Hyphenated Selves: Muslim American Youth Negotiating Identities on the Fault Lines of Global Conflict

In the wake of the events of September 11, Muslim-American youth found that the multiple cultures within which they live were suddenly and alarmingly in conflict. The developmental consequences of living in a world fractured by religious and ethnic terror have yet to be determined for Muslim youth in the United States. This exploratory, mixed-method study begins to examine how Muslim youth negotiate their identities in these challenging times. Documented in the surveys, narrated in the interviews, and drawn into their identity maps, Muslim-American youth (n = 70) ages 12 to 18, vividly portrayed their interior lives as a dialectic labor of psychological reconciliation – piecing together what we call hyphenated selves. The results show that Muslim youth experience discrimination, sometimes to an extreme degree. We observed diversity in how youth deal with the challenges of growing up Muslim in post 9/11 US, ranging from “telling nobody” to policing each other within the Muslim community. In addition we found that males and females negotiate their Muslim and American identities in different ways.     

Ethnic Identity and Positive Youth Development in Adolescent Males: A Culturally Integrated Approach

The present study examined the relation between ethnic identity and indicators of positive youth development (PYD) in a sample of low-income, urban Black and Latino male youth (N = 254; 66% Black, mean age = 14). Using structural equation modeling, a two-factor model of PYD and ethnic identity was found to provide the best fit to the data with a significant, positive relation between the two factors. At age 14, PYD was positively related to concurrent involvement in prosocial activities, and negatively related to criminal and externalizing behaviors; ethnic identity was related to lower levels of internalizing symptoms. The PYD factor was also related to higher prosocial activity involvement and lower criminal offending at age 15. The findings suggest that male Black and Latino teens living in urban poverty have intrapersonal competencies that promote healthy outcomes and that integration of culturally-relevant factors can enhance our understanding of positive youth development.     

Borders of violence - boundaries of identity: demarcating the Eritrean nation-state

This article explores the concepts of borders and boundaries in the formation of an Eritrean national identity. The dialectical relationship between the State of Eritrea and its borders towards the Sudan and Ethiopia are addressed in order to analyse how this relationship influences the formation of a 'formal' national identity. The cultural, political, religious and historical configuration of the Eritrean frontiers makes it difficult to demarcate a particular Eritrean identity, distinguishing it from Sudanese ethnic and religious identities or historical-politico and ethnic Ethiopian identities. The Eritrean border conflicts with the Sudan and Ethiopia are used as empirical cases to show how state violence through the mobilization of the multi-ethnic national army is employed in order to manifest a significant other that the 'formal' Eritrean national identity may be contrasted against. The article concludes that the Eritrean boundaries of identity and borders of territory are still in the making, and what they will eventually embrace and contain remains to be seen.     

Contested Citizenship and Social Exclusion: Adolescent Arab American Immigrants' Views of the Social Contract

Drawing from social contract theory, we explore how some adolescent Arab immigrants' (n = 99) sensitivity to the image of their ethnic group as enemies of America colors their interpretation of the social contract. Analyses of data collected in 1997 reveal that those youth who reported that the American media portray Arab people and nations as enemies of the United States are more attuned to personal experiences of prejudice based on their ethnic identity and are more dubious that the tenets of the social contract apply equally across groups. Negative images of Arab Americans were well in place prior to September 11, 2001, a pivotal moment that altered the lives of Arab Americans as well as the discourse on immigration and citizenship.     

Effects of the Positive Action Program on Indicators of Positive Youth Development Among Urban Youth

This study evaluated effects of Positive Action, a school-based social-emotional and character development intervention, on indicators of positive youth development (PYD) among a sample of low-income, ethnic minority youth attending 14 urban schools. The study used a matched-pair, cluster-randomized controlled design at the school level. A multiple-measure self-report protocol assessed four key strengths and resources for PYD: self-concept, peer affiliations, ethics, and social skills. Students (n = 1170) were assessed from grades 3 to 8; the duration of the intervention, with drop-outs and late entrants was included in analyses. Growth curve analyses revealed evidence of favorable program effects on each of the four types of resources. The study contributes to PYD research by providing evidence for school-based interventions in low-income, urban contexts for ethnic minority youth.     

Postcolonial France: race,Islam, and the future of the republic

Abstract

The study explored feelings of European identity and attitudes towards Europe manifested in two groups within the British population: the indigenous white British population (N?=?58) and the South-Asian ethnic minority (N?=?44). A social survey approach was used with scales to evaluate British, European and ethnic identities and also attitudes towards Europe. Perceived compatibility of identities was also assessed using a visual representation of identities task. Previous research findings were confirmed with the indigenous white British respondents, who displayed a strong sense of national identity negatively correlated with European identity. In contrast, the South Asian respondents displayed positive feelings of identification on all three levels, and a British identity that correlated positively with European identification.     

