Acts of transcultural belonging and social empowerment among migrant youth

ABSTRACT

Drawing on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with migrant youth in Melbourne, Toronto and Birmingham, this paper explores the relationship between transcultural capital and the negotiation of belonging within wider social and political challenges. It examines these intersecting questions in a global context of pandemic crises, enduring securitization agendas, tightening of migration policies, rising racism as well as deep-rooted social inequalities within many multicultural societies. Using unique empirical insights, this paper argues for a trans-local, relational approach to the conceptual framing and everyday practice of transcultural capital. The paper reframes the very notion of “migrant” from a position of disadvantage to one of empowerment in relation to the challenges and opportunities of living in multicultural cities. Our findings reveal that transcultural capital often acts as a performative tool for navigating local integration challenges, for creating a sense of belonging to multiple places, and for adopting agentic capacities to identity and intercultural relations.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural diversity
• multiculturalism
• migrant youth
• transculturality
• social empowerment
• transcultural capital

Introduction

Research on identity and belonging of migrant youth, and specifically second-generation youth, has traditionally been driven by an unhelpful dichotomy of assimilation and integration. Such a dichotomy portrayed migrant youth as either culturally assimilating and socially engaging with the society of immigration or as willingly resisting this whole integration process (see, Vermeulen 2010). Within such analytical frameworks, belonging and identity are considered fixed, singular and unidirectional, with migrant youth expected to attenuate, in a linear process, their home country ties and relinquish ethnic identity in favour of adopting the settlement society’s value norms and national identity (Waldinger 2017). This unidimensional, linear understanding of migration, identity and belonging ignores the complexities of everyday lived experiences of living within multicultural cities (Colombo 2019; Harris 2016; Visser 2020). Indeed, this linear approach does not account for an increasingly interdependent and hyper-connected world that demands active engagement among multiple communities beyond the duality of home and host countries (Kantek, Veljanova, and Onnudottir 2019; Levitt 2009; Robertson, Harris, and Baldassar 2018). Furthermore, assimilationist and integrationist framings limit understandings of immigration as they focus on processes within the host state while largely excluding cross-border engagements (Waldinger 2017).

In this paper, we adopt a transcultural perspective (Arias Cubas, Jamal Al-deen, and Mansouri 2022; Kantek, Veljanova, and Onnudottir 2019; López Rodríguez 2018; Moskal and Sime 2016; Richter and Nollert 2014) to explore how migrant youth participate in various sociocultural contexts over time. A multi-layered transcultural approach provides opportunities to accrue and access multiple repertoires of cultural knowledge (such as cultural values and heritage practices) as well as local, national and transnational networks. The consequent transcultural capital (Meinhof and Triandafyllidou 2006; Triandafyllidou 2009) allows migrant youth to challenge existing social hierarchies that would otherwise limit their agency. Drawing on interviews with first- and second-generation migrant youth in Melbourne (Australia), Toronto (Canada) and Birmingham (the United Kingdom (UK)), this paper connects the development and deployment of transcultural capital among migrant youth with their agentic capacity to navigate local challenges for social inclusion. This is examined in the context of current social fractures and deepening political challenges in the research sites and beyond. The most pressing challenges include an uneven post-pandemic social recovery; persisting securitization agendas; changes to migration policies and citizenship laws; rising racism and hate speech; and entrenched social inequalities within multicultural societies (c.f. Abdel-Fattah 2020; Mansouri and Vergani 2018; Sime, Moskal, and Tyrrell 2020; Redclift and Rajina 2021). Our proposed transcultural approach opens space for more nuanced framings of transculturality (Welsch 1999) that account for agentic capital accumulated through living in quintessentially transnational social fields. This form of capital amounts to a transformative capacity through which migrant youth can recognize, navigate and challenge social hierarchies by drawing on diverse transcultural skills, networks and systems of knowledge. This is a conceptually important differentiation. Much of the literature on migrant youth, including second-generation youth in post-migrant settings, frames multiple forms of identification and belonging as inherently problematic or even potentially threatening to social cohesion and national security (Steiner, Mason, and Hayes 2013). Here we argue that through everyday constructive engagement with and strategic deployment of multiple cultural repertoires in different contexts, migrant youth are able to re-negotiate and re-create their own agentic sense of belonging.

Migration, diversity and everyday belonging

Recent scholarship on migrant youth has offered alternative, more agentic conceptualizations that emphasize the multifaceted and multi-layered nature of migrant youths’ identities and belonging (Harris 2016; Levitt 2009; Levitt and Waters 2002; Werbner and Modood 2015). This scholarship reflects and focuses on the heuristic nature of the multiple forms of attachment migrants can sustain across various geographical borders over time. It highlights the embeddedness of migrant youth, in particular second-generation migrants in transnational networks or social fields (Levitt 2009; Levitt and Waters 2002). Accordingly, such transcultural framings acknowledge cultural continuity in migration experiences. These framings also reflect the fluidity and multiplicity of identities and belonging experienced by migrants in diverse cultural contexts and across national borders. Within this transnational domain of migrant youth engagement, the concept of transculturality is particularly promising – cross-cultural practices within different national contexts allow for multiple forms of interpersonal and intergroup solidarity, thereby shaping identity (Kantek, Veljanova, and Onnudottir 2019; Moskal and Sime 2016).

