ISSN: 2222-6990
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Malaysia has a unique society with its ethnic diversity and cultural uniqueness. Diversity has become a challenge to the formation of national identity because each ethnic group wants to maintain its own ethnic identity. Malaysia has been striving to form a national identity by strengthening the bonding and harmony among the people, but it has not achieved a satisfying state until now. Therefore, a study was conducted with the objectives to understand the voices of the Malay and Chinese university students in Klang Valley towards the challenges in the formation of national identity and their suggestions to improve the formation. The data were collected in Malaysian public and private universities by using a sequential mixed-method approach. Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) were first conducted to explore students’ views and then a survey was carried out by distributing questionnaires to collect data from a larger population in the selected universities. The outcomes of FGDs and survey found that people’s ideas were not considered in the implementation of the policy by the government, the attitudes of the people like racism and intolerant to other ethnic groups, and unfairness in policy and weak leadership are the challenges in the formation of national identity. To overcome the challenges, this study found that government, people, parents, and university play significant roles in forming national identity. This study identified that it is important to understand grassroots voices in the implementation of national identity formation projects in a country.
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In-Text Citation: (Bing et al., 2021)
To Cite this Article: Bing, S., Fee, L. Y., Samsu, K. H. K., & Ismail, M. M. (2021). The Voices of Malay and Chinese University Students in Klang Valley Towards National Identity Formation in Malaysia. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 11(8), 964-980.
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