Exploring the Understanding of Globalization: A Qualitative Study of the Urban, Educated, Middle-Class, Young Indians

Abstract

The discipline of psychology is increasingly recognizing the pervasive impact of the ever-changing socio-cultural contexts in which people are embedded. This dynamic nature of the social world is immensely impacted by globalization. As a phenomenon of psychological interest, globalization wields numerous changes across different domains and appears to continuously shape the contours of people’s experiences. Keeping this in mind, exploring people’s perceptions and understanding of globalization can serve as a good starting point to discover its diverse implications. Thus, this research focused on the experiences of urban, educated, middle-class, young people from the metropolitan context of Delhi-NCR, India. To this end, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 participants (M = 14, F = 18) between the ages of 18 to 28 years. Data were subjected to reflexive thematic analysis, using inductive coding. Emergent themes and subthemes, related to participants’ notions about globalization and its resultant socio-cultural changes along with their implications are thoroughly discussed.