The cultural foundations of Ukrainian national identity

Using the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), this paper investigates the impact of race and ethnicity, class and naturalization on the voter registration and subsequent assimilation of second-generation Caribbean immigrants into the USA. Drawing from both classical and contemporary models of assimilation, I conduct a comparative analysis of Afro-Caribbeans and Cuban immigrants using voter registration as the primary measure of integration. Although the assimilation literature typically characterizes Cubans as upwardly mobile, this study shows that this is not a distinguishing feature for this group because Afro-Caribbeans are gaining higher levels of upward mobility compared to Cubans with respect to political incorporation. Findings suggest that race and ethnicity, class and citizenship status are all significant factors as both Cuban and Afro-Caribbean immigrants assimilate into the USA.     

Strategic ethnicity: The construction of multi-racial/multi-ethnic religious community

This article highlights through one case the ways in which religious organizations provide an exploratory space for maintaining, reclaiming, and altering aspects of racial and ethnic identity within a racially and ethnically integrated community. Utilizing data from in-depth interviews and participant observation in Southern California, I suggest that within the organizational culture of the congregation, church leaders and individual members recursively construct an integrated identity through 1) the public framing and articulation of goals, 2) their religious organizational structure and resources, and, 3) the lived experiences of members. I argue that a perceived reciprocal legitimacy emerges in this process through which religious claims affirm integration goals while, at the same time, observable integration within the congregation strengthens the acceptance of religious doctrine. I offer strategic ethnicity as a useful way of thinking about the transformation of racial experience and ethnicity into collective and individual tools within American Protestant congregations.     

The fragility of “white Irish” as a minority ethnic identity in England

This paper is a methodological reflection on the experiences of a white Irish woman researching ethnicity in England. Ethnic identity is described as a performance between two social actors that requires the collusion of both parties in order to be socially accepted. The history and disputes around the white Irish ethnic group category in England are discussed. Through the use of fieldnotes and interview extracts, I discuss how I became aware that my ethnic identity was not always recognized by participants, and in some cases the distinction between white Irish and white British was denied. At the micro level, this affects my rapport with individual participants, while at the macro level it resonates with historical relationships between Ireland and England. I argue that such experiences can lead to an existential threat to a person’s ethnic identity and therefore that the status of white Irish identity in England can be fragile.     

Does education ‘trump’ nationality? Boundary-drawing practices among highly educated migrants from Turkey

Inspired by a super-diversity approach, this paper seeks to explore the influence of the ‘ethnic hierarchy’ of ‘old’ minority groups over the way ‘new’ migrants from Turkey negotiate their interaction in the daily life in three settings: Amsterdam, London and Barcelona. By focusing on highly educated migrants from Turkey who by virtue of their country of origin or religion are positioned at the bottom of ‘ethnic hierarchies’, it strives to understand the significance of these different sources of diversity in daily interaction. Applying boundary-drawing strategies developed for ethnic boundaries, this paper argues that education does not necessarily ‘trump’ nationality, but allows for substantial claims of difference. New migrants from Turkey carve out a space for themselves by on the one hand homogenizing Turkish or other Muslim communities through attributing ‘unwanted’ behaviours and on the other re-defining the boundaries of their individual identity with emphasis on different sources of diversity.     

Name change and destigmatization among Middle Eastern immigrants in Sweden

Abstract

Research has shown that individuals in Sweden with foreign-sounding surnames who take on more Swedish-sounding or neutral surnames have a positive earnings progression compared to individuals who keep their foreign-sounding names. This article explores the strategies underlying these surname changes. I draw on forty-five interviews from a population of individuals with Middle Eastern backgrounds who changed surnames during the 1990s. Drawing on stigma and destigmatization theory, I argue that immigrant name change, a strategy typically associated with cultural assimilation, is a destigmatization strategy aiming for pragmatic assimilation. Through passing (as either Swedish or non-Middle Eastern), immigrants may keep the benefits of maintaining ethnic identity in their private life and the benefits of more easy public interactions outside the ethnic group. This study also illustrates how the institutional enabling of name change both creates and enables pragmatic assimilation.     

