Culture & Identity

‘Where do I belong?’
and other changing questions
Shadi Laghai
Identity grows more multifaced as multiculturalism develops.
Image By Brian Lau
Minds Matter Magazine Volume III Issue I Culture & Identity
When making sense of one’s identity, questions
include, “Who are you?” “Where do
you belong?,” and the related question, “How
do you treat others?” Is it possible to answer
these questions in ways that satisfy our human
need to belong, without the cost of dividing
humanity into problematic
categories?
Identity questions, and the identity crisis
that comes with it, are new.
Yoel Inbar, a social psychology professor
at the University of Toronto (U of T), says
that until recent years, people inherited their
parents’ occupations and lived in more ethnically
homogenous communities. He says people
did not question who they were and what
they were supposed to do, because their
futures were predetermined.
Now, as the global community diversifies,
Inbar says “there’s a universe of choices
that you might feel obliged to optimize that in
the past you didn’t even have to worry about.”
But the freedom of forming our own
identity, suggests Inbar, can have a cost on
our mental health. Anxiety and depression increase
without a strong sense of who you are
and what you should do.
Children of immigrant and multicultural
families can feel the effects of inconsistent
identity most strongly.
Kimia Sedig, a student at Western University,
only started having identity crises in
her teens. She says this is because she did not
understand the complexity of the world as a
child.
“I was like, ‘I am Kimia, and that’s all
there is to it,’” she says.
It did not occur to her that her parents’
Jewish and Iranian culture would have a significant
impact on her identity.
As adults, simple personality identities
do not cut it anymore. When Shakib Mohsin,
a student at U of T, is asked where he is from,
he feels answering “Canada” is insufficient.
To those asking, he is different, and they are
looking for classification.
“It felt like you had to be a part of something
that you didn’t really identify with,”
Mohsin says.
Though Mohsin’s parents are from Bangladesh,
his relatives would mock him for not
speaking Bengali. He also did not identify with
Bengali norms, like loving the taste of fish.
Sedig describes a similar dilemma. She
says it felt like she was “hanging in a limbo
between two nicely boxed cultures” because
she did not have a strong sense of belonging
to either one.
Sedig experienced subtle discrimination
for not being a typical Canadian. At the
same time, because she was not fluent in Farsi
and did not know enough of her cultural
history and its traditions, she felt she was not
“enough” to wholly identify with her parents’
Jewish and Iranian cultures.
Not only did Mohsin and Sedig feel torn
between their cultures, Mohsin says he likes
learning and feeling a connection with many
things, including cultures that he did not
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