Can I still be myself around them here? Re-envisioning ethnic identity negotiation in multiethnic schools through a dialogic approach

This article presents a way of understanding ethnic identity negotiation in multiethnic school settings through dialogical and sociocultural perspectives. Starting with reference to Bakhtin and dialogical self theory (DST) as a lens to consider the nexus between ethnic self and other, the article discusses how this nexus is emplaced within the interplay of collective voices and cultural tools. It moves on to consider how these voices and tools are embedded within sociocultural processes of institutions. Based on these theoretical considerations, ethnic identity negotiation is foregrounded through an emphasis on individuals’ dialogical interactions with ethnically compounded sociocultural processes that contribute to the (in)stability of ethnic self. The article concludes by proposing this dialogical approach as a way forward to looking at ethnic identity in shifting and dynamic sociocultural milieu of multiethnic schools.