Introduction

Abstract

This is a qualitative study which deals with identity as negotiated and articulated by youth born to Turkish parents in Germany. As part of a community of seven million descendants of immigrant ancestry, they are "trying to find their own place and identity on the cultural and ethnic map of Europe" (Liebkind 1989: 1). What calls for a common characterisation is their predicament of living between, to use Aziza-A’s term, "two fat cultures" (Watzinger-Tharp 2004: 291) – one of their family, the other of the host society. Many straddle in both, but belong to none. They are "a tree with leaves and branches but without roots" (Veteto- Conrad 1996: 28), with a ’culture’s in-between’ (Bhabha 2002), or an "imagined community" (Anderson 1991), blurring the boundaries, and experimenting with a blend, of civilizations.