Problems and purposes

Ever more youth in Sweden, as well as in other countries, live their everyday lives with more than one culture. A fifth of the pupils in Swedish schools are either born outside Sweden or have at least one parent with a non-Swedish background. For many of those children and youth, the dominant culture has not been an integral part of their lives since they were born. Most often, they have acquainted themselves with the majority culture and the prevalent language when they enter primary school. This is when a process begins that influences even other aspects of their lives.

My aim with this dissertation is to try to understand this process. I do so by describing the encounter of the youth with the new society and how the roads into it are created in individual cases. The emphasis is on how they think about events and experiences along that road. The lives of these young people are characterised by the taken-for-granted home culture as well as by the new majority culture that, in the early stage at least, is foreign to them. The basic question is, how do they manage to join these rather different aspects of everyday life.

Point of departure and methodology

I endeavour to describe this process in as many of its facets as possible. Encountering the new society is also a confrontation with something strange, unfamiliar. This is the starting point of reflections on which the construction process is based that joins the new and strange with the taken-for-granted one brings along. Thus, one part of the description deals with what this type of thinking looks like. Another takes it point of departure in the language, in the special problems connected with the fact that the mother tongue is different from the majority's language. Furthermore, I describe how the relations inside the family and relations to the home culture undergo transformation during this process.

The narratives of the young people themselves constitute my point of departure. With them as the foundation, I convey the patterns and the distinctive features I have found in this process.

I have based this description on loosely structured interviews with 22 youth and young adults. It is not a homogeneous group; some are refugees, others are second-generation immigrants, yet others have grown up in culturally mixed families. What is common for them all, however, is that their have their cultural 'roots' elsewhere, i.e. outside society's dominant culture. They carry with them a luggage which, in more than one way, influences their lives, their perceptions of the past as well as of the present and the future.

Their various cultures of origin distinguish them to a certain extent and in different ways from the Scandinavian culture, but this difference in and of itself is not what I focus on. Instead, I am interested in how they go about constructing their new life worlds in the encounter between the old and the new, the known and the strange. A life world consists partly of the world we experience in everyday life, partly of finite provinces of meaning such as religion, knowledge and the world of our dreams. Everyday life is an intersubjective world that we share with other human beings.

A phenomenological perspective and five specific features

I have chosen to work with a phenomenological perspective since my aim is to analyse and describe the everyday world as it presents itself to these young people.

I am of the opinion that the process of constructing reality I have found in the narratives of the young women and men share some basic characteristics. They are common to everyone who goes through similar transformations and adaptations. One may say that they all find themselves in a somewhat similar situation since they strive to join the different aspects of the world of everyday life with the other provinces of meaning in their life worlds.

First feature - reflexivity

The first among the specific features is a reflexive interplay between the taken-for-granted and the strange, between what they bring along and the new world they encounter. This feature deals with what makes the thinking process begin and, thus, the process of construction that aims to bring some order among the different worlds. Alfred Schutz contributes the theoretical background to my discussion of how the taken-for-granted and the strange appear in our consciousness. Schutz argues that the encounter with the new society implies that the taken-for-granted everyday knowledge that is part and parcel of the cultural patterns one leaves behind, is no longer available as a tool with which to find the way through the new, problematic situations. At the same time, the cultural pattern of the new or strange society is not available as a tool; it does not have the same function to the newcomer as it does to the group living there already. This constitutes a major problem. In order to understand the new society, the newcomer needs a knowledge that is deeper, or has a higher level of relevance, than the knowledge he or she brings along and which was sufficient to tackle everyday life in the home culture.

I believe there are certain parallels between the situation experienced by the stranger in the encounter with the new society and the one we all experience, more or less pronounced, in postmodern society. This type of society is assumed to be characterised by reflexivity, a term that implies that we are confronted, almost constantly, with new phenomena. Everything applies only 'until further notice.' Anthony Giddens use the term 'post-traditional' to describe this society; traditions are successively weakened and lose their capacity to guide humans through life's many and varied situations. While experts may offer advice on what can be done, traditions have a normative or moral content that tells us what ought to be done.

Zygmunt Bauman argues that the postmodern implies, indeed forces us, to live with ambiguity. I have found that the young people who grow up with two cultures live with ambiguity in a double sense.

Second feature - language

The situation is further complicated by the fact that the newcomer is rarely in command of the new language, at least not to an extent that permits him or her to move freely around in the area or intersubjectivity. For most of them, the majority language is the second language.

This constitutes the second specific feature of the process. Language is an integral part of culture and, like culture, it has an important structuring function - as seen, for instance, in the rules applying to vocative forms. Language is also a primary tool for acting into and handling the intersubjective world, i.e. the world of everyday life where the question of who is allowed to say what to whom and under what circumstances varies from one culture to another.

