Who Am I Here? Dual Identity Between Roots and Belonging

Season Two, Episode One of the Research Series
From the Margins to the Pathway
By Louay AL-Daher — DAMI Senter
19.09.2026

Research Series Framework

This article opens the second season of From the Margins to the Pathway: Unpacking Delinquency, Identity, and Integration among Young People with Immigrant Backgrounds in Europe, a series published by DAMI Senter. The first season examined pathways into early delinquency and challenged explanations that reduce behavior to a single factor. This season turns to a logically prior question: How is identity formed, and how does it become, or fail to become, social and civic belonging?

The season does not treat identity as a fixed cultural essence, nor integration as an automatic result of legal residence or access to welfare-state services. It adopts an interactive perspective in which a person’s relationship with society develops through the interplay of identity, recognition, family, school, peers, institutions, and the digital sphere. The individual remains an agent, but acts within opportunities and constraints that are not entirely of their own choosing.

This episode uses bounded agency as an interpretive lens for understanding the interaction between individual action and social structures. The studies reviewed here did not directly test bounded agency. Rather, the concept provides a framework for organizing their findings without falling into structural determinism or imagining the individual as an actor independent of context (Evans, 2007).

Conceptual Opening

The question Who are you? figures prominently in European debates about the children of immigrants. It is often posed as though identity were a single, ready-made answer reducible to legal nationality, country of origin, or cultural affiliation. When a young person draws on more than one frame of reference, terms such as dual identity or bicultural identity are sometimes used in ways that presume conflict or division from the outset.

Scientific research, however, does not justify treating multiple frames of reference as a crisis in themselves. National identity and attachment to family culture do not always operate as opposing sides of a zero-sum equation. They may coexist, diverge, or relate to one another differently depending on the social context, the method of measurement, and the outcome being examined.

This episode therefore does not ask Which identity should prevail? It asks: What does the evidence tell us about the relationship between attachment to the culture of origin, attachment to the society in which a person lives, and psychological, social, and school adjustment? It then asks a separate question: How can these findings be interpreted within DAMI’s project for understanding how belonging is formed?

What the Evidence Shows

The International Comparative Study of Ethnocultural Youth, which included thousands of adolescents in thirteen countries, offered early support for the view that maintaining ties to the culture of origin while participating in the receiving society may be associated with more positive patterns of adaptation than some other orientations (Berry et al., 2006). A meta-analysis of 83 studies with 23,197 participants likewise found a positive association between biculturalism and indicators of psychological and social adjustment. It also showed, however, that the strength of this association varied according to how biculturalism was measured, the type of adjustment assessed, and the characteristics of the samples (Nguyen & Benet-Martínez, 2013).

Later studies call for greater caution. In a German study of 3,894 adolescents with immigrant backgrounds, combined attachment to the culture of origin and the culture of the wider society was associated with some aspects of psychological adjustment, but it did not confer a general advantage in academic achievement. Results also varied across origin groups and domains of adjustment (Schotte et al., 2018).

A more recent study followed a random sample of adolescents in Berlin through grades nine and ten. Bicultural identity was the most common pattern among participants with immigrant backgrounds, but the study did not find it to be a general cumulative resource across all domains. Its cumulative benefit was clearest in school connectedness, while the role of attachment to the culture of origin or to the wider society differed depending on whether the measured outcome was academic, social, or psychological (Baumert et al., 2024).

These findings support a more precise conclusion than the familiar claim that dual identity is best. The evidence indicates that attachment to more than one cultural frame of reference can be a resource, but it does not support treating that pattern as a universal prescription or a fixed causal relationship. Nor does it justify viewing attachment to the culture of origin as inherently risky, or identification with the majority culture as an automatic guarantee of success.

Norwegian Evidence Identity and Recognition Are Not the Same

Data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study in Norway CILS-NOR provide an important basis for understanding identity in the Norwegian context. Using the study’s first wave, Friberg found that self-identification as Norwegian becomes stronger across generations among young people of immigrant origin. At the same time, the desire to preserve the culture of the parents’ country was only weakly related to the development of national identity. In other words, feeling Norwegian and maintaining ties to family culture do not necessarily appear as opposites (Friberg, 2021).

The study also revealed an important difference between how young people define themselves and how they believe others classify them. Young people of African and Asian origin reported that others saw them as less Norwegian than they saw themselves, while the pattern differed among those of European origin. Friberg described this disparity as non-recognition of national identity. The concept shows that identity formation does not occur within the self alone; it is also shaped by the boundaries of acceptance and classification in the social environment (Friberg, 2021).

Norwegian research does not present a single picture free of tension. In two small correlational studies involving upper-secondary school and university students with immigrant backgrounds, Martiny and colleagues found a negative relationship between ethnic and national identity, but a positive relationship between national and dual identity. Positive contact with members of the receiving society was also associated with stronger national and dual identities and with a sense of integration (Martiny et al., 2020). Because the samples were small and non-representative and the design was correlational, the findings cannot be generalized to all young people in Norway. They nevertheless confirm that results vary with the definition and measurement of identity and with the sample being studied.