New ethnic and national questions in Scotland: post-British identities among Glasgow Pakistani teenagers

The problematic relationship between 'Britishness' and the identities of UK ethnic minorities is further complicated in Scotland by the increasing salience of the Scottish dimension. This article discusses the relationship between reformulations of 'post-British' national identities, and the position of Scottish Pakistani-Muslims. The study focuses on the preferred identities of young Pakistani-Scots in West Central Scotland, reporting chiefly on the results of the modified Twenty Statement Test [TST] as administered to sixty-three Scottish-Pakistani teenagers aged between fourteen and seventeen years, estimated as a significant percentage of the Glasgow Pakistani population in this age range. Religious, ethnic and nationality labels are all adopted by these respondents. Where there are no constraints on their identity labels, religious (Muslim) statements predominate, and where a choice of labels is provided, dual ethnicity labels are preferred. The results are theorized in relation to present deficiencies in the acceptance of plural or 'hyphenate' identities within the United Kingdom.     

Subdimensions of Adolescent Belonging in High School

Adolescents' sense of belonging in high school may serve a protective function, linking school-based relationships to positive youth outcomes. To advance the study of sense of belonging, we conducted a mixed method, factor analytic study (Phase 1 focus groups, N = 72; Phase 2 cross-sectional survey, N = 890) to explore the multidimensionality of the sense of belonging construct. Findings suggest that adolescents' sense of belonging involves four distinct school-experience factors: Generalized connection to teachers; connection to a specific teacher; identification and participation in official school-sanctioned activities; and perception of fitting in with peers. Future research should investigate the validity of the proposed sense of belonging subdimensions and longitudinally examine the form and function of disparate adolescent school-based relationships in relation to academic engagement or disengagement processes.     

Ethnic identity on display: West Indian youth and the creation of ethnic boundaries in high school

The black immigrant population in New York City has grown exponentially since 1990, such that West Indians now compose the majority of the black population in several neighbourhoods. This article examines how this ethnic density manifests among youth in high school, and how it has influenced ethnic identity formation among second-generation West Indians. My findings are based on twenty-four interviews and eight months of participant observation in two Brooklyn high schools from 2003 to 2004. The results show that in both schools, Caribbean island identities have become a ‘cool’ commodity within peer groups. Further, although it was important to express pride in one's island identity, these young people often blurred their national origin boundaries by drawing on Jamaican popular culture as way of projecting a unified ‘West Indian identity’. The research also uncovers evidence of a de-stigmatization of Haitianness as a way to incorporate them as cultural insiders into the larger Caribbean collective.     

Racialized national identity construction in the ancestral homeland: Japanese American migrants in Japan

This article examines Japanese Americans in Japan to illuminate how ‘Japanese American’ – an ethnic minority identity in the US – is reconstructed in Japan as a racialized national identity. Based on fifty interviews with American citizens of Japanese ancestry conducted between 2004 and 2007, I demonstrate how interactions with Japanese in Japan shape Japanese Americans’ racial and national understandings of themselves. After laying out a theoretical framework for understanding the shifting intersection of race, ethnicity, and nationality, I explore the interactive process of racial categorization and ethnic identity assertion for Japanese American transnationals in Japan. This process leads to what I call racialized national identities – the intersection of racial and national identities in an international context – and suggests that US racial minority identities are constructed not only within the US, but abroad as well.     

Multiculturalism as nation-building in Australia: Inclusive national identity and the embrace of diversity

This article discusses the relationship between multiculturalism and national identity, focusing on the Australian context. It argues that inclusive national identity can accommodate and support multiculturalism, and serve as an important source of cohesion and unity in ethnically and culturally diverse societies. However, a combative approach to national identity, as prevailed under the Howard government, threatens multicultural values. The article nevertheless concludes that it is necessary for supporters of multiculturalism to engage in ongoing debates about their respective national identities, rather than to vacate the field of national identity to others.     

Maasai Identity on the Periphery

This article examines ethnic identity among the Maasai-related II Chamus of Baringo District, Kenya. Through an analysis of land policies, it shows how colonialism forged identities and boundaries that had scarcely existed in the 19th century. These are now fiercely defended on the basis of "tradition." By examining how identities are shaped by power, the article contributes to the understanding of the political nature of ethnicity and the "ethnic" conflict in Kenya.     

Rethinking ethnicity: Identity,categorization and power

This article argues that ethnic identity is to be understood and theorized as an example of social identity in general and that externally‐located processes of social categorization are enormously influential in the production and reproduction of social identities. However, much research concerned with ethnicity, particularly social anthropological research, inspired, whether directly or indirectly, by Barth's Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, has concentrated upon internal process of group identification, at the expense of categorization. To acknowledge the necessary role of categorization in the social construction of ethnic identity is also to recognize (a) the importance of power and authority relations (domination) in that process, and (b) a distinction, which is developed in this article, between the nominal and the virtual dimensions of ethnic and other social identities. Finally, the article offers an outline of a substantive research agenda concerned with contexts of social categorization.     

