Blurred or Brightened Boundaries? Filipino Americans in Inter-ethnic and Interracial Marriages

• In Event: 222 - Student Forum Paper Session. Boundaries, Inequalities and Standards: Marriage, Race, Ethnicity, and Sex

Abstract

Scholars have argued that ethno-racial boundaries in the United States are in the process of changing, indicated by a number of factors including the high rates of intermarriage among Asian Americans and whites (Alba 2005; Alba and Nee 2005; Alba 2009; Lee and Bean 2010). However, the literature on intermarriage is predominantly quantitative and fails to show us how intermarried Asian Americans perform boundary work—that is, how and with what mechanisms Asian Americans demarcate ethnic and racial lines. Further, often the focus of intermarriage scholarship is Asian and white marriages, ignoring the large proportion of Asian Americans who marry Asians of different ethnicities and other non-whites. Drawing on 21 interviews with intermarried and inter-ethnically married second-generation Filipino Americans in the New York City metropolitan area, I examine the boundary work of Filipino Americans and find that the participants both blur and brighten ethno-racial boundaries between themselves, their partners, and other Asians and non-whites using race, pan-ethnicity, phenotype, and culture. This article demonstrates how the processes of blurring and brightening occur simultaneously, highlighting the flexibility and instability of race and ethnicity, and in particular, pan-ethnicity.

Author

• Brenda Gambol, City University of New York-Graduate Center