ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a closer look at various circumstances associated with identity manifestations of descendants of migrants. Having a migrant background affects one’s identity in various ways. One’s roots – which are characterised by emotional attachments to both one’s parents’ country of birth and one’s own country of birth – are not static, and it is possible to combine these varied aspects of one’s identity. However, the boundaries between these multiple belongings may become blurred in everyday experience. The TIES questionnaire was specifically designed to enable analysis of multiple belongings. Our questions look for categorical identities, which refer to quasi groups (Freedman 1976). This is a concept similar to that of ‘imagined communities’, which Anderson (1993) introduced in his treatise on nations and nationality, and to Bauman’s concept of ‘dream communities’ defined by gender, class and nation (Bauman 1995).
