This study investigates how young Korean Canadians construct and re-construct their
cultural identity through cross-cultural experiences as they interact with and negotiate
cultural differences. My interest in this study was triggered by conversations with some
young Korean Canadians. Prior to these conversations, I assumed that they would be more
Canadian than Korean in terms of culture. It was a surprise to learn that they were
becoming more interested in Korean culture as they grew up and gained a sense of their
identity as Korean Canadian. I was especially surprised when I considered their having
grown up in Canadian contexts where they speak English fluently and are exposed to
Canadian culture most of the time.
In this study, I conducted a narrative inquiry which enabled me to uncover unrecognized
and unspoken experiences associated with the cross-cultural experiences of young Korean
Canadians and understand identity construction as a temporally and relationally multilayered
process. The analysis presented in this study was drawn from twenty-six openended
interviews with young Korean Canadians living in Vancouver, British Columbia.
My findings showed that the young Korean Canadians were not indefinitely torn between
cultures nor did they remain victims of unending identity crisis, although during the initial
stage of adaptation, they went through uncertainties, tensions, and anxieties about not being
wholly one identity or the other. While crossing cultural boundaries and re-configuring
different cultures from inside-out and outside-in perspectives, they became more able to
assess which elements of each culture they wanted to embrace in their own identity
construction. As they transformed their approach from "fitting in one place" to "mixing and
matching different cultural elements," they were awakened to the possibilities of having a
multicultural identity. Identifying multiple cultural elements, they re-constructed their own
emergent form of identity beyond the limited boundary of Korean culture or Canadian
culture.
This study invites educators to revision cultural identity of immigrants, fabricated by crosscultural
living, as productive tensions and generative possibilities rather than problems to
be adjusted and resolved. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/16937 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Park, Minjeong |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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