Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.5559/di.20.2.07
The Construction of Identity and Home(-Lessness) in Diaspora Discourse
Caroline HORNSTEIN TOMIĆ
; Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Zagreb
Abstract
With pluralization as a central characteristic of modern,
complex societies, goes along the loss of embeddedness
in one culture which provides individuals with their identity.
This explains the contemporary discussion about the loss
of identity, the steady increase of cultural differences /
diversity and of problems concerning social integration
deriving thereof. This article concentrates on discourses of
people with migration experiences, members of diasporas,
who out of biographical necessity have to deal with the
search for identity, the under-standing between different
cultures, the meaning of cultural belonging, and with
experiences of strangeness / being a stranger. Migrant
biographies bear, it is argued in the article, the
symptomatic traits of experiencing modernity, which
provokes a constructive approach to identities, and which
furthermore requires social integration as an individual
effort. This, however, leads to a specific cultural
competence of interculturality, which particularly
enables coping with cultural difference/diversity
in the complex social environment of our time.
Keywords
construction of identity; ethnicity; migration; diaspora; integration; complex societies; cultural difference / diversity
Hrčak ID:
69564
URI
Publication date:
15.6.2011.
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