Recent research increasingly illustrates how the identities of migrant youth are mediated through personal, local and cross-border networks, allowing them to create and express multiple belongings to their spatially extended communities (Durham et al. 2022; Harris 2016; Hoerder, Hébert, and Schmitt 2005; Hope 2011). This scholarship emphasizes the transcultural nature of contemporary social and cultural configurations. But transcultural framing is not altogether new (see Ortiz [[1940] 1995]; Welsch 1999). Indeed, associated concepts have long been used to challenge the notion that cultures are neatly delineated and fixed, and to point to possibilities arising from cross-cultural contact between individuals and groups that redraw and transform boundaries of belonging. Furthermore, the concept of transculturality has been employed to critique essentialist notions of culture that reify “the contraposition of ownness and foreignness’ and associated principles of social homogenization, ethnic consolidation and intercultural delimitation in contemporary societies (Welsch 1999, 196). Therefore, redefining and rediscovering oneself through numerous cultural experiences is central to the transcultural perspective, which posits a sense of self as hybrid, fluid and interactive (Richter and Nollert 2014).

Migration-related research has previously adapted notions of the transcultural to describe intercultural relations in contemporary societies and to challenge unidirectional, fixed and closed notions of culture, belonging and citizenship. Indeed, transculturation was often invoked as a concept to allow one to “re-read homogenized histories that construct belongings as fixed”, while also enabling one to “re-conceptualize difference and diversity as negotiable, as inter-sectorial, as strategic, and as capital” (Hoerder, Hébert, and Schmitt 2005, 14–15). Specifically, the concept of transcultural citizenship emphasized how migrants create “new sites and scales of struggle” in their experiences, such as “everyday interactions with the local community and as a sense of belonging to the local environment” (López Rodríguez 2018, 133–134). More recently, the notion of transcultural belonging was adopted to highlight how “transculturalism results in the decoupling of identities to create a “neo-culture”, illuminating how individuals simultaneously amalgamate their belonging to demonstrate how intermeshed their cultural belonging is experienced within their self-conceptualisations’ (Kantek, Veljanova, and Onnudottir 2019, 81). This study argues that the overlapping, compound manifestation of selfhood emerges from the accumulation and internalization of cultural experiences and practices carried out over time and across various cultural contexts.

A transcultural approach helps define the competencies of those exhibiting hybrid and multifaceted identities, where difference is viewed as a strength for individuals, their community and society. Indeed, the term transculturality is often evoked in the literature to account for “a chameleonic disposition for strategically rearranging one’s sense of cultural identity by drawing from an expanded repertoire” (Benessaieh 2010, 28). Like the related concept of transcultural capital adopted in this paper, transculturality refers to “the strategic use of knowledge, skills and networks acquired by migrants through connections with their country and cultures of origin which are made active at their new places of residence” (Meinhof and Triandafyllidou 2006, 202).

Migrant youth and transcultural practices

The concept of transcultural capital provides a framework for analysing how migrant youth foster “multiple ways of being and belonging, and […] how [they] make sense of their identity” (Moskal and Sime 2016, 35). We emphasize “the different temporal and spatial points” for such practices in the lives of migrant youth and in relation to their cross-cultural connectivity and transnational mobility (Arias Cubas, Jamal Al-deen, and Mansouri 2022; Robertson, Harris, and Baldassar 2018). From this perspective, “transculturation deals with human interconnectivity and focuses on a selective weaving of cultural elements to create a new cultural belonging” (Kantek, Veljanova, and Onnudottir 2019; Moskal and Sime 2016, 36). This advances previous framings of migrant youth practices and their dichotomous focus on a settlement spectrum around assimilation and integration. Indeed, one can decode the complex manifestations of social belonging and cultural identity formations amongst migrant youth in multicultural cities by going beyond the much-invoked notion of competing cultural identities (Hope 2011; Moskal and Sime 2016).

Research on migrant youth, in particular second-generation migrants, often emphasizes the importance of local and transnational connections, networks, and ties as they constitute and mobilize cultural and social resources (Levitt 2009; Levitt and Waters 2002; Toivanen 2019). Yet, while transnational practices that reflect some involvement in the economic, political and religious life of the country of origin are common among first-generation migrants (Erel and Ryan 2019), second and later generations are often less involved in such practices (Levitt 2009). More broadly, the transnational perspective emphasizes the importance of investigating “the strong potential effect of being raised in a transnational social field” (Levitt 2009, 1126). It also highlights the fact that transnational practices and local incorporation are not mutually exclusive as migrants and their descendants can remain simultaneously embedded in two or more social contexts (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004).

Building upon this discussion, this paper approaches transcultural capital as a conceptual and analytical tool to explore how young migrants develop, accumulate and access cultural, economic and social resources across various geographical spaces and over time. Using Bourdieu’s (1986) conceptualization “of capital as presenting itself in various forms – cultural, economic and social – transcultural capital” is operationalized as “the strategic use of knowledge, skills and networks acquired by migrants through connections with their country and cultures of origin that are made active at their new places of residence” (Triandafyllidou 2009, 102).

Within this framing, migrant youth can “negotiate difference constructively and creatively as they engage with and draw upon an array of cultural systems across different settings” (Arias Cubas, Jamal Al-deen, and Mansouri 2022, 14) rather than oscillating meaninglessly between cultures. This also allows young people to exercise agency to belong to different sociocultural spaces simultaneously (Durham et al. 2022). Additionally, this framing of transcultural capital opens possibilities for migrant youth to tap into networks and skills and develop these as assets not only to them, but also to the local, national and transnational communities and societies they interact with (Arias Cubas, Jamal Al-deen, and Mansouri 2022).

