Original version
Communities and Cultural Heritage Global Issues, Local Values. 2021, 36-46, DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003031192-5
Abstract
This chapter examines the role social categories play in the self-identification of youths from migrant families living in the Greater Oslo Region, one of the fastest growing urban areas in Europe. Increasing global mobility and connectivity challenge community development practices based on stable territorial units with discrete collective pasts, yet, top-down approaches continue to be fixed to traditional identity paradigms. This raises the question of how far current policy-making is sufficiently anchored in the actual processes through which people bond themselves to others. Fifteen interviews with youths were recorded and transcribed. Tensions are identified between the narrators’ self-defined belongings and the stories of ‘rooted’ difference told around them. The author concludes that essentialist categories of inherited cultural identity continue to be intrinsic to social life, but such concepts also serve as resources for creating new, hybrid spaces for doing and becoming. Current strategies of inclusion are not sufficiently connected to the lived experiences of these youths. However, their accounts clearly demonstrate how they are more than capable of engaging with the plurality and complexity of heritage. From the perspective of heritage institutions and practitioners, the findings indicate the need for a shift of gaze, from classifying descriptions, to people’s social worlds and everyday practices, and illustrate the transforming potential of critical heritage engagement.