Who Am I: A qualitative study towards the ethnic identity construction among Dutch/Asian young adults in The Netherlands.

Abstract

Intermarriage is nowadays becoming increasingly more common in the Netherlands, causing more children to grow up in ‘mixed families’. This study is greatly inspired by the master thesis written by Naomi Kok Luís in 2017, where she studied the ethnic identity construction among Dutch individuals who have a black parent and a white parent. This study explored the construction of the ethnic identity of five Dutch/Asian young adults, including an analysis of a family, peer, other social factors, and a discourse analysis. A methodological triangulation was adopted for this paper, namely: content analysis, terminology analysis, and linguistic ethnic self-categorisation. The sample consisted of one male and four females who are in their twenties. Semi-structured interviews were conducted for the study to gather demographic data, developmental histories, self-descriptive statements and ethnic attitudes. The transcripts were analysed in two forms. First, they were summarised to highlight and compare the psychosocial progress of the interviewees’ multi-ethnic identity developments. Second, a discourse analysis was completed in order to discover which phrases and terms the respondents used to describe and position themselves in the society. The content analysis confirmed that social context has a large impact on the identity construction of the respondents. Results showed that participants have an affinity with their own Dutch as well as their own the Asian culture. However, they seemed to share a feeling of ‘not fitting in’ when they were younger. The terminology analysis revealed that participants frequently used words to distinguish themselves from others, whereas terms such as ‘different’ occurred mostly. The perspective analysis indicated that participants used a variety of methods to linguistically categorise themselves. Findings showed that participants seemed to see the Western as the out-group more often when they are sharing a past experience when they were in an Asian country. This confirmed that identity is multi-faceted and ever-changing, depending largely on the social context. It can be concluded that Dutch/Asian young adults identify themselves with multiple ethnicities depending on the social context. It is recommended that future research should adopt a different approach instead of conducting interviews and take into account more respondents from one particular background in order to generate more specific results.