Methods

This paper is based on a large, multi-year study¹ which involved migrant youth from new and old migrant communities in three highly diverse cities – Melbourne (Australia), Toronto (Canada), and Birmingham (the UK) – where young people navigate diversity and difference in their everyday lives. To provide some context, in Melbourne 48.2 per cent of the population is from a minority ethnic background, while in Toronto and Birmingham the figures stand at 46.1 per cent and 18.6 per cent respectively (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2021; Office of National Statistics 2018a; Statistics Canada 2018). Importantly these cities are not only increasingly diverse and home to large populations of migrants, but also have a significant young population. In Melbourne’s metropolitan area, 38.3 per cent of the population is under 29, while in Toronto and Birmingham the figures are 36.9 per cent and 46.1 per cent respectively (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2021; Office for National Statistics 2018b; Statistics Canada 2017). More importantly, these cities are optimal for this study because they adopted and implemented different diversity management policies coherent with different levels of engagement with multiculturalism (Birmingham Community Cohesion Statement 2018; Government of Ontario 2019; Victoria State Government 2019). On the one hand they represent the early promise of multiculturalism as a progressive social policy for managing diversity and, on the other, they are at the forefront of current debates and significant paradigm shifts in migrant integration policies. Furthermore, while these cities face common challenges regarding diversity management, they nevertheless exhibit local specificities in terms of the policy interventions they have adopted.

The study adopted a mixed methods approach with semi-structured interviews conducted with 119 migrant youth aged 18–25. Interviews primarily explored questions regarding cultural identity, belonging and transcultural capital. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed before the data was coded in NVivo. The data were then analysed according to themes developed theoretically but also those generated empirically, based on interview analysis. In addition to interviews, quantitative data was collected through online surveys hosted on Qualtrics. Surveys were completed by 1,384 participants, encapsulating and able to measure the nature and extent of transcultural capital among migrant youth across Australia, Canada, and the UK. Research in all sites received full ethics approval from Deakin University, the University of Ottawa, and Coventry University.

Participants were first- and second-generation migrants (that is, those born in Australia, Canada, or England to migrant parents or young people who were born overseas and consequently immigrated). The length of settlement of participants born overseas ranged from short (0–5 years), to medium (6–10 years) and long (11+) term arrivals. A set of variables was used to guide sample selection, including gender, religion, ethnicity, length of residence, educational credentials, and employment status. This disaggregated approach ensured the heterogeneous nature of the participants’ migrant communities was represented. The demographic composition of participants varied from site to site, reflecting local characteristics and migration patterns.

This paper draws primarily on findings of the semi-structured interviews across the sites as the theme of multiple identification and belonging was particularly salient in the overall analysis of these interviews. It describes the connection between how migrant youth develop and accumulate transcultural capital, and their agentic capacity to navigate social challenges of belonging in different spaces. The analysis is based on the accounts of a select number of participants (see Table 1), and therefore does not claim generalizability of results to other migrant groups in Australia, Canada, the UK or elsewhere. Nevertheless, the narrative data provides sufficient depth and richness to explore the questions raised in this paper (O’Reilly and Parker 2013). Additionally, the in-depth, qualitative approach provides a basis for a context-specific, nuanced discussion of the ways transculturation shapes migrant youth identities and belonging across social fields.² Participants were assigned pseudonyms, which are used throughout this paper to protect their anonymity.

Table 1. List of participants.

Pseudonym	Age	Gender	Country of birth	Length of settlement	City of residency	Ethnic background
Amber	21	Female	Malaysia	0–5 years	Melbourne	Chinese Malaysian
Amelia	18	Female	Canada	Born here	Toronto	British and Italian
Angela	25	Female	Australia	Born here	Melbourne	Greek
Arya	21	Female	UK	Born here	Birmingham	Indian
Ayla	22	Female	Indonesia	0–5 years	Melbourne	Indonesian
Bianca	19	Female	Canada	Born here	Toronto	Italian
Bruno	24	Male	Canada	Born here	Toronto	Portuguese
Dua	23	Female	Australia	Born here	Melbourne	Albanian
Emily	24	Female	Canada	Born here	Toronto	Chinese
Ella	18	Female	Canada	Born here	Toronto	Chinese
Farah	22	Female	Saudi Arabia	11 + years	Birmingham	Somali and Egyptian
Hamza	23	Male	UK	Born here	Birmingham	Pakistani
Hasan	23	Male	Australia	6–10 years	Melbourne	Indonesian
Isaak	23	Male	Canada	Born here	Toronto	Chilian
Isla	20	Female	Samoa	11 + years	Melbourne	Samoan
Khalid	21	Male	Australia	Born here	Melbourne	Lebanese
Mathew	24	Male	Australia	Born here	Melbourne	Chinese
Meera	25	Female	Canada	Born here	Toronto	Indian
Mia	19	Female	Canada	Born here	Toronto	Chinses
Minh	19	Female	Vietnam	0–5 years	Melbourne	Vietnamese
Nadia	25	Female	Italy	0–5 years	Birmingham	Moroccan and Italian
Nur	18	Female	UK	Born here	Birmingham	Indonesian
Ramya	22	Female	India	0–5 years	Toronto	Indian
Rose	19	Female	Canada	Born here	Toronto	Congolese
Rozhin	22	Female	Iraq	11 + years	Birmingham	Kurdish Iraqi
Sanvi	22	Female	India	0–5 years	Birmingham	Indian
Sofia	21	female	Ukraine	11 + years	Melbourne	Ukrainian
Stephanie	22	Female	Australia	Born here	Melbourne	Greek and Croatian
Surath	22	Male	UK	Born here	Birmingham	Indian and Kenyan
Tahir	21	Male	Pakistan	11 + years	Birmingham	Pakistani
Tida	19	Female	Thailand	0–5 years	Birmingham	Thai
Umang	18	Male	UK	Born here	Birmingham	Indian
Vinh	24	Female	Canada	Born here	Toronto	Vietnamese
Viraj	21	Male	UK	Born here	Birmingham	Indian
Yasmeen	23	Female	UK	Born here	Birmingham	Pakistani
Zahid	22	Male	UK	Born here	Birmingham	Pakistani
Zahra	18	Female	Afghanistan	0–5 years	Melbourne	Afghani

