Social networks and identity negotiations of religious minority youth in diverse social contexts

Abstract

This study is looking at how youth growing up in families affiliated with a religious minority negotiate their religious values and social identity in the social contexts of minority and majority. Although these youth belong to the ethnic majority in Finland, the religious and lifestyle values of their home and religious community differ from the Lutheran mainstream, which causes discrepancies between the values of their socialization background and those of their peer group. The negotiations of values and identities are here examined through two case examples of the teenagers' interview data. These examples illustrate the varied strategies for negotiation, positive versus negative experiences on the acquired negotiation outcomes, as well as the diversity within a minority community and the different ways of being a member of a religious minority.

Keywords:

• Youth
• religious minority
• value negotiations
• social context
• social networks
• Adventist

Notes

1. Survey utilized research design parallel to Umaña-Taylor (2004), including Multi-group Ethnic Identity Measure MEIM (Phinney 1992; 2004) amended to the Finnish Adventist context. School type correlation with identity (MEIM) was .16 (for direct identity statement .10). (Kuusisto 2005a).

2. See Kuusisto 2005b for more on data gathering and sample.

3. The Finnish Adventist Church membership register at the time held 304 youth between fourteen and eighteen years of age. Out of the total respondents (n = 125), the analyses included those who reported having at least one Adventist parent (n = 100; 56 (per cent) females and 44 (per cent) males). Of these, seventy-nine teenagers have two Adventist parents, twenty-one have one Adventist and other (a) Lutheran (three mothers, six fathers), (b) not member of any church (three mothers, seven fathers), or (c) parental church membership (two fathers) is unknown. Participants were between the ages thirteen and nineteen (f = 3, 17, 28, 21, 16, 11, 4 for 13–19, respectively), the average being 15.8.

4. Interviews were conducted in Finnish; quotations translated by the researcher.

5. Floya Anthias referred to similar question in her keynote lecture in Generations in flux – international interdisciplinary conference on ethnicity, integration and family ties (Helsinki, 23–24 October 2008) by problematizing the existence of some sort of ‘core’ of dominant society to which the immigrants are supposed to be assimilated, noting that the society itself is exceedingly heterogeneous.