From “African” National Identity to the “Afropolitan:” Modes of Narrating “Transnational” Identities

Abstract As a result of the wide availability of social media, cheap flights and free intra-EU movement it has become considerably easier to maintain links with the country of origin than it was only a generation ago. Therefore, the language and identity formation among children of recent migrants might be significantly different from the experiences of children of the previous generations. The aim of this paper is to examine the perceptions of parents on the formation of national and transnational identity among the ‘1.5 generation migrant children’ – the children born in Latvia but growing up in England and the factors affecting them. In particular, this article seeks to understand whether 1.5 generation migrant children from Latvia construct strong transnational identities by maintaining equally strong ties with their country of origin and mother tongue and, at the same time, intensively creating networks, learning and using the language of the new home country. The results of 16 semi-structured in-depth interviews with the parents of these children reveal that the 1.5 generation Latvian migrants are on a path of becoming English-dominant bilinguals. So far there is little evidence of the development of a strong transnational identity among 1.5 generation migrant children from Latvia. Instead, this study observed a tendency towards an active integration and assimilation into the new host country facilitated by their parents or occurring despite their parents’ efforts to maintain ties with Latvia. These findings suggest that rather than the national identity of the country of origin being supplemented with a new additional national identity – that of the country of settlement – the identity of the country of origin becomes dominated by it instead.

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Becoming National: Classroom Language Socialization and Political Identities in the Age of Globalization

Annual Review of Applied Linguistics ◽

10.1017/s0267190510000061 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 30 ◽

pp. 193-210 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Debra A. Friedman

Keyword(s):

National Identity ◽

Language Socialization ◽

National Language ◽

Future Research ◽

Competing Values ◽

Political Identities ◽

Transnational Identities ◽

Transnational Community ◽

Nation States ◽

Classroom Language

Although schools have long been recognized as primary sites for creating citizens of the modern nation-state, in recent years traditional assimilationist and exclusionist notions of national identity have been challenged by competing values of multiculturalism, hybridity, and transnationalism. This article surveys recent language socialization research that has examined classrooms as sites for socializing novices into political identities associated with membership in a national or transnational community. It explores five broad themes: (a) socialization into the national language, (b) socialization of immigrants, (c) socialization into new forms of national identity, (d) socialization of minority political identities within nation-states, and (e) socialization and transnational identities. The survey concludes with a review of the contributions of a language socialization approach to the study of these issues as well as suggested directions for future research.

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Nation, Race, and Language: Discussing transnational identities in colonial Singapore, circa 1930

Modern Asian Studies ◽

10.1017/s0026749x11000801 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 46 (2) ◽

pp. 283-302 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

CHUA AI LIN

Keyword(s):

National Identity ◽

Ethnic Communities ◽

Great Intensity ◽

Ethnic Pride ◽

Transnational Identities ◽

Nationalist Movements ◽

China And India ◽

British Colony

AbstractAround 1930, at a time of rising nationalisms in China and India, English-educated Chinese and Indians in the British colony of Singapore debated with great intensity the issue of national identity. They sought to clarify their own position as members of ethnic communities of immigrant origin, while remaining individuals who identified the territory of British Malaya as their home. Readers' letters published in the Malaya Tribune, an English-medium newspaper founded to serve the interests of Anglophone Asians, questioned prevailing assumptions of how to define a nation from the perspectives of territory, political loyalty, race, and language. Lived circumstances in Malaya proved that being Chinese or Indian could encompass a range of political, cultural, and linguistic characteristics, rather than a homogenous identity as promoted by nationalist movements of the time. Through these debates, Chinese and Indians in Malaya found ways to simultaneously reaffirm their ethnic pride as well as their sense of being ‘Malayan’.

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“Canadian, Please”: The Intimate Space of YouTube Racism

Canada and Beyond A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies ◽

10.33776/candb.v5i0.3026 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 5 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Cynthia Sugars

Keyword(s):

National Identity ◽

Public Space ◽

Affective Response ◽

Cultural Discourse ◽

Music Video ◽

Intimate Violence ◽

Transnational Identities ◽

Canadian Identity ◽

Cultural Texts ◽

Opening Line

“Yeah I know that you wanna be Canadian, please.” This is the opening line of the 2009 “Canada Day” YouTube music video by Julia Bentley and Andrew Gunadie that went viral days after it was posted. The video is a kitsch anthem celebrating the benefits of Canadian identity, but there is a deeper message in it, and, indeed, in the troubling responses that it initiated, that makes it a ground-breaking text in Canadian cultural discourse about national identity and anti-racism. The YouTube site invited responses from viewers, and soon became flooded with racist slurs aimed at Gunadie’s Asian descent and his questionable right to claim to “be” Canadian. In short, the very public space of YouTube became a disturbing site of intimate violence. The backlash against the video was so extreme and unsettling that it led to a CBC news investigation, in which Gunadie described the racism the video inspired and his equally “inspired” YouTube fight against the racists. Fed up with being subjected to online violence, Gunadie retaliated by creating a number of ingenious videos. His responses did not resolve intimate and uncomfortable moments into invisibility. On the contrary, the discomfort of online racism prompted from him a self-consciously “uncomfortable” affective response. These cultural texts stand as a powerful testament to the mediating force of online exchanges as a forum in which debates about national and transnational identities are being waged.

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