Marked identities: narrating lives between social labels and individual biographies

Western society has become increasingly diverse and inclusive, but stereotypes still pervade public discourse. How do people who for different reasons have a marked status in society manage their identity and respond to stereotypes? This edited volume explores this issue with people who either belong to a culturally salient group - Travellers, Jewish survivors, Canadian First Nation women, ex DDR citizens - or whose circumstances make them potential targets of discrimination – teenage mothers, homeless people, substance users and individuals with autism. The interviews in these chapters reveal how their life narratives resist, change or incorporate society's views about them.