Components of intercultural identity: towards an effective integration policy

This research focuses on a group of religious students who integrated into a nonreligious school in order to understand the characteristics of their intercultural identity. I suggest a new perspective in which intercultural identity is analyzed by itself rather than analyzing acculturation strategies taken by the individual. Using an in-depth analysis of the presented case study, I argue that intercultural identity is characterized by three types of components: core, reinterpreted, and transient. Thus, while the existing bidimensional model defines integration as the simultaneous acceptance of different cultures as they are, the present study stresses the importance of reinterpreting components from both cultures as a basis for integration. Accordingly, this paper suggests that an effective integration policy encourages in the individual the ability to develop the reinterpreted components. This type of approach might promote a positive correlation, defined by prior research as ambivalent, between integration and the individual’s emotional well-being and educational achievements.