Identity and acculturation: On being bi- and multicultural

Even within a globalizing world, Luxembourg takes an exceptional position with a foreign population of 43 %. The country is trilingual and all three official languages are spoken throughout the country. At the turn of the century, Luxembourg’s steel industry attracted several waves of guest workers from neighboring countries, Italy and Portugal. Many descendants live now in the second and third generation in Luxembourg. As host to many European Institutions and as a global financial services center, Luxembourg attracts an international workforce. The result is a multicultural composition of society and residents who have experienced different forms and degrees of culture contact. These groups can be differentiated by their length of stay in Luxembourg, ranging from several generations (resident Luxembourgers), some generations (migrants), length of a contract/study (sojourners) or working day (commuters). In a series of quantitative studies, we examined the endorsement of multiculturalism that is the attitude towards the plural composition of the society, by these groups. In a first study, we tested the relationship between different forms of culture contact, individual values as measured by the Schwartz Values Structure, and the endorsement of multiculturalism. In particular, we could show that high Self-Transcendence, low Conservation, and the conviction that it is possible to have more than one nationality (efficacy), as well as a mixed composition of the circle of friends, were significant predictors for high levels of self-reported multiculturalism. In a second study, we investigated the relationship between language competence, bilingualism, and biculturalism that is the internalization of more than one culture. We could demonstrate that high language competence (bilingualism) is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for self-reported biculturalism. In a third study, we investigate adolescents, raised in bi-national families regarding their experience of biculturalism. All findings are discussed within an acculturation framework