Analysis of Identity construction process in life story/in narratives

Abstract

This article discusses the struggles suffered by foreigners living in Mexico in terms of identity processes. By means of narratives, we identify in the speech of four foreigners some characteristics that show how they integrate into a new society as active participants. We believe that individual identity is an endless adjustment of a person to the environment and the roles he/she adopts. A person goes through a number of phases when faced with a new society and culture, and such phases are identifiable in his/her speech. Based on this assumption, the discourse of the study subjects was analyzed using a dynamic model that links identity construction with the principles of social identity theory and the W curve (Reisinger, 2009) on the one hand, and with identity strategies (Camilleri, 1996) and acculturation (Berry, 1997) on the other, combined in an original interaction scheme designed by Amin (2012).