Research On Identity Of Children Of New Immigrants

With the trend of more families immigrating to cities, the academia pays more attention to migrant workers as well as their children. Now these two groups are given other new names:new immigrants and children of immigrants. Based on the relevant concepts, qualitative research and identity theory, this paper focuses on the dynamic process of identity construction of children of new immigrants in Shanghai from the early immigration to present, taking the immigration experiences as the main theme and combining the macro and micro system to analyze the identity development or change.In macro system, the paper mainly investigates Shanghai Policy on immigrants, especially Education Policy evolution. While in micro system, it mainly centers on children and their family's immigration experiences, which includes hometown impression, family environment, peer group and family relationship network.Based on the 12 interviews, this paper finds out four characters in the identity development of the process of immigration experiences:the first is "I am from hometown all the time"; the second is "from Shanghainese to half Shanghainese"; the third is "from hometownese to half Shanghainese"; the last is "I am Shanghainese all the time". Also the interviews show that under the same policy, new immigrant children usually have the first identity with positive hometown impression, more migrant neighbors in the community, more peer friends from other province, and consanguinity-based family relationship network. While children often have the last identity with negative hometown impression, more local neighbors, more local peer friends, and "weak tie" based family relationship network. Children who have relevant characters between the experiences referred above usually take "half-Shanghainese" to define their identity.Through deep analysis on the immigration experiences of new immigrant children, three conclusions are found:(1) children of new immigrants construct their identity not only in terms of their household registration (Hukou), but also their immigration experiences; (2) the process of identity construction is combined with the interaction between structural strength and self-construction; (3) the identity of new immigrants children is constructed by the process of categorization, identification, and comparison.Besides, the policy change/development of Shanghai for children of new immigrants, particularly in education, plays a great role in identity changing of children, but it also makes some obstacles for them to realize the identity as Shanghainese. While the difference in identity between new immigrants and their children can be studied in the future.