Chapter 5: “Nowadays I Think, ‘Wow: I Made it’”: Exploring Immigrant Transitions Drawing on Dialogical Self Theory and the Notion of Symbolic Resources

This chapter will examine two young immigrant sisters’ transitions to life, and their school life in particular, in their new host society. We will draw from two conceptual and analytical frameworks we have used independently in previous studies to explore how people make sense of their experiences as immigrants. Firstly, using concepts from dialogical self theory, we will investigate shifts in I-positions that emerge and dialogical strategies employed to restore continuity in the self that is disrupted by uncertainty (O’Sullivan-Lago & Abreu, 2009, 2010). Secondly, we will explore the symbolic resources (Zittoun, 2006) used by the sisters to examine the developmental transitions they experience (Hale & Abreu, 2010). The theory of dialogical self and the notion of symbolic resources will provide a complementary perspective to enhance current understandings of immigrant young people’s experiences.