Abstract

This thesis discusses how people with different backgrounds who have clashing identities and problems of belonging deal with their identity issues and how they find a way to resolve their identity conflicts by finding a new way to define and re-unite their selves as a whole person. When people in my sample were unable to resolve their identity conflicts, they fell into a depression. The thesis escalates from the micro to the macro as individuals learn to describe themselves as global citizens in an attempt to give themselves a sense of belonging and reduce the dissonance that results from identity conflicts. Not much work has been done on globalization from the point of view of Identity. It has been researched more as an economic and political phenomenon so this research bears new ground in terms of understanding the development of the global self. I interviewed a snowball sample of 11 Individuals which ranged from the ages of 24 to 57 with self defined identity crises and identity issues of various sorts. We discussed the types of conflicts, the participants coping mechanisms and their successes and failures at resolving the conflicts and redefining their identity. Erikson, Mead, Cooley, Durkheim, Goffman, and Bauman provided insights and the main theoretical framework. The main conclusion was that respondents re-invented themselves as global citizens to reduce the dissonance they felt and to integrate their fragmented and conflicted identities.