Multiple identities: Young Bedouin professionals challenging their socio-cultural Representations

The desire of a minority group to integrate into society on equal terms with the majority is often expressed through the first-generation university degree holders of children sent by their parents to the schools of the majority group. The present study describes the multi-identities of Bedouin men and women who studied in the majority education system, a Jewish public school with Hebrew as its language of instruction with a different ethnic, religion, political, and cultural milieu. From the perspective of the theory of social representations, the findings point to a variety of strategies that Bedouin students have utilized in refusing to perform stereotypically minority identities. They force us to reframe their identities showing that they are capable of adopting emancipated representations to create a space in accord with the changing nature of Bedouin society. From their retrospective view, we learned that men built a space that combines representations of what we call “both worlds” while women found themselves managing multiple identities, conflict between roles, social relationship and life stages. The contribution of the research lies in the in-depth understanding of the interpersonal processes associated with social experiences of minority students in their own land (not immigrants), showing how they develop, adopt, and retain multiple identities, straddling social borders.