What Does It Mean To Be Muslim / Arab / Young / Palestinian / Palestinian Refugee? Self-Definitions and Emotional Reactions to Social Identity Complexity among Young Palestinian Refugees Living in the Diaspora

Giovanna Leone; Maya Siag; Mauro Sarrica

Giovanna Leone Department of Communication and Social Research, La Sapienza, University of Rome.
Maya Siag Department of Communication and Social Research, La Sapienza, University of Rome.
Mauro Sarrica Department of Communication and Social Research, La Sapienza, University of Rome.

Keywords: refugees, multi-generational approach, identity layers, self-description, emotions

Abstract

The research that we relate to in this paper focuses on emotions that two hundred Palestinian Refugee adolescents living in refugee camps in Jordan associate with their self-definition of their own identity. To prompt this self-description initially, participants were asked to answer to the Twenty Statement Test. They then scored themselves on a pre-arranged list of emotions, related to their identity as they described it. Adolescents were then confronted with only one of the multiple layers that their complex social identity could offer: they were randomly asked to think of themselves as either being a Palestinian, a Palestinian Refugee, a Young Person, an Arab, or a Muslim. Here again participants were asked to self-define their identity and to declare the emotions they felt. Results showed how these adolescents, although all born in the Diaspora and never having visited Palestine, and in spite of the fact that 56.5% of them had parents born in the Diaspora too, spontaneously thought of themselves as Palestinian, and gave a deep emotional impact to this self-definition. However, many of these emotions changed according to the different layer of identity proposed to each group of participants during the second part of the questionnaire, showing how each facet of their complex social identity could lead to different emotional reactions when these adolescents were invited to think of their life. Limitations of this initial exploratory data as well as directions for future research are discussed at the end of the paper.

Author Biographies

Giovanna Leone, Department of Communication and Social Research, La Sapienza, University of Rome.

GIOVANNA LEONE , associate professor of Social Psychology at the Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza, University of Rome. Her main research interests include: social and collective aspects of autobiographical memory; ambivalent effects of interpersonal and intergroup helping, paying a special attention to teacher-student relations in multicultural classrooms; relationship between intergenerational communication on war violence and intergroup reconciliation. Referring to this last point, she is exploring, analysing history textbooks as well as social signals emerging during communication, how negative emotions associated to collective memories of past war violence may enhance coping processes of former enemies and of their descendents.

Maya Siag, Department of Communication and Social Research, La Sapienza, University of Rome.

MAYSA SIAG, Ph.D. Graduate from The European/International Doctorate on Social Representation and Communication, and a collaborating researcher at the Department of Communication and Social Research - Sapienza, University of Rome.

Her research interests are: Social identity complexity, refugees, emotions, and trans-generational transmission of violence.

Mauro Sarrica, Department of Communication and Social Research, La Sapienza, University of Rome.

MAURO SARRICA, Ph.D, researcher at the Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza, University of Rome. His main interests are social construction of knowledge, stability and change of social beliefs, and peace psychology. In this perspective he has investigated the social representation of peace, war and conflict. Developments of his research brought him to investigate the social construction of environmental conflicts and the social representations of citizenship.