Belonging and boundaries in Little Guyana: Conflict, culture, and identity in Richmond Hill, New York

Ethnicities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 896-914
Author(s):  
Nazreen S Bacchus
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigrant Integration ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
South Asian American

Research on the assimilation of contemporary second-generation Americans has shown that ethnic enclaves are saturated with several cultural, religious, and transnational amenities that facilitate the process of immigrant integration in the United States. Missing from this research is a discussion of how middle-class, second-generation Americans use urban enclaves as a means of remaining attached to their ethnic identities. One such group with members who has achieved middle-class status and remained culturally attached to their enclave is Indo-Guyanese Americans of Indian Caribbean descent. This ethnographic study examines the ways in which second-generation Indo-Guyanese Americans use familial, cultural, and religious interactions in Little Guyana to create a sense of belonging and community. As the descendants of re-migrants, their multiethnic identities are complicating their assimilation in American society. Their experiences with racialization and social exclusion from white, South Asian American, and non-co-ethnic circles have pushed them toward developing their multiethnic identity. I use the term ethnic restoration to discuss how second-generation Indo-Guyanese Americans are using transnational ethnic consumption, religious institutions, and co-ethnic interactions to validate their ethnic identities and resist racialization. Their engagement in ethno-religious institutions in Richmond Hill is central to this analysis, as they embrace their Indian Caribbean identities more intensely after experiencing racialization. The findings of this research point to the need to understand why middle-class second-generation Americans are ethnically attached to urban enclaves.

scholarly journals Ethnic and Racial Identities of Second-Generation Black Immigrants in New York City

1994 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 795-820 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary C. Waters
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
Black American ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Origin Identity

This article explores the types of racial and ethnic identities adopted by a sample of 83 adolescent second-generation West Indian and Haitian Americans in New York City. The subjective understandings these youngsters have of being American, of being black American, and of their ethnic identities are described and contrasted with the identities and reactions of first-generation immigrants from the same countries. Three types of identities are evident among the second generation – a black American identity, an ethnic or hyphenated national origin identity, and an immigrant identity. These different identities are related to different perceptions and understandings of race relations and of opportunities in the United States. Those youngsters who identify as black Americans tend to see more racial discrimination and limits to opportunities for blacks in the United States. Those who identify as ethnic West Indians tend to see more opportunities and rewards for individual effort and initiative. I suggest that assimilation to America for the second-generation black immigrant is complicated by race and class and their interaction, with upwardly mobile second-generation youngsters maintaining ethnic ties to their parents’ national origins and with poor inner city youngsters assimilating to the black American peer culture that surrounds them.

Cross-space Consumption among Undocumented Chinese Immigrants in the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Zhou ◽  
Xiangyi Li
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Chinese Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Currency Exchange ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Migrants

We consider cross-space consumption as a form of transnational practice among international migrants. In this paper, we develop the idea of the social value of consumption and use it to explain this particular form of transnationalism. We consider the act of consumption to have not only functional value that satisfies material needs but also a set of nonfunctional values, social value included, that confer symbolic meanings and social status. We argue that cross-space consumption enables international migrants to take advantage of differences in economic development, currency exchange rates, and social structures between countries of destination and origin to maximize their expression of social status and to perform or regain social status. Drawing on a multisited ethnographic study of consumption patterns in migrant hometowns in Fuzhou, China, and in-depth interviews with undocumented Chinese immigrants in New York and their left-behind family members, we find that, despite the vulnerabilities and precarious circumstances associated with the lack of citizenship rights in the host society, undocumented immigrants manage to realize the social value of consumption across national borders and do so through conspicuous consumption, reciprocal consumption, and vicarious consumption in their hometowns even without being physically present there. We conclude that, while cross-space consumption benefits individual migrants, left-behind families, and their hometowns, it serves to revive tradition in ways that fuel extravagant rituals, drive up costs of living, reinforce existing social inequality, and create pressure for continual emigration.

