Recent dialogue between the 'global' and the 'local' has provoked extensive discourse about changing natures of identity, particularly identity shaped within the context of globalisation generally (e.g. Featherstone, 1 990b, 1993 ; Massey, 1993 ; Nonini and Ong,
1 997 Yeoh and Willis, 200 1). As Cohen ( 1997: l 75) argues:
The scope for multiple affiliations and associations that has been opened up outside and
. beyond the nation-state has also allowed a diasporic allegiance to become both more open and more acceptable. There is no longer any stability in the points of origin, no finality in
the points of destination and no necessary coincidence between social and national identities.
With identity based in places increasingly unstable, 'identity', as a reflexive project (cf Giddens, 1 99 1) has to be reconfigured. Yeoh and Willis (200 1 ) assert that the context of global dynamics and transnational forces have not eliminated, but have rather transformed the power and politics of identity; and that because identity is socially constructed., rather than being essentialist, and because it draws on notions of 'imagined communities', new forms of identification are formed in strategic ways to better position themselves in a globalising world. According to this argument, the reflexive project of fonning, shaping or (re)creating an identity is a strategic project, one that is as much self-serving as it is self defined. However, identity is not always self-defined; the reflexive project of identity building is not isolated from the contexts in which that identity-building takes place.
Giddens ( 1 99 1 :54, my emphasis) asserts that a person's identity is not found in behaviour, nor in relation to others, but "in the capacity
to keep a particular narrative going".
TIlls capacity includes behavioural, social, and emotional levels. It also affects an individual's notion of belonging: their ontological security. As Giddens ( 199 1 :54-55) continues:The individual's biography, if she is to maintain regular interaction with others in the day to-day world, cannot be wholly fictive. It must continually integrate events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the ongoing 'story' about the self As Charles Taylor puts it, 'In order to have a sense of who we are, we have to have a notion of how we have
become, and of where we are going' . . . . A stable sense of self-identity presupposes the other elements of ontological security - an acceptance of the reality of things and of others - but it is not directly derivable from them.
When those senses of present, past, and future are questioned or challenged., then an individual's identity is disrupted. The retumees may find that not only does their time in New Zealand - and the plethora of options that study abroad experience suggest for their life courses - challenge their notion of 'where we are going', but they also encounter this disruption upon their re-entry into their countries of origin. The returnees' re-entry not only disrupts their narrative, but also leads to instability in their self-identity. However, while this ontological instability may be a negative characteristic, its outcomes, as explored in Chapter Eight, may be positive.
Recognising the changing and fluid subjectivity-positions, the risks of legitimising stereotypes, and the nature of habitus, the returnees were asked, having returned to their countries of origin, to describe themselves in terms of identity. Invariably, they found this question difficult to answer. Their answers echoed constructed identities; for example, their job or qualification were proffered as responses. Others responded according to their beliefs: "a child of God", "a Muslim", or "a Christian". Others responded according to their nationality: "a Singaporean" or "a Malaysian".
These responses are significant for two reasons: they are identities circumscribed by and within structures (such as a system of beliefs or an ethnic categorisation) and they are responses more relevant within the countries of origin than within New Zealand. That is not to say that identifYing him- or her-self as a Christian within New Zealand was not important for the student, but it was not necessarily the primary means of identification. In New Zealand, as noted in the previous chapter, a significant identifier was that of 'international student': a minority in both a categorisation sense
(Vis-a-vis
domestic students) and a discursive sense(vis-a-vis
the dominant discourse). In their countries of origin, many of these self-identifiers (Christian, Malaysian-Chineseet cetera)
were similarly a minority and a dominated discourse. For some of these students, the cultural capital of a Westem educational degree was unable to alleviate them from being in a discriminated class. For some of these students, they were either ethnically or religiously restricted; their identities were formed out of both repression and resistance.Where they could not find external reference points on which to base their identity, such as a nationality or ethnicity, then they used internal reference points, like a belief or ideals of behaviour. To Giddens ( 199 1 :37) these internal reference points, "provide modes of orientation which, on the level of practice, 'answer' the questions which could be raised about the frameworks of existence" and these answers are emotional rather than simply cognitive. However, at another level, the 'meanings' of these 'frameworks of existence'
are
associated with social organisation, beyond the individual's cognitive and emotional identity-points. Here, then, is the intersection between the individual and the society(ies) to which that individual belongs. As Giddens ( 1 99 1 :42-3) argues:Meaning is not built up through descriptions of external reality, nor does it consist of semiotic codes ordered independently of our encounters with that reality. Rather, 'what cannot be put into words', interchanges with persons and objects on the level of daily
practice - forms the necessary condition of what can be said and of th� meanings involved in practical consciousness . . . Learning about external reality hence is largely a matter of mediated experience.
If, following Giddens ( 1 99 1 ) argument, identity is perceived to be an ongoing narrative, then a student's study experience in New Zealand may be a break in that narrative: those returnees who had most difficulty describing their identity (outside referentials like faith) generally were also those who were less certain and less settled about 'home'. One response demonstrates this:
I think I'm trying to find some purpose here, in Hong Kong . . . . At first, it was really hard to settle, and I think oh, I really don't like this place . . . . I was trying to find some purpose to live here . . . . like doing the job . . . I want to find some meanings, to find some meanings, to . . .live here . . . . I think it's like a searching now, at this moment, because I just started my career, it's just a new side, so its like I'm searching, and if this, like if to any kind really doesn't work out here, then ab, we tears, and . . . [HK4 RGHKF 3 103 0 1 ] .
New Zealand changed those who studied there. At least, New Zealand was a factor in those changes. When students, both recent and those who studied under the Colombo Plan, were asked whether their time in New Zealand changed them, their answer was inevitably 'yes'. The changes were both subtle, in tenns of slight personality or behavioural changes (such as becoming more outgoing) and explicit (such as changing religion or adopting a greatly altered world-view). One Colombo Plan scholar was effusive in his response:
Yes, yes I can't imagine what I would be like if I'd never been overseas or been in Malaysia all these years, fifty years in one country. . . . I suppose I would not be so
-'
confident or even my own career. . . . As I say just now, if I was given the chance I would go [to New Zealand] again . . . if I was younger. [Interview 1 3 CPMYKL, 1 2020 1 ].
However, while these changes in self-confidence and behaviour were significant, the changes in conceptions of one's place and space, while subtler, were equally significant.