Conference Agenda

This study examines the self-reconfiguration process of a young adult with refugee background, using Dialogical Self Theory (DST) as the analytic framework. The dataset consists of anonymized interview dialogues and verbatim excerpts, edited with minimal correction to preserve meaning and integrated into a single narrative text. The narrative was segmented into meaning units and coded for I-positions (self-positions), voices (internalized social, institutional, and relational “voices”), dominance (patterns of positional dominance and marginalization), and the functions of meta-position and promoter positions. Findings indicate that in the middle-school period, a dominant coalition of I-positions—I-as-adapter, I-as-achiever, I-as-responsible-one, I-as-recognition-seeker, and I-as-insecure-self—was supported by an internalized school institutional voice emphasizing conformity and self-responsibility. During this period, I-as-needing-care was marginalized, and distress was communicated through indirect means (e.g., intensified physical/psychological unwellness) rather than direct help-seeking. From the first year of university onward, a counselor’s feedback, family dialogue (especially with a sibling), and a practice of growth-visibility through self-recording functioned as promoter positions, enabling a meta-position and a reorganization of dominance toward I-as-self-authored, I-as-boundary-setter, and a repertoire of reasoned responses to stereotypes. In the present, the participant describes ongoing exposure to discrimination, yet with reduced depletion due to strengthened boundary-setting and explanatory responding, and resistance to being positioned as a “representative” of refugeehood or religion. Implications emphasize (a) designing educational and support environments that expand dialogical space rather than intensify conformity demands, (b) avoiding representational pressure (allowing “to speak” or “not to speak”), and (c) supporting growth-visibility beyond grades and test scores.