Racism,identity and psychological well-being: a longitudinal perspective on politically embattled relations

The relation between racism, identity and well-being has stimulated political debate as well as psychological analysis. Research is reported that explores the relation among young people of white (n=97) and minority (n=174) ethnicity. On first assessment, minority ethnic participants reported: (1) more frequent experiences of racism and discrimination than white participants; and (2) higher levels of ethnic identity and equivalent levels of national identity. Three years later, depressive symptomatology was highest among minority ethnic participants, and (for this group only) positively associated with racism and discrimination reported at first assessment, and negatively associated with national identity.     

Like one of the family: race,ethnicity, and the paradox of US national identity

The tensions between individual rights promised to US citizens and group discrimination targeted against African Americans and similar racial/ethnic groups constitute one enduring paradox of US society. This essay examines this paradox by exploring how a gendered family rhetoric contributes to understandings of race and US national identity. Using African American women's experiences as a touchstone for analysis, the article suggests that African American women's treatment as second-class citizens reflects a belief that they are 'like one of the family', that is, legally part of the US nation-state, but simultaneously subordinated within it. To investigate these relationships, the article examines 1) how intersecting social hierarchies of race and ethnicity foster racialized understandings of US national identity; 2) how the gendered rhetoric of the American family ideal naturalizes and normalizes social hierarchies; and 3) how gendered family rhetoric fosters racialized constructions of US national identity as a large national family.     

Factors related to traditionalism among Navajo students

Strong communal identities and institutions have survived in the Mexican state of Oaxaca in spite of over 150 years of central state efforts to eliminate them. This article examines why this is so, focusing on the liberal reform period of 1856 to 1911, when state officials mandated the privatization of communal land held under corporate title by Mexico's indigenous communities. In contrast to much of the literature on nations and nationalism, in which local and national identities are held to be in opposition, the article argues that local identities and institutions survived in Oaxaca precisely because villagers employed national identities, discourses, and institutions in their defence. More generally, the article contends that we need to rethink the conventional contrast between local and national identities, in order to better comprehend the politics of nation-building and state formation: local identities (communal, ethnic, regional, religious) can only be understood in terms of how they relate and respond to national identities and state institutions; national identities and state institutions, in turn, are in part constructed by subordinate groups whose understanding of the nation is informed by their own local identities, cultures and histories of political conflict.     

Defining difference,forging unity: The co‐construction of race,ethnicity and nation in Belize

This article examines competing nationalist projects which compete to constitute a Belizean nation: pluralist nationalism constructs the nation as ethnically diverse; synthetic nationalism attempts to submerge ethnic or racial difference into a shared national identity; hegemonic nationalism works to attach preferentially a single racial identity to the nation and exclude other identities. Within these projects, the homogenizing processes which construct national sameness are integrally related to the individualizing processes which constitute subnational difference: both national sameness and subnational differences are constituted in terms of race, ethnicity, or a conflation of the two. The article explores how the essentialization of racial, ethnic and national identities facilitates their assimilation of one another.     

‘Playing’ at the ethnic boundary: strategic boundary making/unmaking among ethnic Chinese groups in Australia

The sociological literature has constructed a systematic typology of ‘modes’ and ‘means’ of strategic ethnic boundary making/unmaking. Through exploring different strategies, scholars illustrate the processes and contexts of boundary expansion or contraction. Other scholars also distinguish ethnic elements and ‘moral' values attached to certain ethnicities but not to others. This paper acknowledges dynamic boundary making/unmaking and moral aspects of ethnicity, while exploring the different degrees to which national and pan-national identity nest within each other among ethnic Chinese groups, as well as how ethnic boundary becomes a field where people ‘play' in their everyday interactions. Based on participant observations and in-depth interviews from two pan-Chinese worksites in Australia, the paper argues that different interpretations of ethnic identity as well as how different identities (national and pan-national) are nested give people room to ‘play' at the ethnic boundary and result in different outcomes. This paper also shows that people can cross the ethnic boundary (between Taiwanese/Hong Kongese and PRC-Chinese) without expanding/contracting the existing categories or ‘repositioning/transvaluing' their ethnic statuses.     

'Who the hell do you think you are?' Promoting religious identity among young Hindus in Britain

This article explores how Hindu activism in Britain challenges our understanding of the relationship between ethnicity and religion. It argues against the prevalent model in which Hindu identity is understood as a natural ‘product’ of ethnic identity development. Instead, this article calls for thinking about current religious activism as a response to multicultural politics, national belonging and the experience of being an ethnic minority. Based on anthropological fieldwork, the article examines the development of an organization that has successfully established Hindu societies across the UK, one that changed from initially being pro-Hindu to one that espouses Hindutva. The analysis of the rhetoric of a pro-Hindu speech reveals the aims of this group to distinguish themselves from other Asians, particularly the Muslim minority. Such examples of religious activism among “diaspora” youth require us to rethink our understandings of the connections between religion and ethnicity.