Connection with ethno-cultural groups: opportunities for belonging and experiences of othering

Participants’ self-identification with their ethnic heritage suggests their belonging to ethno-cultural communities is created through assumed commonalities and shared understanding with individuals of similar ethno-cultural backgrounds (Portes and MacLeod 1996). Along these lines, Viraj (Birmingham) explained that he “connect[s] with […] people […] from Indian background” based on shared “stories” and “cultural side”. Similarly, Ayla (Melbourne) could bond with Indonesian friends because they shared “a very similar approach to things’. Likewise, Arya (Birmingham) felt a strong sense of belonging and connectivity to the Indian community in Birmingham, making her “feel more at home”. This sense of connection was created by drawing on individual, internalized and embodied dispositions or “habitus’: a product of socialization within families, communities and societies (Bourdieu 1977) in multiple contexts including transnational mobility. It allowed these participants to make overlapping claims of belonging (Fortier 2006).

Belonging to ethnic communities provided opportunities to develop and enact cultural identities by accessing and using cultural and social resources. Linguistic competence, a form of cultural capital, is often used to shape identity, belong into a particular community, and provide a shared way of perceiving the world (Bourdieu 1986). Mia (Toronto) contended that having language skills advantaged her in integrating into the Chinese community and being accepted and welcomed.

[I]f … you start speaking in Chinese … they treat you differently … they will be like … she's trying to keep her culture rather than when you're asking … person who identifies as Chinese … in English, they will just sometimes roll their eyes at you … how can you be part of a Chinese culture and not speak the language?

Other forms of capital, such as cultural knowledge and access to ethnic networks, opened possibilities for job opportunities. Bruno (Toronto) believed that not only “[k]nowing the Portuguese language” but also his knowledge of “Portuguese culture … helped [him] a lot with understanding how things work … in the construction industry” since “the construction industry has always been something in the Portuguese culture”.

For some participants, ethnic ties and bonds may have indirectly helped provide the means to access social capital through raising self-confidence, or generating specific forms of cultural capital (Anthias 2007). For example, Sofia (Melbourne) was unsure if “the Ukrainian community would help with [her] own development in employment”. However, she was confident that it “helped with the interpersonal community-based aspect of it … feeling like [she’s] got a community to belong to”. Furthermore, participants, particularly new arrivals, said access to a network “within their families and ethnic communities” enabled them to settle more easily in host countries. Access to an “ethnic-specific network” showed how migrant youth used cultural and social resources to build capital in the migratory context (Ryan and Mulholland 2014). These networks often provide accommodation, jobs, information, and emotional support, and may also facilitate community formation, integration and permanent settlement (Patulny 2015). Minh (Melbourne) revealed that access to a Vietnamese network enabled her to enter the labour market and find a job easily and quickly: “My aunty friend … introduced me to the owner … she’s working at the shop I’m working now, so she pulled me some string and I got the job there”.

Self-identification and group belonging were not only expressed in relation to ethnic communities but also extended to pan-ethnic groups. Several participants such as Isaak (Toronto, Chilean background) felt a “closer knit” with the Hispanic community in Toronto based on shared cultural, socio-economic, and racial characteristics (Portes and MacLeod 1996). Similarly, Isla (Melbourne, Samoan background) identified herself as Pacific Islander and felt a sense of belonging in the Pasifika community in Melbourne: “a lot of Pacific Islander communities … we could relate to”. These are significant manifestations of cross-cultural and intergroup networking practices are important for creating social and political attachment beyond the immediate confines of one’s ethno-cultural group.

Additionally, many participants felt their identities and belonging were influenced by multiple ethno-cultural attachments based on their parents’ birthplaces. For instance, Farah (Birmingham) identified herself as Somali Egyptian besides British because “[her] mum’s from Egypt, [her] dad’s from Somalia. So the cultures [she] grew up with are the ones [she] identif[ied] with”. Farah believed that multi-ethnic identification represented an asset “because it allows [her] to speak to different people and look at things from different perspectives” rather than having “just British identity”. Similarly other participants such as Stephanie from Melbourne represented herself as “Greek Australian Croatian” and felt a sense of belonging to each of these communities. As these multiple ethnic affiliations often occur simultaneously, self-identification and belonging are developed because of the participants’ accumulation, internalization of and access to a range of cultural experiences and practices carried out over time and across multiple cultural contexts (Kantek, Veljanova, and Onnudottir 2019; Moskal and Sime 2016). This simultaneity allows for the performance and maintenance of transcultural ways of being and belonging. In this sense, transculturality emphasizes transcending ethnic and national boundaries by connecting material and non-material cultural elements gathered throughout life (Richter and Nollert 2014).

