Preliminary communication

Identification of the “Gastarbeiter”

Pavao Jonjić ; Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

The restructuring of the West European economies hit especially those social groups which were already marginalized, among them foreign workers. The Gastarbeiter wishes to lessen the pressure that he feels. It is a feeling of permanent control, a constant reminder that he is a foreigner, which forces him to hide his identity, suppress it, to flee from it, to »escape from identity«.
Younger migrants most often are not fully accepted by the milieu in which they have grown up, and on the other hand they have lost contact with the cultural and social environment of their parents' origin. Feeling suppressed and more and more marginalized they are losing the support of old forms of identification and it is difficult for them to find support for a new identity.
The question of how to create an identity for foreigners is becoming all the more important. We could list five forms of identification among foreigners: the old identification (the myth of return), the flight from identity, loss of identity (the feeling of emptiness), a new form of identification and self-consciousness.

Keywords

identity; foreigners; identification

Hrčak ID:

128325

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/128325

Publication date:

31.10.1988.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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