Ethnic capital,migration, and citizenship: a Bourdieusian perspective

This article examines how ethnic capital operates in ethnic affinity migration and external citizenship. Criticizing the “methodological nationalism”, inadequate theorization of the state, and “groupist” understanding of ethnicity that characterize existing scholarship on ethnic capital, I develop an alternative account drawing on Bourdieu. I highlight the importance of state power that consecrates ethnicity as a legitimate element in classifying non-citizens and determines the key criteria for coethnicity. The conversion of ethnicity into a migration-facilitating resource, however, is not monopolized by the state. I pay attention to how aspiring migrants, assisted by various intermediaries, challenge the state’s definition of ethnic group boundaries or deliberately cultivate specific ethnic markers, with varying implications for their ethnic self-understanding. Instead of treating ethnicity as what migrants are, I analyse what states, migrants, and intermediaries do with ethnicity – how they shape the valorization, conversion, and legitimization of ethnic capital in macro-political, meso-institutional, and micro-interactional contexts, with different agendas and asymmetrical power.     

Becoming different while becoming the same: Re-territorializing Islamic identities with multi-ethnic practices in Hong Kong

The established consensus in sociology is to explain the transformations of the ethnic identities of migrants through processes by which the migrants combine features they share with co-ethnics with characteristics they adopt from other groups of residents. This conceptualization, however, works on the assumption that it is the differences and contradictions between the elements in the ethnic identities of the migrants, and the characteristics of other groups of residents, that motivate the transformations of migrant ethnic identities. Therefore, processes by which migrants adopt characteristics from other residents are understood to typically decrease the migrants’ differences from them. This analysis of the ethnic identity transformations of Muslims of Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, and mixed ethnic origin in Hong Kong refutes the validity of this interpretation. It shows that adopting characteristics from non-Muslim Chinese residents supported establishing multi-ethnic Islamic practices which, in turn, accentuated the differences of the Muslims from these majorities.     

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.     

Maori Sport and Cultural Identity in Australia

Sport is an important aspect of cultural identity for New Zealand Maori migrants living in Australia. Maori sporting endeavours, especially at festivals such as the Taki Toa Tournament in New South Wales, often reveal distinctive Maori features of cultural performance, in the rituals prior to a game, in the spirited manner with which a game is played, and in the whânau (large/extended family) spirit of belonging and celebration that is encouraged after a game. However, notwithstanding the occasional Maori tournament or festival, Maori sporting participation in Australia is not restricted to an ‘ethnic ghetto’. Widespread Maori involvement in sport has provided an important avenue for Maori migrants to mix socially with Aboriginal and other Australians in their local communities, and to gain acceptance, respect and, in some cases, economic advancement. Many first‐generation Maori migrants display a keen sense of a New Zealand rather than an Australian identity when it comes to trans‐Tasman international sport. Transnational links are also important for Australian Maori who visit New Zealand with sporting teams and stay on various marae (tribal meeting places). The experience of ‘Maori culture’ and hospitality offered by their New Zealand kinsfolk may have a significant influence upon the sporting visitors' subsequent development of Maori cultural identity.     

Modernity and ethnic affiliation in Israeli schools: A dependence approach*

In this article, we argue that there is an important, but as yet unidentified, process involved in the maintenance and reconstruction of ethnic identity. We call this process ‘ethnic reorganization’. We argue that this process is useful for understanding the ethnic survival of indigenous peoples in colonized societies, as well as for illuminating the processes of ethnic renascence among both indigenous and immigrant groups. We find it especially useful in accounting for both the persistence and the transformation of American Indian ethnicity in the United States. Ethnic reorganization occurs when an ethnic minority undergoes a reorganization of its social structure, redefinition of ethnic group boundaries, or some other change in response to pressures or demands imposed by the dominant culture. From this viewpoint, ethnic reorganization is a mechanism that facilitates ethnic group survival, albeit in a modified form. We specify several types of ethnic reorganization. These include: social reorganization, economic reorganization, political reorganization, and cultural reorganization. We argue that ethnic reorganization represents a central mechanism of ethnic change. We present evidence of these forms of ethnic reorganization among many different American Indian societies faced with demographic and cultural extinction.     

