LAUSR

Abstract Although research on minority youth has established the value of coethnic spaces for safe ethnic identity exploration, research has seldom examined how youth in these spaces draw ethnic boundaries or offered appropriate frameworks addressing boundary-setting. This study uses Berry’s acculturation framework to explore ethnic boundary-setting within a Colombian immigrant youth dance program in the US. Seven members participated in a multi-year qualitative study that triangulated surveys, interviews, and responses to a hypothetical multicultural dilemma that ‘positioned’ Colombian participants as part of an in-group on the basis of their ethnicity. Specifically, it explores the strategies they employed to deal with the dilemma and the role context played in those strategies. With findings that reveal how youth incorporate the arguments found in mainstream immigration debates to justify integration, segregation, and exclusion of non-Colombians, this study argues that to understand strategies employed, it is necessary to examine local, national, and transnational contexts.