In the language we learn as children words predominantly carry an emotional meaning. This connotative meaning contains associations and emotions that remain active even after the words have also acquired a concrete, denotative or lexical meaning. The connotative aspects of language are individual as well as cultural and they carry feelings, ethics and moral dimensions. When we learn a second language, it is the denotative meaning of the words that acquire primacy.

Third feature - changed relations in the family

A third special feature which the migration seems to actualise is that of changed relations and positions within the family. Among the contributing factors one may mention the curtailed social network and the differences in knowledge about and capacity to speak the new language. Like language, social relations are a tool of paramount importance when moving around in the space of intersubjectivity. It is a fact that children often learn the new language more quickly than their parents; thus the children acquire a responsibility for contacts between the family and society which they would never have back home. In this way the parents become dependent on their children for social contact. In some cases, the adult position is further weakened when the parent generation becomes unable to support the family economically. The theoretical insights I rely on here are provided by sociologist Merdhad Darvishpour's thoughts on the changing relations of power inside the family caused by migration. I have found quite some evidence of his thesis that the men come to live in the past, the women in the present and the children in the future. Traditions are a tool to preserve continuity with what has been; they help us create coherence in which to feel at home and at ease. When it comes to understanding the complications associated with this change of positions in the family, I have found Giddens' way of reasoning helpful.

Fourth feature - the thinking process

The fourth specific feature is described in the chapter 'Three basic aspects - intersubjectivity, continuity and consciousness.' While the first specific feature - the interplay between the taken-for-granted and the strange - deals with what initiates the thinking process, this one analyses the thinking itself. The area of intersubjectivity is simultaneously that of everyday life; it is the space in which - mutually - we create social relations. The very fact that the newcomer does not have a taken-for-granted or smooth entrance into the area of intersubjectivity contributes to an increased, sharpened consciousness about the different orders of things and a struggle to find out how they relate to each other. In understanding this problematic I rely theoretically on Nick Crossly's "Intersubjectivity. The Fabric of Social Becoming". Crossly distinguishes between radical and egological intersubjectivity. The radical one is direct and non-reflexive. That is what characterises a dialogue among participants who do not have to search for words or formulations. In contrast, when people meet who are not in command of each other's languages and/or do not immediately understand the meaning of the situation they are in, there is a much greater need for reflection and planning which is what characterises the egological intersubjectivity. I believe, therefore, that egological aspects weigh more heavily in the encounter between people with different cultural backgrounds.

Zygmunt Bauman argues that structure is fundamental to all human culture. The basic function of structure is connected with a universal human propensity and struggle to create a certain minimum of order in one's life. One may say that there is a will to understand the larger picture, to connect new information with what one already knows and thus achieve a certain continuity and coherence in existence. But the order of things varies from one culture or one society to the next. The confrontation with a clearly different order of things causes us to observe, compare, evaluate and seek explanations of what seems different. This in turn produces a heightened awareness about the different orders which otherwise would not have been stimulated had we stayed home and used only the knowledge we obtained through childhood aimed to help us navigate in everyday life within that one cultural setting.

Thus we become more aware about the different appearances and features of cultures. The young people we meet in this investigation compare their home culture with what they encounter in the majority culture they now find themselves faced with. One is confronted with the other; what one may have distanced oneself from in one phase of life may later be accepted and integrated with the experience 'capital' that one later identifies with. It may even be said that culture is the 'material' used by the newcomer. Culture has created and moulded us but we also use culture to create our life world.

Fifth feature - the approach to culture

This active relation or approach to culture makes up what I call the fifth specific feature, and it is Zygmunt Bauman who delivers most of the theoretical basis for my analysis of this feature. I share the view of culture as a matrix of possible changes. Even if culture in many ways denotes continuity, stimuli from outside is a sine qua non of culture. At the same time as they break continuity and bring disorder, they contribute new energy which provides for transformation and development. A culture that isolates itself invariably ends up in stagnation and falls back on repression to maintain itself.

My interviews with the young people mirror the special features I have mentioned above. Here we also find the reasons why they have left their home countries; often it seems motivated by the wish to help someone else, for instance to help provide a better future for the children. The early stage is characterised by confrontation with the new and strange and by the fact that the newcomer has lost a good part of his or her social network. Then begins the process of joining what one already knows with the new: the newcomer observes, compares and becomes aware of the similarities and the differences. This involuntary confrontation - this reflexivity - transforms into a more or less forced but conscious investigation of how the different orders of things relate to each other. The differences we deal with here are mostly associated with social relations and attitudes. Attitudes and opinions on, say, independence, freedom and equality are reflected in the norms underlying social relations.

