ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the social construction of sojourners' identity throughout and following the sojourn, drawing on the interview data collected throughout, and in particular on the reflective interviews conducted in English at Insojourn 3. All participants, in the Presojourn interview, discussed gender in binary terms; there was no disclosure throughout the project of any issues relating to LGBT identities. Gender seems to have affected female sojourners' experience somewhat differently in Mexico. Despite the multiracial nature of contemporary France and Spain, sojourners rarely referred to ethnicity in interview. The Language and Social Networks Abroad Project (LANGSNAP) sojourners already had a strongly developed student identity before departure. The chapter summarizes the dimensions mentioned as important for self-realization by the LANGSNAP sojourners, which range somewhat more widely. It examines more closely the place of language in participants' current and desired identity, that is, their identity-related L2 proficiency and their descriptions of future, ideal L2 selves.