Nevertheless, for some participants, relationships with one’s ethnic communities were not always straightforward, particularly those with limited heritage language proficiency. As a result, they either perceived themselves as the “Other” or were labelled as the “Other” vis-à-vis their own ethnic community. Surath (Birmingham, Indian and Kenyan background) stated he had little mastery of Punjabi and acted differently to other members of his ethnic community. Therefore, he felt “from the wider Sikh community, [he] sticks out like a sore thumb”. Isla (Melbourne) also contended her co-ethnic peers at high school “called [her] whitewashed” and “wasn’t included” in the Year 12 Samoan girls’ group:

[T]hey thought I wasn’t Samoan enough, or Pasifika enough … because of the way I talk … act, and I don’t use certain Samoan slang … when they would use slang and I didn’t understand, they thought, like, how do you not – like, aren’t you Samoan, shouldn’t you know?

Intra-community tensions can be as traumatic and challenging for migrant youth as inter-community, external fissures. Indeed, feeling a sense of belonging is meaningful only when young people are recognized in the different cultural and societal settings they occupy within and across ethno-cultural groups (Cuervo and Wyn 2017). Being perceived as the Other and not being “Samoan enough” aligns with assertions that belonging is not only a personal affair but is granted and distributed by others based on perceived cultural competence (Antonsich 2010). Language competency can be an element of cultural capital that provides membership within a particular field (Bourdieu 1986). Given their perceived lack of access to “ethnic linguistic capital”, these young people were ostracized, excluded and misrecognized by co-ethnics as Other, resulting in cultural displacement and inauthenticity, increasing feelings of non-belonging (Durham et al. 2022). Young people’s sense of belonging can be challenged by this “intra-ethnic othering”, resulting in moments of exclusion that reinforce power structures and racialized discourses both internal and external to one’s ethno-cultural community (Pyke and Dang 2003).

Belonging in multicultural neighbourhoods

Across the three sites, most participants highlighted the advantage of living in highly diverse cities – the entrenched demographic and cultural diversity, they argued, reinforced a deeper sense of belonging. This context is conducive to building valuable socio-cultural competencies and interpersonal skills. Growing up and living in multicultural neighbourhoods facilitated integration into different cultures rather than a monocultural mainstream. Participants’ narratives suggest strong attachments to local neighbourhoods and cities. They represent affective forms of belonging to a diverse social milieu. And in such contexts ethnicity is not a predictor of inclusion or exclusion, as diversity becomes the norm of multicultural life (Harris 2016; Visser 2020). Khalid (Melbourne, Lebanese background) said: “I grew up in the West side and everyone was from … a migrant refugee background … so kind of that difference was normal to me”. Umang (Indian background) also explained: “Birmingham is quite a diverse city … So it's a way to integrate with the larger community of Birmingham as a whole, not just your own people from your own ethnic background”. Similarly, Bianca (Italian background) said: “Toronto [is] like a mosaic of different cultures … I don’t really find one definition of like Canadian culture that I've kind of like engaged with”.

In this sense, increasing cultural diversity within local milieus created an equalizing, inclusive sense of belonging (Durham et al. 2022). Within diverse local spaces, young adults often orient themselves to “an amalgam of people of different ethnic backgrounds” rather than the traditional dominant majority group (Crul 2016, 57). Integration is no longer exclusively understood as a process that minorities seek to adapt to, and in the process end up assimilating into a monocultural mainstream (Crul 2016). Instead, by blending into and participating in “dynamic environment[s] of proliferating differences”, these young people perform acts of national belonging (Harris 2016, 365). Ella (Toronto, Chinese background) affirmed this: “a Canadian identity is … actually meeting people … with different identities and like coexisting is what I saw a Canadian identity as”.

Additionally, being different and living in diverse places provided exposure to multiple cultures and differences, helping develop “many socio-cultural competencies and interpersonal skills”, such as nuanced cultural awareness, open-mindedness and empathy towards people of different cultural backgrounds (Arias Cubas, Jamal Al-deen, and Mansouri 2022, 9). Isla (Melbourne, Samoan background) explained that “being exposed to different things here” has been an opportunity to “just become a bit more open-minded, more culturally aware … less judgemental about the situations that maybe [she] compare[s] to [her] own”. Similarly, Ramya (Toronto, Indian background) said: “from the moment I came to Canada … I was able to be more open-minded to the cultures … available over here because it’s vast variety”. Nur (Birmingham, Indonesian background) also explained that living in Birmingham helped her “become more open minded … learn as to how to approach different people … [and be] more accepting as to … where they're from”. Participants indicated that through everyday encounters with difference and engagement with multiple cultures (whether in public places, educational institutions and workplaces), they developed intercultural competencies, a valuable affective manifestation of transcultural capital, that generated a sense of community and an appreciation of difference in their cities and neighbourhoods (Arias Cubas, Jamal Al-deen, and Mansouri 2022).

However, this strong sense of belonging to local places was often contrasted to negative receptions in other “less” multicultural locales in Australia, Canada and the UK. Mathew (Melbourne, Chinese background) spoke about his positive experience of attending a multicultural primary school in contrast with his feeling of discomfort or “out of place” in a primarily “White” school:

Part of it is going to a very White school in high school and feeling the shame of being … different … In primary school I went to a very diverse school … no one really called me up as “you're Chinese” whereas in high school it was very much you're different, you're this chink.

