Identity and acculturation: On being mono- and bicultural in a multicultural context

Identity and acculturation: On being mono- and bicultural in a multicultural context Even within a globalizing world, Luxembourg takes an exceptional position with a foreign population of 44 %. Furthermore, Luxembourg is a trilingual country and the official languages French, German and Luxembourgish are widely spoken, as well as English and the languages representing the countries of origin of the residents. Luxembourg’s steel industry attracted several waves of guest workers from neighboring countries as well as Italy and Portugal. Many descendants now live in the second or even 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. One further consequence of this multicultural context is that many children grow up in mixed-national households or are born in a country which is different to their passport country or to that of their parents. In a series of quantitative studies we investigated how children raised in this multilingual, multicultural context and growing up in bi-national families or in a country different to their passport country organize and experience their nationalities. Studies were conducted at two different secondary schools, namely the European School of Luxembourg (N = 204, average age M = 15.16, SD = 0.84) which attracts a large number of children whose parents work for the European Institutions and a large comprehensive Luxembourg State school (N = 225, average age M = 15.93, SD = 1.15) whose students come from a wide range of backgrounds. At both schools the student populations represent a wide range of countries and about half are raised in mixed national households. First an open self-definition measure was applied to assess whether the students self-identify in a mono- or bicultural manner. Secondly, an adapted version of the bicultural identity integration measure was administered to evaluate whether biculturalism is experienced as a source of conflict and to what extend the nationalities are integrated in the daily lives. The results indicate that culture contact alone is not a sufficient condition to self-identify in a bicultural way. Students growing up in mixed national households, however, are more likely to self-identify as bicultural and experience this biculturalism as harmonious, a source of pride and serving the sense of uniqueness. Further factors influencing the self-definition process as mono- or bicultural will be discussed and implications for identity processes within increasingly diverse societies elaborated within an acculturation framework