Religion, Social Incorporation, and Civic Engagement among Generations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prema A. Kurien
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Civic Participation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Immigrant Generation ◽  
Intergenerational Differences ◽  
First And Second Generation

Chapter 5 shows how negotiations and disagreements between generations shape the civic engagement of Mar Thoma American congregations in the United States and India. Recent studies have demonstrated that participation in religious institutions facilitates the civic incorporation of contemporary immigrants. These studies have focused on either the immigrant generation or on the second generation. In one way or another, these studies indicate that concepts of identity and of religious obligation play an important role in motivating civic participation. Not surprisingly, given the different models of religion of immigrants and their children, definitions of community and their perceived Christian obligations toward this community varied between first- and second-generation Mar Thomites. There are no academic studies that examine how intergenerational differences in the understanding of religious and racial identity affect the civic engagement of multigenerational congregations. This is important to understand, however, as most religious institutions of contemporary immigrants are multigenerational.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Himanee Gupta-Carlson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Asian American ◽  
South Asians ◽  
The United States ◽  
The South ◽  
South Asian American ◽  
Auto Ethnography ◽  
Race And Religion

The introduction introduces the central themes of the book and highlights its significance. It opens by exploring the wedding of the (a Hindu female of Indian ancestry) to a white, Christian male and places racial and religious tensions embedded in that event within the larger context of race and religion as organizing forces in American life. The introduction also describes auto-ethnography and discourse analysis, and discusses how these methods are used throughout the work. It also offers a profile of the South Asian American community in Muncie and of South Asians in the United States.

Negotiating Space and Making Place: Punjabi-Sikh Cabbies in New York City

2020 ◽  
pp. 089692052095423
Author(s):  
Diditi Mitra
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Immigrant Status ◽  
Lower Socioeconomic Status ◽  
South Asian American ◽  
Lower Socioeconomic ◽  
Transnational Space

I examine how immigrant Punjabi-Sikhs make sense of themselves as yellow cabbies in New York with two complementary frameworks—Hill Collins’ “matrix of domination” and insights from the literature exploring the interplay between race and ethnicity. The cabbies discussed their immigrant status, non-whiteness, and social class as influential, emphasizing the effects of all three forms of marginalization as occurring simultaneously. They deployed “money” to frame this subordination and to negotiate dimensions of social location and identity. The transnational space they occupied emerges noteworthy too in their identity making. This analysis, based on interviews with 56 cabbies, advances scholarship on race and immigration/transnationalism, Asian and South Asian American identities, specifically research on immigrant Sikhs of lower socioeconomic status, attention on whom is scant.

Asian and Asian American Suburbs in the United States

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Zarsadiaz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Southern California ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Bay Area

Asians and Asian Americans are the most suburbanized people of color in the United States. While Asians and Asian Americans have been moving to the metropolitan fringe since the 1940s, their settlement accelerated in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. This was partly the result of relaxed US immigration policies following the 1965 Hart-Celler Act. Globalization and burgeoning transnational economies across the so-called Pacific Rim also encouraged outmigration. Whether it is Korean or Indian immigrants in northern New Jersey or Vietnamese refugees in suburban Houston, Asians and Asian Americans have shifted Americans’ understandings of “typical” suburbia. In the late 1980s, academic researchers and policymakers started paying closer attention to this phenomenon, especially in Southern California, where Asians and Asian Americans often clustered together in select suburbs. Sociologists, in particular, observed how greater Los Angeles’s economic, political, and built landscapes changed as immigrants and refugees—predominantly from Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, South Korea, India, and Vietnam—established roots throughout the region, including Orange County. Since then, other studies of heavily populated Asian and Asian American ethnic suburbs—or “ethnoburbs”—have emerged, including research on New York City, Boston, and Washington, DC. Nonetheless, scholarship remains focused on Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, and other hubs of the metropolitan West Coast. Research and scholarship on Asians and Asian Americans living in the suburbs has grown over the last decade. This is partly a response to demographic shifts occurring beyond the coasts. Moreover, geographers, historians, and urban planners have joined the discussion, producing critical studies on race, class, architecture, and political economy. Despite the breadth and depth of recent research, literature on Asian and Asian American suburbanization remains limited. There is thus much room for additional research on this subject, given a majority of Asians and Asian Americans in the United States live outside city limits.