Umang (Indian background) spoke about how moving out of Birmingham was quite challenging:

In other places, but not Birmingham … We had chess competitions in Eton for example or Cambridge … and there is a sense maybe a condescending view upon the students there who may be majoritavely [sic] White … they may look at you different. It could … because I have a different skin colour.

Similarly, Meera (Toronto, Indian background) felt “stigmatized for being of a different”:

[O]nce you start going up into actual Hamilton, they weren’t really aware of all the races. It was really Caucasian … they thought I was black, because that’s all they knew … like, Asian, Black or White. So, in instances like that, it can be kind of scary, even, to be too overt with your ethnicity.

These excerpts illustrate the spatial dimension is critical in examining the integration of youth migrants into mainstream society. In monocultural spaces, where inclusion and exclusion were framed by reductive binaries of majority/minority, these young people had less power to negotiate difference and participate in intercultural dialogue (Harris 2016). These findings align with Visser’s study (2020) on migrant youth living in Tottenham, a highly diverse neighbourhood in London, where it was difficult for young people to claim belonging locally. They had to negotiate the othering process with those who had the power of granting belonging.

Additionally, the narratives of Birmingham participants suggest they were aware of negative public discourse and attitudes in Birmingham which affected their identity formation and belonging. Some mentioned the Trojan Horse affair when Islamic schools in Birmingham came under attack as the city council investigated alleged plans to carry out widespread Islamic indoctrination of children, leading to reputational damage Muslim communities within Birmingham and beyond (Awan 2018). Zahid (Birmingham, Pakistani background) explained how this affair impacted the negotiation of his Pakistani Muslim identity and belonging to wider society:

[W]ith the association of things like terrorism and there was the Trojan Horse affair recently in Birmingham – when someone asks you what are you and you have to say you're Muslim as a young person, it is scary sometimes because you know the associations that have been made in modern society

Clearly, youth sense of belonging was impacted by social and political structures that shaped their everyday experiences (Durham et al. 2022). Within the popular imagination, Birmingham is portrayed as exhibiting “urban decay and religious ghettoization” (Karner and Parker 2011, 519). These problematized representations, along with counter-terrorism laws, usually led to social isolation that had a real impact on identity and belonging. Therefore, opportunities for a greater sense of citizenship and improved integration were constrained, and community cohesion and diversity were damaged (Awan 2018).

Belonging to mainstream society: opportunities and constraints

Most participants were able to acquire the cultural tools to engage with the majority culture and the wider society through everyday interaction with peers and adults. This refutes some strands in the migration literature which equates attachment to ethnic culture and heritage with a sense of disconnection from the mainstream (Cantle 2012). Indeed, living and being raised in transnational social fields, for second-generation participants particularly, enabled mobility through different cultural spaces and an accumulation of transcultural skills and knowledge vital to perform transcultural identities and belonging. Participants’ narratives illustrate how they simultaneously exercise agency by deciding how, where and when to activate transcultural resources to communicate and establish connections across different sociocultural contexts (Levitt 2009). Rose (Toronto, Congolese background) spoke about the times where she adopted and used her Canadian culture,

applying to schools, applying to jobs, having professional conversations. You have to adopt the culture or the environment that you're in … I can't be the typical African person with a person who was interviewing me for a job.

Other participants like, Arya (Birmingham, Indian background) spoke about how they deliberately and selectively deployed cultural resources in response to opportunities and challenges:

I’m a medical student … and a lot of the Warwick demographic … is White or elderly … I have to adapt my way of speaking to how they speak … to get the most information from them … we get treated a bit better … I’ve adapted myself over the years to make sure that I have the same experience of living here as they do.

Stephanie (Melbourne, Greek background) also contented:

There’s so much racism here, it’s unbelievable. When I go for a job interview, I have to pretend to be Australian … Put on the accent more mate and I love football … 

Clearly, Arya, and Stephanie were aware that racial prejudice and discrimination had deep and lasting effects on migrant youth in Australia and the UK (see Redclift and Rajina 2021; Elias, Mansouri, and Paradies 2021), and therefore strategically used their embodied cultural capital (transcultural disposition), “speaking how they speak”, to mitigate their challenges. This suggests these young people learnt to navigate and understand cultural cues to negotiate the boundaries they are confronted with to feel authentic in relation to others (Durham et al. 2022).

Many participants spoke about their capacity for agentic, cross-cultural elasticity – being able to move between different social spaces and make strategic decisions on how to act. Yasmeen (Birmingham, Pakistani background) believed she was “a bit of a chameleon”. When she was “around people who haven’t got that culture [her ethnic culture]” she would “blend in”, and when she was “around people who do, they will bring it out” in her. This “chameleonic capacity” to culturally adapt to a variety of parameters and draw from an enlarged repertory of codes allows one to strategically rearrange their sense of cultural identity “depending on the location, moment or context” (Iyer 2000, 18). This fluid, dialogical process of cultural creativity has become visible within highly diverse contemporary societies (Benessaieh 2010). While participants’ deliberate deployment of cultural resources is aligned with research on hybrid identities (see Harris 2016; Moskal and Sime 2016), we argue that a focus on transculturality moves away from the mere recognition of hybridity and emphasizes the notion that transcultural capital “is not just the fusing of two identities but offers the possibility of something new being created” (Hope 2011, 91). Here, transcultural capital transcends the fixed nation-state and embraces diverse interactive cultural repertoires. Vinh (Toronto, Vietnamese background) asserted:

Having two different backgrounds doesn’t mean you have two different personalities, but you’re exposed to different things, and different exposure makes you grow as a person, and shapes who you are. That all equates to your identity.

