Bicultural Identities: Race and Flexible Ethnicity Among 1.5- and Second-Generation African Immigrant Young Adults

• In Event: Understanding [Racial] Identity Formation Among African Immigrant Youth and Emergent Adults

Abstract

Objective and Theoretical Framework

Segmented assimilation has been the dominant theoretical lens to understand the identity formation of 1.5 and second-generation immigrants (Portes & Zhou, 1993; Portes & Rumbaut, 2014). It posits that children of immigrants experience conflict between maintaining their parent’s ethnic identities and embracing their current American racial identities. Thus, segmented assimilation characterizes racial and ethnic identities as competing forces that have difficulty co-existing. Analyzing the experiences of 26, 1.5 and second-generation Ethiopians and Nigerians in the Pacific Northwest, we draw from Wimmer’s ethnic boundary making theory (2008) to illustrate their identities as part of a nested hierarchy which simultaneously affords them agency to pick and choose between their nested sets of identification depending upon the social context, and constrains their identity choice such that it is determined by the social context. Moreover, ethnic boundary making also provides a more nuanced understanding of the incorporation of 1.5 and second-generation African immigrants through highlighting the types of boundary work this population engages in when at home, school, racial and ethnic based student organizations, and professional organizations.

Methods and Data Sources

A total of 26 in-depth interviews were conducted with children of African immigrants from Ethiopia and Nigeria residing in the Seattle metropolitan area between August 2014 and January 2016. Participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 33. Twenty identified as female and the others as male. All participants had a bachelor's degree with most having an advanced degree or were enrolled in university for a graduate degree. Participants were recruited via personal contacts, community organizations, and colleges and universities in the Seattle metro area. After initial interviews, additional participants were captured through snowball sampling. Interviews lasted 45 minutes to 3 hours (average time = 90 minutes). Eighteen interviews were conducted in person, seven by phone, and one via Skype. Data were analyzed using open and focused coding (Merriam, 2009) by hand and with Atlas.ti.

Results and Scholarly Significance

Findings indicate that the children of immigrants in this study are engaged in strategies of boundary expansion through their understanding of themselves as Black, and contraction through their understanding of ethnicity. Furthermore, their bicultural identities enabled their ethnic identities to shift between being African or Black in certain social contexts. Many understand their identities as “nested segments of differentiation” (Wimmer, 2008, p. 976), where their Ethiopian and Nigerian ethnic identities are lower levels of identification within a larger Black racial category. They consider ethnicity as an identity that connects them to a familial and cultural legacy that roots them to specific points of origin on the African continent. Participants actively expanded the Black racial boundary through their understanding of themselves as members of the Black community, along with understanding Blackness as a global identity which connects people of the African Diaspora together through ancestry and historical circumstance. This finding suggests the racial and ethnic boundaries between African 1.5 and second-generation and Black Americans are becoming increasingly blurred.

Authors

• Adaurennaya Chidinma Onyewuenyi, The College of New Jersey

• MeCherri Abedi-Anim