Rashmi Singla

“Grab your culture and walk with the global”: Ladakhi students’ negotiation of cultural identity in the context of globalization-based acculturation

The globalization-based acculturation process in the Indian Himalayan region of Ladakh represents a highly complex network of intercultural interactions. Ladakhi youth negotiate their cultural orientation and identity in relation both (a) to indirect intercultural exposure through media and (b) to intermittent cultural contact through tourism in Ladakh. Additionally, many Ladakhi students take sojourns in large Indian cities. Like other Eastern populations exposed to cultural globalization, young Ladakhis are influenced by several local and global cultural streams. Within this acculturative process, Ladakhi youth are caught between ambiguous societal pressures toward both tradition and change. Through in-depth interviews, in the present study we investigated the negotiations of eight Ladakhi students’ cultural identity in Leh (Ladakh) and Delhi. In doing so, we drew pragmatically on theories of multiculturalism and dialogical self. Participants reported negotiating their cultural identity through dialogue between various personal, cultural, religious, and social voices, where these voices require selectively incorporating various cultural elements within the parameters established by societal constraints. Results indicate the vast complexity and dynamics within the Ladakhi acculturation process, with multiple interacting cultural streams, religions, and significant sociohistorical factors calling for an in-depth qualitative approach to elucidate the processes underlying globalization-based acculturation.

Intermarried couples, mental health and psychosocial well-being: Negotiating mixedness in the Danish context of ‘homogeneity’

Intermarried couples in Denmark face a range of psychosocial challenges in the context of dominant discourses of homogeneity coexisting with ethnic diversity. This article deals with the couples’ managing of everyday life, mental health, well-being and implications for health promotion and counselling. The participants in this qualitative study (n = 10) are persons in mixed relationships where one partner is from South Asia and the other a native Dane, forming visibly ethnically different households [Phoenix, A. (2011). Psychosocial intersections: Contextualising the accounts of adults who grew up in visibly ethnically different households. In Lutz, V., & L. Supik (Eds.), Framing intersectionality: Debates on a multi-faceted concept in gender studies. Surrey: Ashgate]. The analysis indicates that internal, personal and family aspects, such as realistic plans, mixing everyday practices and focussing on the fun part, are in interplay with external aspects such as formal and informal acceptance of the intermarriage in society, dominant gender roles, recognition and inclusion for the mixed couples. Recognition of the significance of these aspects and practices is important for promoting positive mental health and well-being over the life course.

Managing Everyday Life

This chapter deals with maintaining intermarried relationships through the life course. It follows on from the previous chapter’s discussion of the ‘getting together’ narratives of the couples characterised by the centrality of love. Some theoretical conceptualisations of love — both in society in general and within close relationships — forms the first section of this chapter, while the second section presents an everyday life approach to studying the management of mixed couple life. The third section delineates a three-stage ontogenetic (relating to the developmental history of individual within its own lifetime) division.

Psychosocial Intervention Model: Ethnic Minority Youth with Intimate Partnership Formation Problems in Denmark

The article is based on a research project using survey data (N=628) and qualitative interviews (N=60) with young people and their parents belonging to the five largest ethnic minority groups in Denmark, along with the experiences of psychosocial services for minority young people. The theoretical framework is social psychological, combining theories of modernisation, family relations and effects of discrimination. The article examines interaction with the parents in relation to their intimate partnership formation and the dynamics of religious endogamy. Main findings are that parents may be either supportive or against the young people, contrary to the dominant discourses about intergenerational conflicts. The continued practice of religious endogamy is another finding. The article criticises the reductionistic dichotomy ‐ either own or parental choice ‐ and appeals for broader concepts which focus both on own choice and parental acceptance. The article also throws light on some strategic services dealing with the problems of ethnic minority young people in forming intimate partnerships in other countries. A model for psychosocial intervention is presented which directs attention to ageism and sexism, as well as racism, at personal, interpersonal and structural levels.

