Processes of identity construction in Spanish university students migrated abroad

Abstract

The economic crisis begun in 2008 caused that the migratory balance of Spain, after more than two decades of being positive, in 2011 became again negative, as it was for much of the twentieth century. However, unlike the emigrants of yesteryear, today’s university emigrants are between 25 and 35 years old and without family dependents. This article examines how these new Spanish emigrants rebuild their identities during their migration processes and the factors that influence them. For this purpose, in-depth interviews were carried out with the aim of knowing the life stories of 15 young people with migration experiences during the period from 2008 to 2014. The information obtained is analyzed following the Grounded Theory method, which enables the differentiation of three discursive categories in the evolution of the identities of the young university emigrants. So, these identities are named here as Spanish-phobia (Rejection of Spanish society), Spanish-philia (longing for the Spanish society), and the mutation to a new hybrid identity, in which cultural patterns of origin are intermingled with those of the new society where the migrants live. By means of the said three categories the successive transformations in the identities of young migrants are conceptualized. In turn, these transformations depend upon a series of factors, such as the degree of knowledge that migrants have about the host country language, their degree of habituation to the climate of that country, the social status they achieve after migration, their interactions with the local population, among others. Therefore, the above mentioned three identities are not essential or static, but social constructions that are defined and/or redefined (built and/or rebuilt) according to the situations of interaction (socio-cultural and/or psychological) entailed by the migratory process.