Cultural Identity as Part of Youth’s Self-Concept in Multicultural Settings

Identity is recognized as an important aspect of psychosocial well-being. This study examined the self-concept and cultural identity of 550 youth in a community based sample of high school students in Canada. A revised version of Kuhn and McPartland’s (1954) Twenty Statement Test and Oetting and Beauvais’ (1991) orthogonal cultural identification item were used to gather data. The relationship between participants’ individual (age and gender) and environmental (cultural background and migrant background) with cultural identity levels was considered. Close to 79% of respondents were born in Canada, 18% had immigrated, and 2.5% were visa students. The average age of respondents was 17 years. In relation to self-concept, 61.3% of responses were related to the Self-Evaluations category and 16.5% to the Social Identity category. Five sub-themes (Ethnicity/National origin, Migration status/Residency, Race, Language, and Cultural/Political) were related to cultural identity. Over 54% of the sample identified a lot and 32.5% identified some with the Canadian way of life. Cultural identity levels were found to vary by cultural background in relation to several cultural identity groups. The concept of neighbourhood concordance was considered among the explanations for emerging patterns. The term multiculturation was proposed in cultural identity discourse in multicultural settings.