Stonhet and Yelotop: Body Images,Physical Markers and Definitions of Ethnic Boundaries in Papua New Guinea

The Wampar of Papua New Guinea are an ethnic group with contested boundaries and a strong ethnic identity and consciousness. Since their first contact with White missionaries, government officials and anthropologists, body images have changed and become more important. ‘Foreign’ migrants from other PNG provinces are now coming in great numbers into Wampar territory, where they find wealthy Wampar make good marriage partners. From peaceful relations with ‘foreigners’ in the 1960s and 1970s, the situation has changed to the extent that Wampar now have plans for driving men from other ethnic groups out of their territory. Within two generations, ideas of changeable cultural otherness have developed into stereotypes of unchangeable bodily differences. In this paper, I describe (1) changes in the perception of foreigners, and in the definition of ‘foreigner’ itself, (2) body images of the Wampar, and (3) conditions for these changes.     

Transitions in Taste in Vietnam and the Diaspora

This paper argues that food and styles of eating have become the predominant markers of social change for the Vietnamese in both Vietnam and in the diaspora. In post‐socialist Vietnam the transition to a market economy has allowed for a huge growth in the number of restaurants and cafés, and in the north, a return to an earlier style of cooking. The intense interest and emphasis on food as embodied pleasure has meant that it has come to stand for the transition away from a heavily state‐controlled economy. The new configurations of family and friendship are being framed by newly available ways of ‘eating out’, which are both a means of social display and distinction as well as an indicator of the tensions between reform and festivity within an authoritarian nation‐state struggling to define itself in a globalising world. At the same time as food in Vietnam is undergoing rapid transformation so too has the Vietnamese diaspora generationally changed its eating patterns. Although there has been a focus in the literature on food in the diaspora that emphasises the nostalgic and recuperative elements of ‘migrant food’, I argue that food is the prime mechanism of intercultural engagement for each diasporic generation. For older Vietnamese, Vietnamese restaurants and barbecues have been the sites of interplay between cultural ‘tradition’ and innovation, and between Australianness and Vietnameseness, and these interstitial places continue to be important for younger Vietnamese. Within this established framework of cross‐cultural interaction, for Vietnamese youth, the social settings of ‘ethnic food’, eaten at home and shared with family, have been grafted onto a sociality of eating fast food. This melding together of both invention and convention, of transgression and ordinariness provides the background against which young people from migrant backgrounds are reinvigorating the social spaces of food consumption and in the process both re‐enchanting and destabilising the notion of migrant food.     

‘We've got team spirit!’: ethnic community building and Japanese American youth basketball leagues

This article examines the role co-ethnic youth basketball leagues play in shaping ethnic community among third- and fourth-generation Japanese American youth. With dwindling rates of Japanese immigration, increased rates of out-marriage, and fewer cultural hubs available, finding a thriving ethnic community has become a particular challenge for later-generation Japanese Americans. Drawing from ethnographic data, I argue that even among highly ‘assimilated’ Japanese Americans, youth basketball leagues serve as an active space for constructing and preserving ethnic community and social networks. I demonstrate how through social, cultural, and spatial interactions facilitated by sports, some Japanese Americans have found a sense of ethnic ‘connectedness’ within basketball leagues while performing their own renditions of ethnic identity that is simultaneously attentive to fluid local and global connections. These findings illuminate the role and importance of sport through which Japanese Americans challenges the racial contours of American-ness and belonging while claiming their place, locally, nationally, and transnationally.     

‘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.     

PROSPECTS FOR “GENETIC THERAPY” - CAN A PERSON BENEFIT FROM BEING ALTERED?

