Navigating Cultural Worlds and Negotiating Identities: A Conceptual Model

Abstract

For children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds the ability to maintain flexible identities and integrate multiple facets of self is a crucial developmental task. We present a conceptual model for the development of expertise in navigating across cultures, delineating how community characteristics interact with family and individual practices to create the conditions under which children develop expertise in navigating multiple cultural worlds and identities. Core constructs and propositions about the nature of relations are derived from a multidisciplinary review of extant scholarship. To illustrate an application of the model, we compare two waves of immigration to the US from the Indian subcontinent and derive potential hypotheses about how differences in immigration history and circumstances of settlement in the host country are associated with the processes of negotiating identities.

Adolescent Health Development: A Relational Developmental Systems Perspective

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Relational Developmental Systems Theories and the Ecological Validity of Experimental Designs

“…These split approaches are rejected by proponents of relational developmental systems theories [e.g., Mistry & Wu, 2010;Overton & Müller, 2013]. Within contemporary theory, these split conceptions are eschewed in favor of a relational metamodel that emphasizes the study and integration of different levels of organization as a means to understand life-span human development [Lerner, 2006;Overton, 2013].…”

When ‘el intérprete’ is also the ‘learner’: An Innovative Youth Empowerment Project for Immigrant Youth

“…We define navigating multiple cultural worlds and identities as being able to manage effectively the process of living in multiple cultural settings (Cooper, 2003;LaFramboise, Coleman, & Gerton, 1993;Mistry, & Wu, 2010). Further, we suggest that navigating behavioral norms, language, and discourse styles may well be a unique strength of immigrant children who move through multiple cultural worlds.…”