Being in Between: Exploring Cultural Bereavement and Identity Expression through Drawing

Abstract

When leaving their country of origin, immigrant children experience various losses that can lead to a grief reaction called cultural bereavement. Being an ambiguous loss, cultural bereavement can complicate children's identity construction by creating a gap between home and host country identities that may affect children's sense of belonging and identity. Yet, drawing can support immigrant children in the meaningmaking process necessary to work through the experience of cultural bereavement, as it is a non-threatening way to safely express emotionally charged material. This article presents the case study of an 11-year-old immigrant Egyptian girl who used drawing in the context of classroom-based creative expression workshops to express her cultural bereavement process and create a new meaningful identity.

Making sense of collective identity and trauma through drawing: the case study of a Palestinian refugee student

“…As was observed in Ali's drawings and how they evolved, he could gradually explore aspects of his wounded identity, going back and forth between his wish to affirm his Palestinian identity and his wish to avoid it. It is interesting to compare the case of Ali to the case of a Chinese boy in his class, for whom his cultural identity of origin played a protective role (Beauregard, 2015), this also supporting other studies about the importance of maintaining links with the culture of origin while creating bonds with host society (Berry et al, 2006). But for refugee students who have been uprooted, and especially in the case of Palestinian refugees from Lebanon who are not allowed a national identity, relying on one's cultural identity of origin might not play only a protective role.…”