. Recommendations from the ELLs and the researcher are presented for a more holistic approach to adult ELL instruction that incorporates more of the multiple facets of ELLs’ learning trajectories in the target-language context.

Comparing to the aggressive growth of the Chinese student population on Canadian university campuses, their lived experience and identity issues deserve more attention that it already had. Using the theoretical framework combining social identity theory (Tajfel, 1974) and Ting-Toomey’s (1999, 2005) identity negotiation theory, this thesis investigated the identity construction and negotiation process of Chinese international students in Canadian universities. The study utilized a qualitative approach combining semi-structured interviews and a thematic analysis to examine the intercultural experiences of sixteen Chinese students in the Ottawa area through their own voices. Six themes were uncovered and future implications for international education practice were further discussed.

With respect to matters of identities as a treacherous and sensitive subject in today’s college classroom, this project explores concepts like identity, otherness, resistance, otherization, writer’s identity, and identity negotiation; and interrogates how these concepts may affect learning and professional relationship among the class members in the First Year Composition Classroom. The crux of the argument in this research is that process and social construction collaborative pedagogies can be effective in negotiating the resistance and otherness manifesting from identity dichotomies in the First Year Composition classroom.

Due to increased transnational migration and globalisation, English has come to have a high status in Sweden, and is used in daily communication. The purpose of this research is to investigate how immigrants with English as their first language, negotiate their identity in Sweden, how they construct the need to (not) speak Swedish, and, finally, how their linguistic trajectories inform us about their linguistic ideologies and reported practices. Identity, constantly performed on the border between the self and the other, is greatly dependent on the language. Recent research in the field has focused mainly on immigrants moving to English speaking countries, while migrants with English as their first language have been somewhat neglected. This study investigates identity negotiation based on linguistic repertoire, Spracherleben, and linguistic ideologies, based on data collected through interviews. The results indicate that the fact that all informants prefer to, and mostly do use English, has a meaning beyond the language. It is namely in the language choice itself that the participants negotiate and demonstrate their identity. Language, therefore, is not the main issue the informants find problematic. Instead, it is the sense of alienation and the inability to convey their message in the way they feel would best represent who they are.

This dissertation explores one white working-class family’s hopes, fears, illusions, and tensions related to social mobility. I tell stories from my experiences as a first-generation college student, including: ethnographic fieldwork; interviews with my family, community members, and former teachers; and narratives from other working-class academics to provide an in-depth, evocative, and relational look at mobility. I explore the roots of vulnerability in my family and how I was socialized into understanding belonging and worthiness in particular ways, and how this socialization influences my feelings of belonging and worthiness in the academy. The goal of this research is bridging – past and present selves, working-class and academic cultures, work and family – for me and my family and other first-generation students and their families.

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