Habitus and Identity Formation

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The above is an interview with Sarah Foo, a first generation immigrant who is currently a freshman in college. Sarah Foo moved to the US with her mother and her sister on April 14, 2008. Her family settled in Tampa, Florida where her mother knew someone in the community; there was a strong Thai community where they moved because of the Thai temples located in Tampa. The family came with visas and applied for permanent residency as soon as they were able to. Sarah and her sister enrolled in public high school. She was 14-years-old at the time and spoke very little English. The above excerpted audio focuses on Sarah's first experiences in the US and her feelings on her own identity.

Sarah describes her first experiences in the US as alien and overwhelming primarily due to the culture shock she faced upon arrival. Sarah had come to the US with a worldview and set of cultural practices formed by the structures she had grown up with in Thailand. The habitus that she internalized was clearly very different from the habitus of her American peers, as evidenced by the differences in dress and social interaction that she saw. The interview shows that her habitus was in conflict with the habitus she saw around her, and it is not clear that her habitus has changed significantly as a result of assimilation. Though Sarah later described becoming more comfortable living in the US, with regards to language and picking up social norms, Sarah still identifies as Thai, and not American "yet".

Sarah’s connection to Thai culture fits well with Bourdieu’s concept of habitus as a theory of culture. All of Sarah's early socialization experiences were informed by Thai culture. As a result, by the time Sarah moved to the US, she had internalized much of Thai culture and formed her primary disposition. “More than half of my life took place somewhere else,” she explains. Assimilation occurred gradually and naturally over time because “[h]abitus is fairly resistant to change, since primary socialization in Bourdieu’s view is more formative of internal dispositions than subsequent socialization experiences (Swartz, 1998:107). Coming to the US meant that Sarah's habitus necessarily changed as it encountered new situations. However, Sarah seemed to internalize American practices as elaborations to her habitus, rather than fundamental alterations to her cultural disposition; when she overcame the culture gap, she was adding American practices to her habitus, rather than altering her internal disposition as a Thai person. Thus, Sarah's habitus informed her identity as fundamentally Thai.

What Sarah was used to: a typical classroom in Thailand

What Sarah experienced: a typical classroom in America