From Identity to Wellbeing and Delinquency A Nonlinear Relationship

This precision matters because the broader project also examines pathways into delinquency. Lee used CILS4EU data to study the relationship between identity patterns, wellbeing, and delinquency among students with immigrant backgrounds in Europe. An integrated identity pattern was associated with higher wellbeing than an assimilated identity pattern. The relationships involving delinquency, however, differed between students of European and non-European origin; no single pattern could be generalized across all groups (Lee, 2020).

This finding does not support the claim that a particular identity either prevents or causes delinquency. It supports a more cautious position: identity may function as a resource or a framework of meaning within broader pathways, but its effects depend on context, relationships, and opportunities. It does not operate as an independent cause that determines behavior.

DAMI Interpretation Identity as a Resource Not a Destiny

On the basis of this evidence, DAMI Senter proposes that identity should be understood as a dynamic social resource, rather than as a direct cause of integration or alienation. Identity derives its value from how it is lived within relationships and institutions, and from a person’s ability to translate it into participation, trust, and effective social ties.

This conclusion is an interpretive synthesis proposed by DAMI on the basis of the literature; it is not a finding tested in this exact form by any single study. Attachment to family culture may provide continuity, support, and a sense of self, while attachment to society and its institutions may open opportunities for participation and access to resources. Neither, however, operates independently of the institutional climate, social recognition, the quality of relationships, and the choices a person makes.

Bounded agency helps avoid two opposing explanations. The first treats institutions or cultural background as mechanically determining the outcome. The second places full responsibility on the individual, as though choices were made outside history, structure, and relationships. An interactive reading instead sees the individual as acting within a field of opportunities and limits. Personal decisions may expand or reproduce that field, but they cannot be understood apart from it.

Identity therefore provides a partial answer to the question Who am I? It does not, by itself, answer Where do I belong? The second question moves the analysis from identity to belonging, and from self-definition to the quality of the relationship linking a person to family, school, peers, institutions, and the public sphere.

Concluding Position

The evidence does not support the view that multiple identities automatically create a crisis, nor does it support treating bicultural identity as a guaranteed solution. It supports a more nuanced reading: attachment to the culture of origin and attachment to society can coexist, and each can serve as a resource in certain domains. Their outcomes, however, vary with context, the type of adjustment, and the relationships surrounding the individual.

Integration should therefore not be measured by the extent to which a person abandons legitimate elements of identity, and it is not completed by the mere declaration of national belonging. It is a social and civic relationship that requires real opportunities for participation, mutual recognition, trust in institutions, and commitment to public rules.

The thesis advanced by DAMI Senter in this episode is:

Identity is not a problem to be erased, nor does it guarantee belonging on its own. It is a social resource whose effects are shaped by the interaction of recognition, relationships, institutions, and bounded individual agency.

The season therefore moves to the next episode with a further question: if identity does not automatically become belonging, what role do social and institutional recognition play in that process?

Testable Policy Directions

1. Do not measure integration by cultural similarity alone. Policy and research should distinguish retaining elements of family culture from withdrawal from institutions or rejection of public rules.

2. Measure multiple outcomes. Policies should be evaluated through participation, school connectedness, trust, wellbeing, and achievement rather than through the assumption that one indicator represents integration as a whole.

3. Expand opportunities for contact and equal participation. Correlational evidence points to the importance of positive contact with members and institutions of the wider society, but programs based on this premise should undergo causal evaluation before being scaled.

4. Monitor the recognition gap. Asking young people how they define themselves is not enough. Research should also examine the extent to which institutions and the social environment recognize their national identity and legitimate participation.

5. Establish the connection between rights and responsibilities. Institutions have obligations of fairness and equal opportunity; individuals have obligations to participate and respect the rule of law. This is a normative position adopted by DAMI Senter, not an empirical finding derived from identity studies.

References

Baumert, J., Becker, M., Jansen, M., & Köller, O. (2024). Cultural identity and the academic, social, and psychological adjustment of adolescents with immigration background. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 53(2), 294–315. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-023-01853-z

Berry, J. W., Phinney, J. S., Sam, D. L., & Vedder, P. (2006). Immigrant youth: Acculturation, identity, and adaptation. Applied Psychology, 55(3), 303–332. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.2006.00256.x

Evans, K. (2007). Concepts of bounded agency in education, work, and the personal lives of young adults. International Journal of Psychology, 42(2), 85–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207590600991237

Friberg, J. H. (2021). Who wants to be Norwegian—Who gets to be Norwegian? Identificational assimilation and non-recognition among immigrant origin youth in Norway. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 44(16), 21–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2020.1857813

Lee, S. (2020). Does identity matter for adaptation? The influence of acculturation identity on the well-being and delinquency of adolescent students in Europe. Journal of Youth Studies, 23(6), 797–817. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2019.1636950

Martiny, S. E., Froehlich, L., Soltanpanah, J., & Haugen, M. S. (2020). Young immigrants in Norway: The role of national and ethnic identity in immigrants’ integration. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 61(2), 312–324. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12594

Nguyen, A.-M. D., & Benet-Martínez, V. (2013). Biculturalism and adjustment: A meta-analysis. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 44(1), 122–159. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022111435097

Schotte, K., Stanat, P., & Edele, A. (2018). Is integration always most adaptive? The role of cultural identity in academic achievement and in psychological adaptation of immigrant students in Germany. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 47(1), 16–37. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0737-x

From Identity to Belonging The Role of Social and Institutional Recognition

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