Negotiating Transnational Identity: A Study of the Digital Diaspora

Abstract

This study is entitled “Negotiating the Transnational Identity: A Study of the Digital Diaspora. This study is a uses the qualitative approach with ethnography method. The object of this research is the Indonesian diaspora who has been living in Malaysia as students and workers. Diaspora is a person who is living in a location that is geographically far from their home culture. The Diasporas are exposed to the new culture and may causes the process of cultural identity negotiation. The concept of negotiation is defined as the process of transactional interaction in which individuals in an intercultural situation try to impose, define, change, challenge, and or support the desired selfimage of them or others. Thus, identity negotiation is a communication activity. This research findings sees how the informants continued to negotiate their identities as part of diaspora as being discussed based on the identity negotiation competence. Most of the informants also stated that while they experience some major changes in their lives during their stay in Malaysia, they managed to feel the same as who they are back then in their homeland. These findings add that the cultural ethnic, personal situational variability influence how individual perceive the meaning of cultural symbols, interpretation and in the end impacted how they evaluate their lives.