Mapping the human genome is an immense project with numerous objectives. Indeed, it is likely that some of its most important ramifications and applications remain as yet unglimpsed. All we can presently attempt is to focus on some of the more obvious possibilities and prepare for the problems already looming on our horizon. One such possibility is that of Prenatal Genetic Intervention (PGI), which might be said to be a therapeutic intervention on behalf of the embryonic child. In this paper, I argue that "genetic therapy" is likely to be a misnomer, and that if PGI becomes possible, we should generally resist its inclusion under the special moral duty of providing health care. "Therapy" necessarily means helping a person, while PGI -- though effecting improvements from an impersonal perspective -- will frequently not consist in directly helping any person. This is due not to the embryo not being a person, but rather to the basic philosophical problem of personal identity persisting through significant alterations -- especially the alteration of genotype. The decisive moral question then hinges on the definition of "significant" alteration. I shall examine the feasibility of drawing analogies from criteria for personal identity proposed in discussions of how persons maintain their identity across time and through physical and psychological change. Certain metaphysical aspects of human identity and individuality will be also touched upon, partly in terms derived from classical Judaism. In conclusion I argue that, regarding embryos in particular, persistence of genotype must generally be deemed a necessary condition for maintaining personal identity. Therefore, many proposals for PGI should be excluded from the notion of therapeutic intervention and thus denied the special moral status of requests for therapy.     

Woven World: Neotraditional Symbols of Unity in Vanuatu

The importance of kastom to national identity in Vanuatu has been recognized. In this paper I identify plaiting technology in general and basketry in particular — which once served to distinguish ethnic groups in Vanuatu — as emerging symbols of ni-Vanuatu unity. I argue that unlike these kastom traditions often discussed in the literature, plaiting and basketry need not be reinvented. Plaiting is a customary practice which has rich contemporaneous expressions. Plaited products may be fully elaborated in local detail and yet, as shared productions of a technology with common features, can simultaneously represent ni-Vanuatu identity.     

Locating the post-national activist: migration rights,civil society and the practice of post-nationalism

Theorists of post-nationalism examine the (re)configuration of national identity, membership and rights. Yet while normative scholarship has conceptualized post-nationalism as an ongoing practice of discursive contestation over the role of national group membership in liberal democratic societies, more empirical studies have tended to overlook these features to predominantly focus instead on top-down legal and political institution-building as evidence of post-nationalism. In this article I argue in favour of an empirical conceptualization of post-nationalism which more effectively captures micro-level practices of discursive contestation. Specifically I posit that post-national activists, or actors engaging in post-national practices of contestation from within the state, are a key focus of analysis for scholars of post-nationalism. I develop this claim through the analysis of data collected with individuals working on civil society campaigns for migration rights in Europe, Australia and the USA who – I demonstrate – embody many of the characteristics of the post-national activist.     

Boundaries of belief: religious practices and the construction of ethnic identity in Hui Muslim communities†

Though scholars of ethnicity remark that religion is an important qualifying attribute for membership in an ethnic group, the nature of the relationship between religious faith and ethnic identity requires further exploration. An approach that emphasizes the importance of religious practices in forming and maintaining ethnic boundaries may offer a more complete explanation of the relationship between religion and ethnicity. This article proposes a framework for understanding how religious practices influence ethnic boundary formation and maintenance processes. I propose that religious practices may play a universalizing, negotiating, or differentiating role in influencing the formation and maintenance of ethnic boundaries. To illustrate these various roles played by religious processes, the article presents a heuristic case study of Islamic faith in boundary setting processes in Hui Muslim communities in China.     

Immigrant transit camps ‐ The formation of dependent relations in Israeli society

In this article three approaches to define and explain negative ethnic attitudes are discussed: the anthropology of cultural misunderstanding, the sociology of how differences in group positions are justified ideologically, and the social psychology of maintaining self‐esteem through intergroup differentiation. The‐ aim is to integrate these approaches into an interdisciplinary model. Social identity theory is used as a frame for this integration. The argument developed is that ingroup values are used for intergroup differentiation and evaluation. This leads to the development of stereotypes. Stereotypes reflect misunderstanding, but also anchor social representations of a hierarchy of group positions (ethnic hierarchy). Depending on the ethnic composition of the larger society, majority and minority groups will differ in their ethnic hierarchies. Discrepancies between ethnic hierarchies will lead to ethnic tension. From the perspective developed, a number of hypotheses is derived about how changes in the socio‐economic position of minority groups will affect intergroup evaluations. Hypotheses based on the category differentiation model and the social identity model are specified with respect to the expected changes in stereotypes and intergroup discrimination of the ethnic majority and minority groups.