How do we maintain our sense of cultural identity in new environments? M E G NA KA G AWA
Growing up as a half-South African, half-Japanese person and having lived in multiple different countries, I often find it difficult to define my own identity. Furthermore, coming to NYU Abu Dhabi and meeting numerous students with diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds has made me question how we maintain our sense of cultural identity in new environments. Of course, there are many components that make up our identity such as religion, political views, race, gender etc. However, for the purpose of this essay I will be focusing on a person’s national and cultural identity. In order to grasp a stronger understanding of how we maintain our sense of identity in new environments, I surveyed 10 students from NYU Abu Dhabi about their experiences with identity. The methodology used to conduct this survey will be further explained in the body of this essay. In order to analyse the results of these surveys, I will be looking at theoretical concepts from Fredrik Barth and Pierre Bourdieu to strengthen my argument that moving to a new environment does not undermine or negatively affect notions of belonging and identity; instead, mobility allows the concepts of belonging and identity to evolve and become stronger and much more diverse. Before I begin with the analysis of the results that I collected, I will discuss the methodological approach as to how I carried out my survey. To begin with, rather than choosing to conduct one-on-one interviews, I instead asked participants to answer questions via Google forms. The reason I chose this method rather than face-to-face interviews is because I believed that the participants would feel more comfortable typing out their experiences and because it gave them more time to thoroughly respond to the questions. Furthermore, considering that this research was conducted over a short period of time, in order to assure quality responses, I chose to limit the number of participants to 10 people. I am aware of the limitations of my research in that I have only collected responses from a small group of people. If this essay
HOW DO WE MAINTAIN OUR SENSE OF CULTURAL IDENTITY?
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