The construction process

The luggage these young people carry with them from back 'home' such as ways of thinking, knowledge, social position and prestige do not allow passage into the new society. They can not just throw this luggage away, it continues to influence their lives; at the same time, most of it is not transferable, and cannot be translated into the new culture.

I imagine the construction process as an irregular interplay between the anchoring in the home culture and the anchoring in the new one. It is shaped by all the events and experiences the newcomer goes through in that particular situation.

We can see this process at a number of levels. At a general level, it is culture opposite culture. At the level of the near and everyday life, there is the tension between family life anchored in the home culture, on the one hand, and life in the school where the majority culture dominates on the other. This produces a reflexivity not only at the mental level but also at the physical level. As stated above, reflexivity per definition implies thinking. But this is a reflexivity that 'lives in the body' and which therefore, paradoxically, does not produce a conscious thinking or awareness. One might say that the construction process runs automatically when you grow up with both/and. This applies, for instance, to those who have frequently and regularly visited their home country. Some of those I have interviewed have deliberately chosen to investigate their home culture by going back to study or work there. And for those who have grown up in an enclave culture, the construction process really gather momentum when they take the large step out into the majority society.

The importance of language - the mother tongue as well as the majority language - is clear to all I have interviewed. It is common that the children command the latter better than their parents while the parents remain more skilled in the mother tongue. For some youth this is a reason why they do not understand their parents that well. Language is also of major importance to the question of identity formation. An eleven-year old boy woke up one morning, perturbed at the fact that he had been dreaming in Swedish: had he now become a Swede?

Language also seems to function as an indicator of intelligence; a poor command of language is often associated with low intelligence. Thus, language opens or closes doors to the majority community.

This is where one of many complicated issues arises in the migration process. The changing capabilities and positions of family members make the children more responsible for the family's contact with society; that in itself changes the status of the members. A young woman formulated this process by stating that men were losing their former status. They could not remain the head of the family while asking their kids for help. They did not speak the language to maintain social relations with the larger community. Immigrant parents do not have the same qualifications as the native-born parents in preparing their children to adult life in a society with which they themselves are not familiarised. In addition, this causes a higher 'density' of roles and relations within the family: a few take upon them more roles than they otherwise would due to the restricted social situation.

High awareness

The interviews clearly reveal that the young people are highly aware of the differences in the orders of things; they are also conscious of the both the positive and the negative results they may produce. Many tell the story about how their parents really tried to gain access to the new society but, successively, gave up for one or the other reason. If you do not feel welcome under the new circumstances, one natural reaction is to distance yourself from the majority culture and hold on strongly to the home culture. This happens particularly in enclave cultures where compatriot demands and pressure create an extra obstacle for the young man or woman who really wants to become one of the majority culture.

Could we learn to see the immigrant as a resource and not only as a problem?

Generally speaking, the surrounding perspective on immigrant youth focuses much more on the problems than on the opportunities. The teachers, school nurses and other 'experts' I have interviewed predominantly talk about the difficulties encountered in and with this group of youth. Research on the newcomers and the migration process tend to be problem-oriented and focus on ethnic groups. There is also a tendency to rename 'immigrant problems' and call them 'social problems' and/or 'labour market problems.' Surely, the two can be related to each other and one ought neither disregard the fact that deficient language ability makes integration into the new society more difficult, nor that cultural dimensions can cause misunderstandings.

The problems and difficulties encountered by the young people when going through this process are well expressed by them. The focus in this dissertation, however, is on the patterns or special features that characterise the process as such. It is my sincere hope that my analysis of these features, theoretically as well as empirically, may contribute to a more diverse and balanced image of the immigrant's situation than the one we tend to find among members of the majority population. Furthermore, I would be happy if the dissertation help increase the awareness of the many resources, the human potential, immigrants carry with them in their luggage.

In the summarising discussion I have chosen to focus on the ambiguity connected with growing up with more than one culture. Since ambiguity is also a defining characteristic of postmodern society, I believe that the ability to deal with more than one culture can be seen as an asset in dealing with postmodern issues in general. The young people emphasise that one such asset is their perceived ability to deal with problems and issues from more than one angle. They seem to share the awareness that things can be done and life lived in different ways without having a need to ranking one as better than the other. Another advantage mentioned by several is their social competence and ability to mediate among people.

I am convinced that human beings strive to find some coherence in their lives; it is a basic trait of human existence. It seems to me that the young people we meet here perceive the reflexivity, the interplay between the taken-for-granted and the strange as well as different perspectives and openness in the encounter with difference as the very stuff that this life coherence is made of.

 © The author and TFF 2001

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