Living in a Multicultural World

What does identity mean for an immigrant? Tan Le was only four years old when she and her family took a dangerous journey to emigrate from Vietnam to Australia. After time in a refugee camp they settled in a suburb of Melbourne Australia. In her 2014 TED Talk, she describes her feelings of living in a parallel existence with different identities; as an Asian student focused on her education, an immigrant from a community where many felt isolated and disenfranchised and a social activist who felt out of place without a firm understanding of dominant cultural and social norms when she was asked to present at large venues and forums. She continued to challenge herself, completed law school and now runs a bioinformatics company. Not all immigrants will have the same level of professional success as Tan Le, but most share the experience of struggling to form a personal identity and social identity.

Learning Objectives

At the end of the chapter, you should be able to:

1. Explain the concept of multicultural identities across and within cultures.
2. Explain how multicultural identity is different than personal identity or social identity.
3. Define the term acculturation and how it is different from enculturation.
4. Identify a type of positive acculturation and negative acculturation.
5. Distinguish between acculturation and culture shock.
6. Identify psychological differences associated with bilingualism.
7. Distinguish between cultural frame switching and cultural code switching.
8. Explain the foreign language effect and its relationship to negative perceptions of bilingual speakers.
9. Distinguish between frame switching and code switching. Provide examples.
10. Distinguish between cultural reaffirmation, identity denial and stereotype threat as challenges of living in a multicultural society.