Understanding [Racial] Identity Formation Among African Immigrant Youth and Emergent Adults

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium brings together race and immigration scholars to examine identity formation among African immigrant youth and emergent adults in the United States. We explore how race, in relation to ethnicity and gender, shape the experiences of these youth and emergent adults. From research rooted in postcolonial theory, anti-Blackness, ethnic boundary making theory, Critical Race Feminism, and Transnationalism, we question notions of conflicting racial and ethnic identity among immigrant students as previously theorized in the literature. Instead, we show how social context shapes the identities of these immigrants, and describe the unique ways in which these identities coalesce, as well as where and when racial and ethnic identities are highlighted and used by these youth and emergent adults.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Critical Examination of Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in Education

Chair

• Atota Bedane Halkiyo, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College Arizona State University

Papers

• Revisiting Proximal Host: Adding to the Conversation - Mercy Agyepong, New York University

• Bicultural Identities: Race and Flexible Ethnicity Among 1.5- and Second-Generation African Immigrant Young Adults - Adaurennaya Chidinma Onyewuenyi, The College of New Jersey; MeCherri Abedi-Anim

• A Qualitative Investigation of the Experiences of Black Immigrant Women in Undergraduate Engineering in the Southwestern United States - Meseret F. Hailu, Arizona State University; Brooke Coley, Arizona State University Polytechnic

Discussant

• Chrystal A. George Mwangi, George Mason University