“We're Sort of Imposters”: Negotiating Identity at Home and Abroad

摘要

In this article, I argue that through study abroad programming, university students engage in relational encounters between self (home culture) and other (host culture)—twinned concepts that constitute and are constituted by each other. Moreover, I assert that these encounters take place not only during the students’ time abroad, but also well before it as students produce and consume various identities through performances, representations, and discourses. These practices and processes at home shape the ways in which students create meanings abroad. In making these claims, I look closely at students’ experiences in a short-term study abroad program to Ireland and Northern Ireland. I assert that it was through the students’ constructions of Irishness as commodities, claims, and contestations that they encountered their Americanness. The qualitative data for this study were collected in the mid-2000s, and include focus group transcripts, journals, photo-reflections, as well as related program and course documents.