Poster #173 - Narrative Constructions of Developmental Progression: Making Sense of ‘Mixed’ Ethnic Identities

• In Event: 1-169 - Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Section - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Integrative Statement

We present an analysis of retrospective personal narratives of nineteen youth with multi-ethnic heritages to document the process through which they have constructed and reconciled multiple ethnic identities. Our conceptual framework for the study is based broadly on sociocultural theory that views individuals and contexts as integrated (Vygotsky, 1978; Rogoff, 2003), and foregrounds individuals as active agents making sense of their encounters with developmental contexts (Mistry & Dutta, 2015; Mistry, et al 2016). In applying this broad lens to the study of ethnic identity, we integrate McAdams (2013) developmental framework of self as ‘actor’, ‘agent’, and ‘author’ and the narrative approach to studying ethnic identity (Syed, 2015) with a focus on elucidating the developmental process and how context matters. We argue that self-focused reflection or meaning-making is intensified when a person experiences a critical event or a salient experience (in this case an ethnicity-based experience) that requires a mutual readjustment of personal goals, behaviors, and contexts. Thus, we argue that narrated interpretations of personal experiences reveal these mutually-constitutive transactions frames through which individuals make meaning of their experiences in culturally constructed worlds (Polkinghorne, 1988) and through which they integrate experienced events in to their life story (McLean & Thorne, 2003).

Narratives were elicited through a semi-structured interview in which participants were asked about their family background, exposure to their multiple heritages, exposure to ethnic diversity in day-to-day settings, narrative accounts of salient ethnicity-based experiences (e.g., first awareness of being different from others around them), their reflections on the experienced events, as well as on the societal contexts within they have learned about themselves from past experiences. Interviews were audio-taped, transcribed verbatim, and uploaded into NVivo, a qualitative analysis program. Participants’ narrative accounts of critical events/experiences were categorized based on Syed and Azmitia (2008). Analysis focused on how youth represented and reflected upon critical events through which their ethnicity-based difference was made salient during childhood, the personal meaning placed on these events at the time of occurrence, and how these were integrated into a current, contextualized understanding and re-construction of their multiple heritages (see Figure 1 for an example of how participants’ narrative construction of developmental progression was documented). All 19 participants’ narrative constructions were then sorted and grouped to examine modal patterns of progression from recalled experiences (self as actor), to acting on and making sense of these at the time of occurrence as a motivated agent (self as agent), to current contextualized understandings (self as author). As evident from Figure 2, the two main groups consisted of participants who were part-Asian (6), and those with part-African heritage (10). Of this group, 5 participants had one parent born outside the USA, so we examined the two groups (differentiated by nativity of parents) separately. In addition, a 4th group (3) consisted of participants with varying mixed heritages (not including Asian or African heritages). Visual charting of the grouped participants enabled us to examine nuanced differences both across modal profiles as well as the exceptions to the rule within profiles.

Authors

• Jayanthi Mistry, Tufts University
  Presenting Author

• Judith Scott, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author