Growing up between cultures : linguistic and cultural identity among Maltese youth and their ethnic counterparts in Australia

Abstract

The paper explores how young people’s cultural identities are being increasingly redefined in complex linguistic and performative relation to transcultural experiences. It first considers the situation of young people of Maltese origin whose parents settled in Australia after the Second World War, and critiques the suggestion that these youths ’ educational performance and access to professional level employment may have been negatively affected by their alleged loss of ‘mother tongue’, ethnic identity and cultural heritage. The paper challenges this perception by outlining the complex ways in which young people growing up in Malta itself (the ‘home’ or ‘mother’ country) perceive, construct and perform their linguistic and cultural identities. It argues that young Maltese people’s performative and linguistic constructions of their cultural identities provide a striking example of ‘glocal’ hybridity, and that, irrespective of whether they choose to claim Maltese or English or a combination of the two as the primary marker of their cultural identity, this hybridity is experienced as a positive performance and expression of selfhood.