Cyber-extended identity among 1.5 and 2nd generation female Armenian immigrant high school students: a segmented assimilation

UnrestrictedIncorporation of immigrant children and their families is a critical issue with widespread implications for educators and researchers. These 1.5 and 2nd generation immigrant youth have increasingly global perspectives and interests. Because they use technologies like the Internet to adjust to life in the United States and maintain connections with their homelands, their social spaces, conceptions of home and ideas about citizenship are dynamic and have yet to be fully researched. Little research has been done on the experience of the contemporary 1.5 and 2nd generations. Their modes of incorporation, means of self-identification, and how these may be related to their experiences at school and work has been neglected.; Seven female immigrant Armenian high school students' interviews are interpreted within three theoretical frameworks. Of primary consideration is how these young women incorporate and how their incorporation differs from their parents and each other. Secondly, how they construct a sense of place, develop citizenship, and shape their identities on the Internet. Finally, the interviews reveal behaviors and beliefs these young women have that support successful modes of incorporation and from where these behaviors and beliefs come. While distinct differences emerged between 1.5 and 2nd generation participants' interactions with websites, the effects of these interactions on their modes of incorporation is clear. These young immigrants create a betweenness that blurs the distinctions between life off-line and online where ethnicity and citizenship are flexible and where they accommodate, as needed, without assimilation