Identity Development of Somali College Student

Abstract

While there has been a considerable research on college students’ experiences and identity development, there is a gap on literature on immigrant college students and their collegiate experiences. This scarcity of knowledge on immigrant students has deleterious effect on these students’ academic success and psychosocial wellbeing. This is particularly critical at a time when these students face multiple and intersecting marginalizations because of their racial, ethnic, religious identities. This dissertation examines the identity development of Somali college students and how its impacted by the overlapping contextual environments in which their lives are embedded. The dissertation project uses qualitative method. Using in-depth semi-structured interviews and grounded theory constructivist methodology, data collection and analyses were conducted in tandem. Findings suggest the presence of four salient dimensions of racial, ethnic, religious and gender identity as well as meanings associated with each dimension. Racial identity was associated with experiences of political subjectivities as Blacks struggling for equality in a racialized society whereas ethnic identity was associated solidarity and belonging informed by diasporic experiences of longing and memories of participants’ ancestral homeland, Somalia. Religious identity, owing to racialization of Islam in media and society, was associated with experiences that mirrored their racial identity while gender identity was associated sense of individual agency that challenged gender norms in Somali culture. These four dimensions of identity often intersected in ways that either amplified or erased an aspect of identity. In each of these dimensions, participants contrasted their experiences as second-generation immigrants with those of their first-generation parents.