Responding to Hyper/In-Visibility: Afghan Americans Negotiating Islamophobia in and out of Schools

• In Event: Perceptions of (Im)Possibility: Muslim Students' Reality Within a Context of Islamophobia

Abstract

Objectives. Like many marginalized groups, Afghan-Americans contend with multiple forms of “Othering” that simultaneously produce invisibility and hypervisibility. In the case of Muslim Americans this paradox manifests from terrorist and orientalist tropes that generalize the actions of few individuals to a whole population in order to justify domestic surveillance and military actions abroad (Ali 2016). For refugee and immigrant communities this (in)visibility justifies xenophobia and deficit framings, stringent immigration policies, and U.S. exceptionalism while erasing reasons for displacement (Espiritu, 2003; Nayak, 2006, Maira, 2016).

Theoretical Framework. This paper brings together the literature on Orientalism in conversation with the literature on visibility of non-dominant communities through a consideration of the following research questions: In what ways do Afghan-Americans as refugees or the children of refugees experience “Othering” as invisibility/hypervisibility? How do they negotiate or respond to this paradoxical invisibility/hypervisibility?

Methods and Data Sources. Data for this study consisted of qualitative interviews with short demographic surveys with twenty 1.5 and second generation Afghan-Americans primarily in Northern California. Content analysis, grounded theory and thematic networks were used as analytical methods to code and evaluate themes that emerged from the transcripts (Saldana, 2009).

Results. The results of this study suggest that Afghan-Americans experience the paradox of visibility as they, (1) Negotiate normality under the constant gaze of stereotypical tropes that define their identities as non-normative and foreign. (2) Afghan-Americans experience paranoia that may be exacerbated by the context of intergenerational trauma experienced within Afghan refugee families. (3) Afghan-Americans resist effects of the paradox through their emergent cultural consciousness that allows them to shape narratives around their identity in progressive ways.

Conclusion. This study has implications for the ways that school contexts and school officials may unknowingly exacerbate the paradox of visibility experienced by Muslim and refugee youth. Cultural and religious visibility takes the form of negative stereotypes for these young Muslims in State institutions that include schools. As a result, school officials need to be aware of the psychological and academic well being of these students and balance the burden placed on them to educate their peers and negate overburdening discourses that position them as non-normative.

Author

• Saugher Nojan, University of California - Santa Cruz