Nonetheless, for many participants, particularly those born and raised in host countries, navigating cultural differences and moving between cultural worlds remains a complex process involving ambivalence, confusion, and resistance. Those who lived or moved in less multicultural spaces were more inclined to identify with the host society’s culture and strongly rejected identifying with their ethnic culture. However, as they grew into adulthood, they realized their difference was not a disadvantage but a cultural resource that can be converted into a capital beneficial for identity formation and belonging. Hamza (Birmingham, Pakistani background) said: “I projected self-hate upon myself. I wanted to be White […] until I got to […] 16–17[…] where I definitely developed more of a sense of an empowerment […] that made me feel proud of who I was”. Similarly Rose (Toronto, Congolese background) explained how, as a child, “being in a space where there were no Africans” and “mostly Quebecois people”, she “did conform to their culture and that was a period of time where [she] wasn't in tune with [her] own culture”. However, “with time, [she] decided [she] wanted to be more immersed in [her] own culture”. Dua (Melbourne, Albanian background) also said: “growing up, you sort of don’t want to confront the differences … you … just want to come across as sort of just the same”.

These accounts suggest the emerging identities of young migrants represent a constant, fluctuating and non-linear process. Over time, these young adults constructed and reconstructed their cultural identities (Moskal and Sime 2016), which includes resistance, negotiation, adaptation and, most importantly, transformative change. As young migrants grow into adulthood, they tend to identify with the cultures (mainstream and ethnic) they grew up with, believing this self-identification is productive, unproblematic as well normal given the increasing cultural diversity of the societies they live in. For instance, Angela (Melbourne, Greek background) said that: “I see Greek-Australian as not a hybrid identity but as its own identity”. This identification represents the ability to use difference as capital and simultaneously exercise agency to move across difference depending on the context and encompasses a belonging practice (Harris 2016; Colombo 2019).

Although study participants believed they could develop and deploy transcultural capital to move between different life-worlds, they also acknowledged they were perceived as different by mainstream society due to their distinctive physical characteristics and religious-cultural differences. Hasan (Melbourne, Indonesian background) also said: “the word Australian is only applicable to the people who tend to have White skin”. At school, Vinh (Toronto, Vietnamese background) “used to get made fun of for being Asian”. Tahir (Birmingham, Pakistani background) said: “mostly if you see an Asian person in a White school [they] are going to get bullied because the White people see them as different”. Rozhin (Birmingham, Kurdish Iraqi background) also referred to her experience of Islamophobia (mainly outside Birmingham) when choosing to be visibly Muslim. Her account illustrates Islamophobia is gendered, and veiled Muslim women are particularly targeted for discrimination (Perry 2014):

‘“You don’t belong here.” Comments that people throw at you when you just walk past them … like the stares you get … make you feel uncomfortable that you don’t belong here … just because you wear a head scarf, you’d be like looked down at … that’s not where you’re from.

These accounts suggest participants were perceived as outsiders because of cultural and physical attributes that did not reflect the “accepted” symbolic capital – a value of a particular group’s perception of legitimacy and worth within a particular social field (Bourdieu 1990). This misrecognition may limit opportunities for meaningful national belonging since these young people were “positioned as inauthentic claimants to belonging” (Durham et al. 2022, 12). It may also restrict the possibility of transcultural capital being successfully converted into social and cultural resources essential for upward social mobility. Importantly, the process of sociocultural and discursive othering affects how individuals feel included and excluded. It illustrates that a sense of belonging to a place may not translate into being accepted as a member (Antonsich 2010).

Our findings also suggest that for participants settled in the host societies for less than 5 years, developing the cultural and social resources required to operate in and belong to the mainstream had a strong temporal dimension (Bourdieu 1986), with opportunities and constraints being present at particular points in time. This suggests that, like the spatial dimension, temporality is critical to understanding how migrant youth within mainstream cultural milieus accrue cultural knowledge and skills and build local networks to develop a cultural capital and make use of it (Erel and Ryan 2019). Amber (Melbourne) an international student with Chinese Malaysian background spoke about how, through the passage of time, access to networks that consisted of predominantly White Australians helped her “feel a sense of belonging and overcome social exclusion” (Arias Cubas, Jamal Al-deen, and Mansouri 2022, 12):

I did the first year in college and all of the Australian kids were in their own gang … I just remember feeling really excluded … I wouldn’t feel comfortable sitting with them because I wouldn’t know what to talk to them about. [But now] I have a few Australian friends and … a boyfriend who is Australian … I think that helped a lot and I guess he’s taught me – what everything means. Because there is a lot of slang that I just didn’t know … Because when I met all of his friends and they were all very predominantly White … With him helping me it was a little bit not too uncomfortable.

Given the difficulties faced by migrant youth in establishing relationships with members of mainstream society, having access to such “majoritarian” networks helped establish effective support strategies for Amber (Gomes 2015). She could mobilize this network to gain knowledge about Australian culture, including exposure to and understanding of Australian slang, which helped overcome feelings of not belonging and create local affinities. These relationships are effective in establishing belonging to mainstream society, yet they may not always be available to new arrivals. Ayla (Melbourne, Indonesian background) for instance spoke about the everyday challenges of establishing relationships with local students:

I wanted to make friends – but I also made friends with just the international people …  … we sort of just stuck together … We were afraid to make new friends … It was also necessary because we were doing things that [non-migrants] wouldn’t have had to do … but then that sort of created a divide anyway … I think we have our own little community outside the community. I’m not saying that interacting with Australians is bad … It’s just hard for me to make friends with them.

