Every school year, without fail, there was always one moment that I dreaded: the first week icebreaker. “Get in a circle, let’s go around and introduce ourselves. Say your name, favorite hobby, and where you are from!” Although it seemed harmless enough, the question, “Where are you from?” carried more weight than peers around me probably realized. During the first couple years in America, I answered without hesitation. “I’m from Korea,” I’d say proudly. But a few years later, the question began to feel trickier than it should be. By the time I was in high school, I started wondering if I was supposed to say “California,” as we had been living there for a while by then. On a daily basis, I spoke more English than Korean. I got more used to American culture than Korean culture. And more importantly, I did not want to be seen as too foreign. So when it came time to introduce myself again, I hesitated for a moment. “Well, I was born in Korea, but I live in California.” That moment of hesitation marked the beginning of a deeper personal split. It seems like such a small moment, but it stayed with me. It was the first time I realized that identity was not what I could state so confidently, but something I had to choose, and every choice came with its consequences. Saying “Korea” felt like risking being labeled as an outsider, but “California” felt like denying a part of myself. The small moment of introducing myself every school year became a larger conflict. One that still follows me into college, and even casual conversations with strangers.

For many immigrants, identity is a constant negotiation. Torn between two worlds, we are often told to assimilate with one culture, while constantly being reminded of our foreignness. We carry our family’s language, culture, and traditions, while attempting to adapt to the norms and expectations of the new society. This “in between” state creates the sense of internal conflict, as well as alienation. “Too foreign for home, yet too foreign for here” becomes more than a saying, but a lived reality with no clear sense of feeling fully home in either place. In the end, we are simply left to ask ourselves: Who am I? What am I? Where do I belong? And at the heart of it all is the question that shaped my childhood: Can immigrants ever truly feel at home in one culture?

I started noticing the ways this question extended beyond just me, when I compared myself to my younger brother. Unlike me, he was too young to remember living in Korea. He is also much more fluent in English than in Korean, and more “Americanized,” as my parents would say. I recently asked him whether he thinks of himself as more American or Korean, in which he paused for a moment before answering. “American, I think. I don’t really speak Korean well, and sometimes I feel out of place when we go to Korea. I can’t even understand everything they’re saying.” His experience reflects an important truth, that even within the same household, immigrant experience can differ dramatically. This generational and linguistic gap parallels findings by Rubén G. Rumbaut, who explains how immigrants experience “segmented assimilation,” in which identity and belonging split along the lines of class, language, and culture. While some preserve strong ties to their home country, others lean more towards their host country, often depending on how accepted or marginalized they feel in the society. Although my brother’s answer was not surprising, it still stuck with me. While I am constantly negotiating between two identities, he feels a clearer sense of belonging, because American life is what he has always known.

Scholars have long studied how immigrants come to develop their identities. Nancy Foner, et al note that identities are “amenable to change” through dynamic processes shaped by experience and social interaction. Immigrants don’t simply assimilate or resist assimilation, but rather navigate through multiple identities that shift over time. This explains why I once clung to my Korean roots and now find myself feeling in between identities depending on the settings—school, home, or public spaces. Déborah B. Maehler and Jessica Daikeler’s extensive research on first generation immigrants further reveals how cultural identity can often include both host and home cultures in complicated ways. For many, identity becomes something hybrid rather than singular. This hybridity may allow room for flexibility, but it also creates discomfort as they may belong partially to two places, but not fully to either. This duality is especially clear in the way I switch between languages and behaviors depending on who I am with. At home, I instinctively call my parents “eomma” and “appa.” But at school or another environment, I refer to them as my mom and dad, in the “American way.” I live in this kind of cultural code-switching, trying to pass seamlessly between two different worlds.

This dilemma becomes even more complicated when it comes to national identity. Jennifer Wenshya Lee and Yvonne M. Hébert explored how youth of immigrant and non-immigrant origins in Canada acknowledged their sense of belonging. They found that youths of immigrant origin expressed a more complex relationship to the idea of “being Canadian” than of their non-immigrant peers. When two groups were asked to define what “being Canadian” means to them, findings show that immigrant origin youths described Canadian identity with more rational statements, such as “peaceful country” and “high standard of living,” while non-immigrant youths who presented their identity with more passion and confidence, like “proud” and “highest standard of living.” This difference shows a discrepancy in how rooted each group feels in the national culture. Immigrants often define identity based on ideals because they don’t feel reflected in the dominant cultural narratives like the national holidays and symbols, things one can belong to without necessarily “looking the part.” As a result, “being Canadian” becomes more about the principles than shared traditions. I’ve often found myself navigating that same sense of disconnect, trying to present as fully American yet still feeling out of place. Through language, clothing, even humor, I try to fit in. But there’s always something: a stranger asking where I’m really from, or complimenting my English. These aren’t blatant aggressions, but small reminders that my belonging comes with conditions. When national identity is closely knitted to cultural symbols and traditions that exclude their experiences, immigrants can feel like outsiders. And so they cling to values they can align with, like freedom and democracy, while still detached from the cultural references that non-immigrants take for granted. Many immigrants learn what national identity is supposed to mean, but still question whether that identity truly includes them.

But maybe the goal isn’t to fully belong in one culture. In their analysis of immigrant identity in the contexts of the U.S. and Sweden, Ylva Svensson and Moin Syed found that U.S. participants were more likely to define themselves using multi-ethnic categories like “Asian-American,” rather than the national labels alone. While the participants often described themselves as feeling different from the mainstream culture, they also felt a strong sense of belonging through communities that embraced these differences. In contrast, the Swedish participants struggled more with finding community around the deviations from the norm. This suggests that immigrant identity, particularly in the U.S., is best understood as a negotiation between the individual and society. Instead of resolving cultural contradictions, many found ways to live within them, redirecting differences as a source of connection among those who reflect their experiences. As Svensson and Syed argue, identity formation is about finding coherence amidst contradiction. That idea started to feel real during the first few months of college. I started noticing how almost everyone around me carried their own version of a layered identity, whether it was a name that didn’t come easily to others, a mix of languages spoken at home, or the experience of growing up between two cultures. This wasn’t just for immigrants; even those who had grown up in America often had stories shaped by regional differences or cultural traditions that didn’t always align with the conventional culture. No one apologized for it. No one felt the need to explain. And slowly, I stopped explaining myself too. The things I used to second-guess, like the way I’d count in Korean, switch between languages in my head, or wonder whether I was too Korean or not Korean enough, eventually started to feel like facts, not contradictions. Being different didn’t feel like something to fix anymore, it just felt normal. In a strange way, the question that haunted me growing up–where are you from?–has further pushed me to think more about who I am. Rather than choosing between two countries, maybe I can claim both, because my identity is not split, but layered.

For many of us, home is something we build piece by piece, not what we inherit fully formed. It doesn’t simply exist in one language, tradition, or passport, but in the ongoing process of choosing and blending. Through this, I’ve started to realize that identity doesn’t have to be either resolved or clearly defined to be real. In fact, maybe the more honest question here isn’t about which culture we belong to, but whether we can belong without needing to be fully understood by either. Can we embrace the complexity of who we are, even when the world around us asks for simplicity? Immigrant identity is not something to be solved, but something to be lived, both imperfect and layered. And within that space, we don’t just learn to exist, but to belong on our own terms.

Works Cited