Can Tradition and Ambition Coexist? Unpacking Career and Collective Identity Integration Among Indian Emerging Adults
Career identity; Collective identity; Emerging adults; India; Integration; Qualitative
Developing a meaningful identity requires integrating lived experiences by coordinating the past, present and future identities, integrating multiple personally meaningful identity domains, or aligning ones identities with ones culture to form a coherent sense of self. However, there is a dearth of studies on identity integration across multiple identity domains in the Indian sociocultural context. Even in the West, identity integration is studied using survey methods predominantly in minority populations and on identity domains like ethnicity/religion and religion/sexuality. However, this focus risks overlooking the complexity and nuance of identity experiences, which are often deeply shaped by personally salient and central domains such as career and family. Thus, this paper expands the understanding of identity integration across career and collective identity, considering its relevance among Indian emerging adults using a qualitative approach. Ten emerging adults (1825 years) were purposively selected, and their interviews were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. The narrative accounts revealed career and collective identity integration as a bidirectional phenomenon where family dynamics influence career identities, which, in turn, influence family relations and the reshaping of their worth and communication dynamics. A unique configuration of struggling to balance between family and career emerged as emerging adults negotiated between their desire to stay with family and career pursuits. The impact of financial independence on career identity and parental relationships emerged as another significant aspect. The results discuss theoretical and practical implications for identity research in light of urban Indias unique sociocultural context. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.
Springer Science and Business Media B.V.
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-025-00515-9 https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105013021583?origin=resultslist
Singhal S., Department of Psychology, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India, Department of Psychology, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Ghaziabad, Delhi NCR Campus, India; Prakash N., Department of Psychology, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India