'It's just a name?' Young people in Canada and Germany discuss 'national' belonging'

Summary, in English

Both Canada and Germany are multi-cultural societies, but with different approaches to this reality. In this chapter, I explore the question of how young people understand and define their social positions, and how much the process is influenced by the societies they live in. I use material from a qualitative research project in one German and one Canadian secondary school. Young people with and without migrant backgrounds shared their experiences and analyses with me, discussing issues of belonging on a number of levels. Drawing on some of these discussions, I seek to show if and how structural differences on the nation-state level materialise in the way participants reproduce different discourses on “national” belonging. Statements of the Canadian participants are central here, and complemented by the comparative perspective of their German counterparts.

• Author: Irina Schmitt
• Editor: Christine Riegel; Thomas Geisen
• Publishing year: 2007
• Language: English
• Pages: 81-96
• Publication/Series: Jugend, Migration und Zugehörigkeit. Subjektpositionierungen im Kontext von Jugendkultur, Ethnizitäts- und Geschlechterkonstruktionen
• Document type: Book chapter
• Publisher: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften
• Topic: Gender Studies
• Keywords: multi-culturalism; Germany; Canada; national belonging; youth; migration
• Status: Published
• Project: “Transfer of Cultural Praxes and Norms: Allochthonous and Autochthonous Youths between Parents, School, and Peer Group”
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISBN: 978-3-531-15251-6