Youth Sociability, Ethnicity and Identity Strategies. An ethnographic study in multicultural schools of Brussels

Abstract

This paper presents an identity construction analysis of youth coming from immigration in multicultural school contexts of Brussels. In order to study the schooling experience of learners in these specific contexts, we propose to study the meaning of cultural references and practices used by learners within their youthful sociability. The concept of identity strategies shows how these young people manage and choose between different cultural referents to increase their chances of integration in the “host society”. If the school relations are intensively driven by cultural affirmations, we want to understand how culture is invested by learners in their mutual relations. It appears that these cultural practices and their social significations constitute meaningful basis in the structuring of their daily. These cultural systems constitute different cultural resources within the youthful sociability and give schemes of understanding capable to guide the young people in their social actions.