ABSTRACT
“Culture conflict” is a popular term used to describe second generation young British Asians depicted as facing the dilemma of bipolar values. Supposedly, they must choose either the constraining norms of Asian religions and life-styles of their migrant parents, and thus maintain ethnic identity, or adopt the relative freedom offered by Western values, mediated by teachers and peers at school, colleagues in the workplace, and the images and ideas diffused by television, radio and press. However, empirical evidence provides a more complex picture not so much of stark choice, but of conflicting identification patterns with parents, own community, and role models from the community at large. These are resolved by adopting separate pathways and evolving individual value systems. While all consider language to be an important feature of ethnicity, it is not found to be a determinant of ethnic identity.
