“It's just a name”? Young people in Canada and Germany Discuss ‘National’ Belonging

Abstract

Both Canada and Germany are multi-cultural societies, but with different approaches to this reality. In this chapter, I explore the question of how young people understand and define their social positions, and how much the process is influenced by the societies they live in. I use material from a qualitative research project in one German and one Canadian secondary school. Young people with and without migrant backgrounds shared their experiences and analyses with me, discussing issues of belonging on a number of levels. Drawing on some of these discussions, I seek to show if and how structural differences on the nationstate level materialise in the way participants reproduce different discourses on ‘national’ belonging. Statements of the Canadian participants are central here, and complemented by the comparative perspective of their German counterparts.

I would like to thank the young people who kindly shared their knowledge, experiences and time with me, and the teachers and staff at both schools involved in the project. I extend my thanks to the University of Bremen, the Gesellschaft für Kanada-Studien, the European Network for Canadian Studies and the International Council for Canadian Studies for their generous support. Last but not least, I thank J. Seipel for her critical comments.