Cultural belonging and peer relations among young people in multi-ethnic Norwegian suburbs

Abstract

The article elaborates on young people’s sense of cultural belonging, based on interviews held with 41 pupils with an immigrant background. All of the interviewees lived in the suburbs of a Norwegian town and attended schools where the majority of pupils were ethnic Norwegians. The article focuses both on how the young people constructed themselves in terms of cultural belonging and their experiences of inclusion in peer groups. The findings reveal that the sense of cultural belonging among pupils was closely linked to their parents’ cultural origins, and that the pupils’ social and cultural practices functioned as key to their inclusion in or exclusion from their peer community.