ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the ways in which the young people of North Caucasian origin reconstruct the chains of equivalence and difference to comply, resist and talk back some of their negative cultural labels. It examines the ways in which young people take matters into their own hands and re-negotiate existing boundaries such as ethnicity, nationality and religion. The chapter includes both simplifying and stereotypical opinions of ethnicity and ethnic groups as well as utterances which aims to question and deconstruct such insights. The young people of North Caucasian origin stress that the Caucasus is a multinational region, where several languages are spoken and where different cultural traditions meet and intertwine. They talk about Caucasian identity as being fractured by allegiances to different nationalities and by religious and political differences. The term cultural identity is applied in this chapter as an umbrella concept to indicate the commonality, connectedness and groupness of individuals with different and intersecting cultural communities.
