Published Paper Details:

One generation's move to a foreign country starts a diaspora lineage that can affect successive generations. More often, we talk about the sufferings and homelessness that the first generation experiences, but the second generation's inherited diaspora, which contributes to their fluid identity, is just as traumatic. The second generation of immigrants goes through cultural hybridity, exposing them to two different cultures and entrapping them between two extremes--one where they belong and the other where they wish to belong--which makes them uncertain about their identities. Since the first generation has stronger ties to their homeland, they try to impart to their children the same values that their parent country instilled in them. Their offspring born and raised in the host country are more likely to absorb the culture there. This causes a divide in the young children's psyche, leaving them unable to decide whether they belong to the culture their parents promote or the one they observe in the community around them. This paper aims to examine the transnational identities of second-generation immigrants and delve deeper into the trauma experienced by these immigrants with hyphenated identities. Homi Bhabha's postcolonial criticism of cultural hybridity will help the researcher to show how the second generation, trying to balance two cultures, often ends up in a psychological conflict that leaves them in limbo.