Studies on international student mobility found that the desire to develop new friends and connections is a motivating factor to study abroad – connections with locals open possibilities for social connectedness and local belonging (Gomes 2015). Furthermore, for international students studying abroad, it is also believed to provide opportunities to deploy transcultural resources essential to cultural connectivity and transnational connections (Robertson, Harris, and Baldassar 2018). However, research shows these expectations are not often met in real life. Instead, the friendship circles of international students often consist of people from their home nation and fellow international students from other nations. They rarely make any meaningful contact with local students (Gomes 2015; Moskal and Schweisfurth 2018). Cultural differences, language barriers and marginalization may impede building friendships with members of mainstream society. Sanvi, (Birmingham, Indian background) felt that: “the professors who I meet were very comfortable with my British classmates than me. They were confused themselves, how to approach me”. Tida (Birmingham, Thai background) explained she felt othered due to exclusionary practices:

[I]n the student accommodation … they just put all the Asians together and like all the White people in the same building … is just like so separated. And it kind of made me feel like being treated not the same.

Furthermore, some participants, including refugees and international students, discussed how restrictions associated with temporary visas diminished their feelings of belonging and further weakened an already fragile belonging (Boese and Philips 2017). Ayla (Melbourne, Indonesian background) said: “I’m reminded of not actually belonging here from my student visa and I only can work 20 hours a week and that is quite restricting”. A lack of formal recognition (such as citizenship and permanent residency) may also limit socioeconomic opportunities, including access to higher education and employment. Zahra (Melbourne, Afghani background) said: “Now I want to be a nurse and I'm studying in TAFE … I have to continue in university … I have to pay for university. It's hard because I think I don’t get my citizen[ship] until there”.

Some Birmingham participants, in particular international students from the EU, expressed concerns regarding changes to migration and citizenship laws and policies resulting from Brexit. Nadia (Birmingham, Italian and Moroccan background):

Brexit was the worst thing that ever happened … It's going to make things harder if you will think about European mobility … it would be harder to move from a place to another … there’s more people that want to come here and study

Brexit and other restrictive migration and citizenship laws have constrained mobility and limited the sociocultural spaces young people have access to. This shrinks personal opportunities to access cross-cultural networks and develop meaningful local belonging. The participants’ narratives suggest their sense of belonging was often shaped and influenced by kinetic migration laws and shifting geo-political events such as Brexit (Sime, Moskal, and Tyrrell 2020). All of this impacts the capacity for transcultural capital to act as a strategy for negotiating cultural identity formation and for pursuing social empowerment. The convergence of micro-level local dynamics of demographic diversity and multicultural policies on one hand, with macro-level geo-political manoeuvrings and associated national laws on the other, combine to affect the likelihood of developing transcultural capital and deploying it strategically to navigate integration challenges in the pursuit of upward social mobility.

Conclusion

This paper focussed on the performance and manifestations of transcultural capital among migrant youth and the consequent opportunities for performative acts of intra- and inter-community networking, belonging and solidarity. The paper discussed the multi-level, relational nature of transcultural capital and its unique capacity to impact belonging, identity negotiation as well as social integration outcomes for migrant youth. Our empirical evidence highlights the primacy of not only place-making but also the analytical utility of a context-specific perspective for understanding and accounting for complex relationships and tensions between individualized subjectivities and collective claims and articulations of cultural identities. These are often polarizing debates within multicultural societies where social relations are organized around individual membership of political communities and anchored in citizenship terms can be exclusionary.

Therefore, we prioritize a framing of transcultural capital that highlights its transformative, agentic nature, as opposed to a framing that merely maintains heritage culture (though this has merit). The approach to transcultural capital we report in this paper allows individuals to navigate critical temporal junctions that might otherwise affect their political as well as socio-cultural practices. This is evident migrant youth’s capacity to navigate the local dynamics of social integration – a critical condition for upward social mobility for individuals and intercultural understanding for communities and societies.

Nonetheless, our findings also suggest racialized stereotypes limit opportunities for transcultural capital to be converted into an agentic driver of upward social mobility. Findings show how migration policies pertaining to access to university education and citizenship, for example, can constrain mobility and restrict access to sociocultural spaces for migrant youth, in particular holders of temporary visas. Therefore, future research may unveil a more comprehensive understanding of factors that hinder the accumulation of transcultural capital among migrant youth and how they negotiate multiple forms of belonging. This research could pave the way for more inclusive and informed initiatives and policies that properly support migrant youth.

Acknowledgements

We thank Yakov Clarke-Demaj, Kim Lam and many local research assistants for their support with participant recruitment and data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant from 2018–2021 (grant number DP180100786).

Notes

1 This paper is based on a larger study funded by the Australian Research Council discovery scheme (DP180100786) 2018–2022.

2 The authors of this article are first generation Muslim migrants with Middle-Eastern background and both have extensive experience conducting research on migrant youth. The authors share the religious and cultural understandings of some of the participants with Middle-Eastern background. These shared understandings allowed for a deeper comprehension of religious and sensitive cultural issues. This insider positionality has not impacted interviewees responses since both researchers did not take part in data collection. However, it enabled in-depth data analysis and assured strong validity of findings.