by Selina Máté

The concept of identity is far too complex for one singular understanding. Its definition tends to be different depending on who you (the person) ask. I have found my identity to be predominantly rooted in past experiences. When asked, “tell me about yourself,” I find myself telling stories of my Midwestern roots, family upbringing, my love for Guatemala, and my dog. However, I have been tempted in recent years to add present experiences to this answer. I find myself including that I live in North Carolina and adding bits about my job and education.

Time and time again I have grappled with the question - 

What forms my identity?

If our history defines us so profoundly, what do the role of the present and the future play in shaping our identity? Are we truly a product of our past - a conglomerate of events all coming together to form a personality - or are we an ever-evolving being, awaiting change at every turn? 

I think that our identity is a beautiful combination of both the past and the present. 

I work at World Relief Durham, a refugee resettlement agency in North Carolina. Here, I fulfill the role of the mentorship coordinator in our Refugee & Immigrant Youth Services program. While my duties vary from day-to-day, my overall responsibility is to help high school and college-aged students build relationships with volunteer mentors. In addition to this, we provide academic and vocational support. 

As you can imagine, I get the chance to talk with many young people about their future and what they aspire to do. Their goals are endless - from lawyer to doctor to a business owner. They all aspire to create something bigger than themselves, while simultaneously seeking to make their families proud. Alongside this, most of my students are highly invested in their home culture, family, and religions. While these students attempt to move forward in a new country with a new language, they must also take their pasts into full consideration. Moving to a new place is no easy task, but a refugee’s journey is excruciating.

The young people I work with are experiencing a constant evolution of identity. They have shared that they feel the need to learn how to be a part of two cultures at once and, in some sense, balance two identities. One participant shared that when she arrives home from school, she feels she is African, fitting in once again with her family from the Central African Republic. At school, she feels as if she is a young American girl - still proud of her African heritage, but learning a new culture. This complicated feeling is not unfamiliar to many immigrants and refugee youth. 

This complexity is often referred to as acculturative stress or strains/stressors associated with the acculturative process. It can lead to depressive symptoms, behavioral problems, and lower scores in school. This issue of identity can feed into other matters in a young refugee or immigrant’s life. For most, positive mentoring relationships can help combat these problems that acculturative stress causes. They can help youth detangle the confusion and focus on positive social integration in their new homes. 

One example of this stress that is often shared in the World Relief Durham office is a story of a student that got sent to the office for bringing a knife to school. When the teacher found out that the student was in possession of a “weapon” they sent them straight to the office. When the student’s parents were called, the office personnel and the parent ran into quite a bit of confusion. The parents asked, “How is my child supposed to sharpen their pencil if they don’t have a knife with them?” The school staff realized that this was not an attempt at harm, but rather a cultural difference between the new refugee student and the US school system. This difference was a learning experience for the family and staff; however, these differences are not always handled with as much grace and kindness.

While refugee and immigrant youth deal with complex identity questions that are often unmatched, I believe that everyone experiences these identity shifts in their own ways. I felt a deep sense of confusion and depression when shifting from a college student to an adult, from a Michigander to a North Carolinian and from a single woman to a married one. These monumental changes that we all face at different times can affect us in ways that go deeper than the surface. All of the good and bad experiences that we go through mold us, and we do not get to decide which ones we get to keep. The bad comes along with the good.

As we go through life, we can make changes and define our future, but we cannot neglect the fact that our past influences who we are and how we interact with the world. We get to decide what we want to do with ourselves and allow God to use those past experiences, both the good and the bad, to advance the Kingdom and make His name known. This concept reminds me of a verse in Romans. Romans 8:28 notes, 

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Everyone faces challenges in life. It is a fact. In my experience and the lives of many of my students, the challenges have been hard and confusing - often leading to identity confusion. However, these challenges can be used for the good of creating our worldview. They influence how we allow our identity to be shaped. 

Our identity is shaped by the past, but also by the present. We are complex beings, created in the image of God. Perhaps this image and identity look like an art college or a stained glass window. Each piece is intricate and beautiful on its own; however, when you look at the bigger picture - you see how marvelous it is in its entirety and what a beautiful story it tells. For the refugee youth in my program, their individual parts are composed of many components - their home country, family culture, and religion. Each day they add new pieces to themselves as they navigate a new country, language, and culture in the United States. When the old and the new collide within them as they do in all of us, there may be confusion and a more complex identity, but overall there is beauty. 

Resources

We’ve created a free downloadable PDF to explore the article deeper. It contains discussion questions about the topic in general terms that will give you a jumping-off point for beginning a conversation.

The second page contains a way to see the topic from a biblical perspective.

And finally, to go deeper into the subject, we have chosen a few curated resources to explore from other authors’ and thinkers’ research or perspectives.

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