Asian Americans in Opera: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Yunhwa Rao
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chinese Opera ◽  
American Composers ◽  
History Of

Chinese opera in America has several intertwined histories that have developed from the mid-19th century onward to inform performances and representations of Asian Americans on the opera stage. These histories include Chinese opera theater in North America from 1852 to 1940, Chinese opera performance in the ubiquitous Chinese villages at various World Fairs in the United States from 1890 to 1915, the famous US tour of Peking opera singer Mei Lanfang from New York to Chicago and San Francisco in 1930, a constellation of imagined “Chinese” opera and yellowface plays from 1880 to 1930, and the more recent history of contemporary opera created by Asian Americans commissioned by major opera houses. Some of these varied histories are closely intertwined, not all are well understood, and some have been simply forgotten. Since the mid-19th century, Chinese opera theater has become part of US urban history and has left a significant imprint on the collective cultural and historical memory of Chinese America. Outside of Chinese American communities arose well-known instances of imagined “Chinese” opera, yellowface works that employ the “Chinese opera trope” as a source of inspiration, or Western-style theatrical works based on Chinese themes or plotlines. These histories are interrelated, and have also significantly shaped the reception and understanding of contemporary operas created by Asian American composers and writers. While these operatic works of the late 20th and early 21st centuries are significantly different from those of earlier moments in history, their production and interpretation cannot escape this influence.

scholarly journals From Forever Foreigners to Model Minority: Asian American Men in Sports

2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yomee Lee
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
College Students ◽  
New York ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Male College ◽  
Asian American Men ◽  
Male College Students

AbstractDespite their long history in the United States, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to Asian Americans and their lived experience in sports. The purpose of this study was to give voices to Asian American men by focusing on their experiences in sports. In particular, this study examined the experiences of East Asian and Southeast Asian American male college students who were often perceived as “foreign” and “pejoratively feminine” racialized minority yet participated in sports that were associated with dominant masculinity in the U.S. The setting of the study was as a predominately White institution located in Upstate New York where Asian Americans make up about one percent of the total student population. Qualitative research method was employed for the study. Six Asian American male students were recruited through snowball and purposeful sampling methods. In-depth interviews were conducted to reveal the rich stories of these Asian American men. The research showed that the stories of Asian American male college students were much nuanced and complicated. Specifically, this study revealed that Asian American men were constantly otherized as “forever foreigners” who did not have a legitimate citizenship in the United States. Also, Asian Americans faced unique ideas about their manhood that either highlighted emasculated and feminized masculinity or hyper-masculinity. In dealing with these situations, Asian American men employed unique cultural strategies to challenge and resist racial stereotypes through sports.

Animating Gandhi

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shilpa S. Davé
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
South Asians ◽  
The United States ◽  
White Masculinity ◽  
South Asian American ◽  
American Character ◽  
South Asian Americans ◽  
Asian History

This chapter discusses how the Indian American character is the accent or the suburban “sidekick” character to the dominant narratives of young, white masculinity that are prevalent in American culture. The representation and use of the historical figure Mohandas Gandhi in the MTV animated series Clone High revisits and challenges American representations of Asian Americans and South Asian Americans as model minorities. The use of the historical leader Gandhi as a teenage “geek” sidekick without recognition of how Gandhi fits into South Asian history and influences South Asian American communities shows how American stereotypes dwarf any other representation of South Asians or South Asian Americans in the United States.

‘To really trust [...] we had to be open with ourselves and each other’: Community building through Spring Awakening

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-111
Author(s):  
Julie K. Hagen ◽  
Jennifer Thomas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Community Building ◽  
The United States ◽  
Musical Theatre ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Spring Awakening ◽  
Narrative Ethnography ◽  
The Subject

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to better understand how participation in St. Lawrence University’s (New York, the United States) production of Spring Awakening served as a means of intimate and broader community building. This narrative ethnography investigated the director and a focus group of actors involved in the production of Spring Awakening. Analyses of the data revealed four themes: content, interconnectedness, emotion and vulnerability and magic. St. Lawrence University students welcomed and embraced the language, the music and the subject matter presented to them in the content of Spring Awakening. The willingness with which the students opened up to conversation and community continued to resonate with them in an interconnectedness that seemingly had more depth and more meaning than other productions they have worked on, including other musical theatre productions.

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