Att leva med två kulturer : En kvalitativ studie om identitetskonstruktionen bland ungdomar som ingår i två kulturella världar

Sammanfattning: Today´s swedish society consists of an ethnic and cultural variety which can also lead to a lot of challenges surrounding social integration. These challenges can express themselves in various of ways, but often resulting in an inclusion or exclusion of ethnic minorities. The immigration politics around year 1979 was to a great extent distinguished by equality, freedom and cooperation which enabled immigrants the right to keep their cultural identity and language. The children to the immigrants grow up in two cultures- their original culture and the swedish culture. The aim with this study is to investigate the different social roles immigrant youths construct in relation to the categories “swede” and “immigrant”, as well as in relation to the different cultural environments in which they are included. Theories like segregation, discrimination and Goffman´s dramaturgical role theory are used in this paper together with previous research about “third cultural individuals” and youths living in two different cultural worlds. We used a thematic analysis of the gathered empirical data consisting of four interviews. The result indicate that youths with at least two foreign born parents identify themselves both as “swedes” and as “immigrants”. They also identify themselves both as “swedes” and as an albanian, kurd, syrian respective a montenegrin. The result that emerged is that they felt like they need to play a role in order to be accepted in environments where they are among swedes and at work. They feel like they have to talk and behave like a “swede”.