Mixed Parentage: Negotiating Identity in Denmark

Despite an increase in cross border intimate relationships and children of mixed parentage, there is little mention or scholarship about them in the area of childhood and migrancy in the Nordic countries. The international literature implies historical pathologization , contestation and current complex paradigms regarding these children. This chapter explores how children of mixed parentage negotiate their identities in the Danish context, where statistically and socially there are no widely acceptable terms for categorizing them. To this purpose, an empirical qualitative in-depth interview study of children and young people of mixed parentage residing in Copenhagen area is conducted. The theoretical framework is eclectic, combining post-structural approach with mixed identity negotiation theory and transnationalism. The main conclusion is that the children reveal various strategies of identity formation in the context of partial migrancy. They position themselves as having an “in-between” identity or “just Danes” in their everyday lives among friends, family, and during leisure activities. Thus a new paradigm is evolving away from the pathologization of mixed children, simplified one-sided categories. These findings also have implications for social policy and practices related to mixed children.

Implications for Strengthening Mixed Partnering and Parenting: Counselling and Psychotherapy

This final chapter is the result of many epistemological as well as ethical reflections and brings insights from my clinical practice into this research. Besides working as an academic since 2000, in the Department of Psychology and Educational Studies at Roskilde University along with affiliation to Interdisciplinary Studies in Health Promotion and Health Strategies, for the past three decades I have been working as a clinical psychologist, providing counselling and psychotherapy. My clients have included, among others, ethnically mixed couples and families, ethnic minority youths, their families and transnational adoptees. It has been a challenge to combine the research-based results from the present study focussing on ‘ordinary’, intermarried couples with positive mental health and wellbeing, with insights from my psychosocial practice. A survey about the psychotherapeutic activities of psychologists in Denmark (Jacobsen, Nielsen & Mathiesen, 2013) in a Danish psychological journal Psykolog Nyt, made me aware that just 2% of psychologists in Denmark have a Ph.D. degree along with a specialisation in psychotherapy Thus only a few psychologists possess “double competence” which combines clinical practice experiences with research experience. Besides it was pointed that about 7% have a minority background like me while 93% have majority Danish background. At the same time significance of qualitative research in enhancing counselling and psychotherapy has been highlighted emphatically by McLeod, 2012.

Intermarried Couples and Their Experiences

This chapter introduces the primary empirical study and is intended to provide context and some information about research methodology. The point of departure relates to sampling technique and a consideration of the ethical challenges faced. The data collection process is also described. I discuss here the issue of sample size, the number of research participants and subsequent generalisation because it is an important one in qualitative research and there is often discussion about researcher-based and a reader-based analytical generalisation. Finally I outline the study participants and provide their major demographic features as well as short biographical notes.

Local Lives in a Transnational Context

This chapter deals with the broader social context that mixed couples live within, both in the country of residence and in the diaspora spouse’s country of origin. Along with a focus on everyday practices and activities within the marriage, participants express their attitudes towards broader social questions and conditions that lie outside their intimate relationship, including those concerning religion and politics. The treatment the mixed couples — especially the diasporic spouses — meet in broader society reveals the extent to which their humanity is recognised and how human the receiving society is, as expressed by Tutu in 2014: ‘When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognising the humanity in others.’ These aspects of their narratives reflect wider social attitudes — in other words the ‘outside’ rather than ‘inside’ as delineated by Cabarello, Edwards & Puthussery (2008). While ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ have been analytically separated here, it is acknowledged that in real life they are closely intertwined.

Getting Together — ‘Falling in Love’

This chapter begins with a delineation of theories of general intimate partner selection within social psychology. It attempts to answer the question of how people from different ethnic backgrounds come together. The answers to this question within this sample show a commonality of coming together for the participants through the process of falling in love combined with pragmatic aspects, despite highly varied contextual factors.

Intimate Relationships across Ethnic (and Other) Borders

This book is about the kind of intimate relations across ethnic borders that are gaining attention academically and politically as well as in service provision at international levels. It explores the dynamics of such relations, especially intermarriages between visibly ethnically different couples, characterised by differences in phenotypes such as physical and facial characteristics, skin colour and hair type. This book includes primarily an empirical study (Singla & Holm, 2012), in which one partner is Danish and the other originates from South Asia (India or Pakistan), at times also implying marriage between citizens and non-citizens.