8 - Identity construction among transnational migrants: a dialogical analysis of the interplay between personal, social and societal levels

Summary

This chapter illustrates how phenomena on the personal, social and societal levels work together in the production of novel I-positions within the dialogical self. Globalization has opened the door to greater discretionary transnational migration and ushered in a new immigration. Hybridization can occur in situations where multiple I-positions are simultaneously active and cannot simply coexist, either because of conflict or because of the creative urge towards synthesis. The chapter approaches hybridization through three co-necessary levels of analysis: the personal, social and societal. Societal-level formations function as constraints on and promoters of forms of hybridization and, therefore, the emergence of third positions. Further research into the relationship between specific societal-level formations and the dynamics of expressive dominance would strengthen the ability of dialogical self theory (DST) to address the personal, social and societal levels of analysis while maintaining a focus on the dynamic and developmental potential of DST.