Constructing self-identity: minority students' adaptation trajectories in a Chinese university

Researchers have gone beyond identity status and been putting more and more emphases on the dynamic process of identity development and its contextual embeddedness. Study of individual's adaptation to the multicultural background is a good point of penetration. Because of the differences in regional conditions and cultural traditions, the minority youths who go to university in the mainstream culture would have special experiences and challenges in the development of their self-identities. Semi-structured interview and narrative were used in this research to discover the characteristics of the self-identity constructing processes of Mongolian undergraduates in a Shanghai university context. Their identity constructing process could be divided into three stages: difference-detecting, self-doubting and self-orienting. The main efforts of identity constructing in each stage could all be described as self-exploring and support-seeking. Special contents of internal explorations and sources of support were distinguished at different stages. As relative results, three main types of self-orientation were revealed: goal-oriented, self-isolated and unreserved assimilated. The characteristics of them are quite similar to those of three identity processing styles proposed by Berzonsky, which indicates there are some common elements lying in all self-development processes of adolescences and young adults. Ethnicity and culture could be background and resource or what Côté called identity capital that impacts the special course of self-identity constructing under similar principles. Different attitudes towards and relationships with their own ethnicity and new surroundings separated the three types of students from each other and interacted with the developmental characteristics and tendencies of their ethnicity identifications and self identities. It was found that minority youths' self-identity constructing was based on their needs of self-value and interacted with their ecological niche constructing. Take ethnicity attachment and ethnicity responsibility as a typical example: the setting up of bi-direction relationship between individuals and their ethnicity (or other identity-related factors) was very important for minority youths to expand and integrate themselves. We also presented in detail our methodological exploring process so as to illuminate the limitation of traditional methods and the necessity and importance of methodological reform. Methodologically, both emic and etic positions were taken, interview and narrative approaches were adopted and individual angle of analysis was kept in the research. They were all proved to be effective to provide insight into the dynamic process of self identity constructing.