Transnational Ways of Being and Belonging: How Immigrant Children's Identities Shift and Evolve Across Time and Space

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Division G Roundtable Session 4

Abstract

This study multi-sited ethnographic study examines how immigrant children’s complex identities shift across geographic boundaries by drawing on two concepts introduced by Levitt & Glick Schiller, (2004): transnational ways of being and ways of belonging. The findings indicate that young immigrant children’s transnational ways of belonging cannot be characterized in a singular and a fixed way and demonstrate how their dynamic and hybrid identities shift and evolve as they engage in transnational practices, particularly in relationship to the people, places, and experiences they encounter while moving across borders. By challenging the dichotomy of home/school and receiving/sending country, this study captures a more comprehensive and nuanced picture of immigrant children’s identities across time and space in the context of transnationalism.

Author

• Jungmin Kwon, Michigan State University