If this is not complicated enough, then we also have an underpinning shift occurring in some areas as a consequence of rising migration: as Mike Hardy also suggested ‘as the diaspora space grows, it provides a link between identity, history and now. …  Identity in a diaspora space or location develops as an ongoing process that can change with situations and experiences’. As people move from one country to another, they retain their homeland identity but also merge it with their new home – and so become Italian-American or London-Irish. Sometimes this shift happens quickly but not always. One comment from the programme pointed out that ‘identity across borders is the true need’. Another highlighted this well in that ‘in France we have a broad influx of North African migrants that gradually assume a Moroccan-French, Tunisian-French or similar identity. But this typically takes three or four generations to develop. Yes, we may become Parisian more quickly than that, but, at a fundamental level, I see that national identity is something we hold on to for as long as possible. Children may be comfortable with being foremost Parisian, but they will still talk more about their grandparent’s heritage two or three generations after moving to France.’ Going forward, as people from different nations move around and settle a long way from their homeland, the diaspora mix will increase and with it the associated influence on our self-identity.

We also have to consider the impact of increasingly global common interest groups with which people align their priorities. Whether cause-related (eg, Greenpeace), belief based (eg, Christian, Islamic) sports oriented (eg, Boston Red Sox) or lifestyle driven (eg, spiritual, organic food or gay), the growth of the internet has enabled people all over the world to connect and become a community. Many of the connections between the new tribes and clans are increasingly cross-border in nature and influence and so are adding another dimension to the growing identity smorgasbord that we can assemble.

Looking at the decade ahead, people have had alternative views of how this could all play out. At one extreme, some see that we will have the option to inhabit a world where multiple faces to external communities are presented as a coherent mix: in the ‘youniverse’, everything that can be is centred around the individual. Networks, information, identities and relationships are all presented and seen solely through the lens of personal proximity and influence. As was suggested in an LA workshop, ‘developments such as Facebook Connect and Opengraft will aggregate your “likes” and make your identity more portable’. At the other end of the spectrum, some see further fragmentation of identity on the horizon to a point where we manage our relationships, interests and hence our multiple identities in isolation of each other. The coherence is less visible to others, and even to ourselves, but, at heart, still represents an amalgam of who we are.

Cocktail identities are here today and highly likely to increase in the future in both nature and scope. Alongside the identities we create and manage, whether in the real world or on-line, additional layers based on what others think and say about who we are, what we think and what we do will increasingly be publicly available: professional and amateur critiques on top of and around the real you.

And so we are left with a two-part question. Will we continue to be happy with this cocktail of information about who we are? Or, would it be easier and make us happier to simply consolidate each of our multiple identities back into one and so rediscover the ‘real me’?