“You Are Not Like Me!”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Onoso Imoagene
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Assimilation Theory ◽  
Segmented Assimilation ◽  
Key Factor

Chapter 2 shows how the proximal host is a crucial actor influencing how the second generation of Nigerian ancestry identify. How the presence of the proximal host affects identity formation among the black second generation is generally overlooked in segmented assimilation theory and is a key factor emphasized in beyond racialization theory. The chapter details how relations with the proximal host in childhood, particularly feelings of rejection and exclusion based on perceived physical and cultural differences, laid the foundation for developing a distinct ethnicity in adulthood. I discuss the responses of the proximal hosts in the United States and Britain to the Nigerian second generation when they were young. What was viewed as discriminatory responses by members of the proximal host by the Nigerian second generation fostered a feeling of being black but different among the Nigerian second generation. The tense relations between proximal hosts and the African second generation required the young Nigerian second generation to start the process of defining what being black meant to them and defining a diasporic ethnic identity differentiating them from their proximal hosts.

Forging a Diasporic Nigerian Ethnicity in the United States and Britain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Onoso Imoagene
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Group Membership ◽  
Ethnically Diverse ◽  
The United States ◽  
Assimilation Theory ◽  
Segmented Assimilation

Chapter 4 examines why the Nigerian second generation in both the United States and Britain did not forge a reactive black ethnicity as predicted by segmented assimilation theory. It describes how blackness can be constructed to be ethnically diverse. The chapter details how the Nigerian second generation are forging a diasporic Nigerian ethnicity in the United States and Britain via two simultaneous processes required in identity formation: signaling difference from members of other groups and establishing similarity to determine the boundaries of group membership. I thoroughly discuss the cultural, moral and socioeconomic boundaries established by the Nigerian second generation to delineate ethnic parameters between themselves and their proximal host. I also explain why the second generation in Britain does not draw as sharp of a boundary between themselves and their proximal hosts compared to their U.S. counterparts.

The Crucible Within: Ethnic Identity, Self-Esteem, and Segmented Assimilation among Children of Immigrants

1994 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 748-794 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruben G. Rumbaut
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Psychosocial Adaptation ◽  
Children Of Immigrants ◽  
Parental Socialization ◽  
Segmented Assimilation ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Ethnic Density

Focusing on the formation of ethnic self-identities during adolescence, this article examines the psychosocial adaptation of children of immigrants from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. The data are drawn from a survey carried out in the San Diego and Miami metropolitan areas of over 5,000 children of immigrants attending the eighth and ninth grades in local schools. The sample is evenly split by gender and nativity (half are U.S. born, half foreign born). The results show major differences in their patterns of ethnic self-identification, both between and within groups from diverse national origins. Instead of a uniform assimilative path, we found segmented paths to identity formation. Detailed social portraits are sketched for each ethnic identity type. Multivariate analyses then explore the determinants of assimilative and dissimilative ethnic self-identities and of other aspects of psychosocial adaptation such as self-esteem, depressive affect, and parent-child conflict, controlling for gender, socioeconomic status, and national origin. The theoretical and practical implications of these results –especially the effects of acculturation, discrimination, location and ethnic density of schools, parental socialization and family context, upon the psychosocial adaptation of children of recent immigrants to the United States – are discussed.

Shamanism in Motion, Pentecostalism on Hold, and Maya Mormonism

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-66
Author(s):  
C. James MacKenzie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Religion And Ethnicity ◽  
Community Attachments

This article examines how religion, including new religious movements as well as older options in new contexts, combines with ethnic and community attachments in shaping the identity of Guatemalan economic migrants in southern California. While the literature on transnationalism tends to view religion and ethnicity as different though sometimes overlapping means by which migrants seek incorporation into new social and political contexts, the ethnographic evidence presented here suggests more complicated dynamics. These are reflected in the experiences of three migrants from a single indigenous community in Guatemala, each with different backgrounds of faith and ethnic identity: a nominal Catholic in his early 20s who is sympathetic to Mesoamerican shamanism though ambivalent about Maya ethnic identity; a middle-aged Pentecostal Christian who is ambivalent about religious practice and belief in the United States and rejects the Maya ethnic label; and a convert to Mormonism in his 30s who has attenuated his ties to his home community while adopting a broader Maya ethnic identity. To interpret these experiences, I develop an analytical framework which draws upon some of Thomas Csordas’ ideas about religion in globalization but stresses a renewed attention to community as a persistent, if ambivalent and perhaps inherently conflictive, site for identity formation, especially in the context of migration.

THE RACIAL UNCONSCIOUS OF ASSIMILATION THEORY1

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 375-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moon-Kie Jung
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Assimilation Theory ◽  
Segmented Assimilation ◽  
Oppositional Culture ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Caribbean

AbstractIn the past two decades, migration scholars have revised and revitalized assimilation theory to study the large and growing numbers of migrants from Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean and their offspring in the United States. Neoclassical and segmented assimilation theories seek to make sense of the current wave of migration that differs in important ways from the last great wave at the turn of the twentieth century and to overcome the conceptual shortcomings of earlier theories of assimilation that it inspired. This article examines some of the central assumptions and arguments of the new theories. In particular, it undertakes a detailed critique of their treatment of race and finds that they variously engage in suspect comparisons to past migration from Europe; read out or misread the qualitatively different historical trajectories of European and non-European migrants; exclude native-born Blacks from the analysis; fail to conceptually account for the key changes that are purported to facilitate “assimilation”; import the dubious concept of the “underclass” to characterize poor urban Blacks and others; laud uncritically the “culture” of migrants; explicitly or implicitly advocate the “assimilation” of migrants; and discount the political potential of “oppositional culture.” Shifting the focus fromdifferencetoinequalityanddomination, the article concludes with a brief proposal for reorienting our theoretical approach, fromassimilationto thepolitics of national belonging.

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