Managing Identities in Diverse Societies: A Developmental Intergroup Perspective with Adolescents

ongoing

Ethnic and cultural diversity has sharply increased in modern societies due to migration processes. However, the implication of this for adolescents facing the core task of developing their identities are still mostly unknown. For both adolescents without and with a migrant background (e.g., recent refugees, second-generation immigrants) growing up in societies with increasing levels of diversity can be challenging, as they have to manage their identities acknowledging that how they address the core question “who am I?” could be the result of a dynamic process based on multiple and diverse social interactions. The IDENTITIES project adopts a cross-fertilization approach, integrating developmental and social-psychological models, to provide a ground-breaking knowledge on the processes leading to the well-being of adolescents with and without a migrant background. By proposing a multidimensional ecological developmental intergroup perspective, the project aims to examine: (1) how intergroup experiences in ecological contexts (from parents, friends, school, and leisure microsystems to cultural macrosystems) influence the development of adolescents’ (personal, social, and human) identities; (2) how the interplay of identities affects adolescents’ (physical, psychological, and social) well-being; (3) how intergroup experiences in multiple ecological contexts influence adolescents’ well-being disentangling direct and indirect effects (mediated by identities). To achieve these aims, a longitudinal study with 2,250 adolescents from two cohorts will be conducted, including multiple annual, monthly, and daily assessments and applying a multi-informant design (with quantitative data collected from adolescents, parents, teachers, school principals, municipal administrators, archives, and non-invasive medical devices) and it will be complemented by a case study with a narrative approach conducted with 50 adolescents who have lived abroad for at least three months.