PSY 451 Week 2 Identity Development and Acculturation Example

Between Kabul and Campus: Ethnic Identity and Acculturation in a Young Refugee

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSY/451: Multicultural Psychology

Week 2 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The client, family and clinic are composites written for a model paper; research findings come from the sources listed.

People who move between cultures face two questions: how much of their heritage to keep, and how much to join the new society. Their answers, and the answers of family members, shape identity, relationships and well-being. This paper applies research on ethnic identity and acculturation to a young refugee client at the Phoenix community clinic introduced in Week 1.

The Client

Farid is nineteen. His family fled Afghanistan when he was sixteen and resettled in Phoenix, Arizona, after a year in a camp abroad. His parents speak Dari at home, keep close ties to a small Afghan community and expect Farid to work in his uncle's grocery store and, eventually, marry a woman the family knows. At a community college, Farid made friends through an intramural soccer team and enjoys his psychology classes. In recent months, he has felt pulled apart: too American at home, too foreign at school. He stopped attending classes, and his adviser referred him to the clinic, where he was assigned to work with a counselor while Daniela, the practicum student, observes.

Four Acculturation Strategies

Berry (1997) proposed that acculturation can be understood by crossing two questions: whether people value maintaining their heritage culture and identity, and whether they seek contact and participation with the larger society. The answers yield four strategies. Integration keeps the heritage culture while participating in the new society. Assimilation gives up the heritage culture to join the new one. Separation keeps the heritage culture while avoiding the new society. Marginalization involves little connection to either. Integration was generally associated with better adaptation, and marginalization with the poorest. Berry stressed that strategies depend not only on individual choice but also on the attitudes of the receiving society.

Farid's current state resembles marginalization: he feels he belongs nowhere. Yet his history suggests a path toward integration, holding his family's language and faith while joining campus life. His parents lean toward separation, a common response among refugees who have lost much and fear losing their children's heritage as well.

Developing an Ethnic Identity

Phinney (1992) developed the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure, a questionnaire for adolescents and young adults of any ethnic background. It assesses ethnic identity through affirmation and belonging, a sense of pride and attachment to one's group, and through achievement, the extent to which a person has explored what ethnicity means and come to a secure commitment. In studies with high school and college students, higher scores were associated with higher self-esteem across groups.

Farid has strong belonging; he is proud of his family's history and faith. He has not yet explored what being Afghan American means for him, as distinct from what it means to his parents. Counseling can support that exploration, which research suggests leads to a more secure identity.

At home Farid is told he is becoming too American; at school he is asked where he is really from. Both questions leave him without a place to stand.

Acculturation Is More Than One Thing

Schwartz et al. (2010) argued that acculturation involves several domains that can change independently: cultural practices, such as language, food and media; cultural values, such as beliefs about family obligation and individual choice; and cultural identifications, the sense of belonging to heritage and receiving groups. They also emphasized that the context of reception, including discrimination and the welcome a group receives, shapes how acculturation unfolds and that acculturation gaps between parents and children are linked to family conflict.

This model helps Farid see that he need not choose wholesale. He has adopted American practices, such as soccer and English at school, while keeping core values of family loyalty and his religious faith. His identity can include both Afghan and American belonging. The conflict at home reflects a gap in practices more than in values: his parents fear that new habits mean he is abandoning them, when he shares their commitment to family.

Acculturative Stress and Refugee Experience

Farid's stress has many sources: learning English quickly, missing relatives left behind, memories of the escape and the camp, family financial pressure and occasional comments from strangers about Afghans. Refugees often carry losses and trauma that other immigrants do not, and the clinic's assessment includes screening for posttraumatic stress.

The Context of Reception

How Phoenix receives Farid matters as much as his own choices. Resettlement agencies helped his family find housing and his father a job, and his college offers English support and a Muslim student association, all signs of welcome. At the same time, Farid has heard classmates joke about terrorism and a customer at the store mutter at his mother's headscarf. Each slight makes integration feel less possible and separation more attractive to his parents, who want to protect the family.

Language Brokering

Like many children of immigrants, Farid became the family's translator within months of arrival, reading bills, calling the landlord and explaining school forms. This role, sometimes called language brokering, can build skill and closeness, but it also reverses parts of the parent-child relationship and adds pressure. His parents depend on his English even as they worry about what else he is absorbing, a tension that sharpens the gap between them.

Family-Focused Support

Because the conflict is partly a family gap, the counselor proposes sessions with Farid and, if the family agrees, with his parents, using a Dari interpreter. Sessions would help Farid explain what college means to him and help his parents voice their fears. Connecting the family with an Afghan community organization that supports students could show the parents that education and heritage can coexist. For Farid, a plan to return to classes part time while working some shifts at the store honors both obligations.

Conclusion

Farid's sense of belonging nowhere reflects marginalization in a family where parents lean toward separation. Berry's framework, Phinney's measure of ethnic identity and a model separating practices, values and identifications show that he can integrate, keeping his family's values and faith while joining campus life. Support that addresses the family gap, refugee stress and his identity exploration offers a path forward.

References

Berry, J. W. (1997). Immigration, acculturation, and adaptation. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 46(1), 5-34. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.1997.tb01087.x

Phinney, J. S. (1992). The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure: A new scale for use with diverse groups. Journal of Adolescent Research, 7(2), 156-176. https://doi.org/10.1177/074355489272003

Schwartz, S. J., Unger, J. B., Zamboanga, B. L., & Szapocznik, J. (2010). Rethinking the concept of acculturation: Implications for theory and research. American Psychologist, 65(4), 237-251. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019330