Negotiating the Situational Identity of Algerian Migrants over-skilled in Québec

Abstract

Through qualitative demarch, this research is trying to point out how the difficulties to integrate into market labor of the host-society and affect the strategies of new comers and exploring each situation to realize their goals. They find themselves obliged to negotiate constantly their situations and their strategies. Because it is never an individual matter, the identity is deeply affected, and it is intricately shaped by every experience life. In exploring the micro-social processes interaction through which migrant identity is reinvented, the study leads to setting up of a “mapping” of migrants faced every situation and how the migrant negotiate its references. Furthermore, it displays the result of negotiating as a social adjustment in everyday life and the struggles to succeed gradually the whole process of integration. The people interviewed invent for themselves new norms of negotiating, within the different social situations, which include three references (homeland, host society and community of the same origin). A new form of identifications emerges from their social negotiating that obey not only to their references but also to the conditions of their situations and the possibilities to improve or realize their aims. The analysis highlights the ‘adaptative action’ and the situation negotiating of identity