Identity Work as Care-Work: Gender as a Mediator of Cohort-Level Divisions in Transnational Group Boundaries

• In Event: 130 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Roundtables (one-hour). Table 01. Identity and Presentation

Abstract

Migration spurs social processes around identity and symbolic boundaries that vary for groups based on their sending context, receiving context, and other factors. The complex circumstances of stateless refugee diaspora groups foster differential tactics of identity and boundary negotiation. How these complex social processes unfold within a single, recently arrived group is the central focus of this research. This paper explores how the Ahıska Turks in the US, a transnational, stateless, diaspora, refugee group, pursues the negotiation of their identity, and social and symbolic boundaries in a new context given their complex migratory history. Drawing from work on symbolic boundaries, and social identity, I use qualitative methods to examine how the Ahıska Turks emphasize a shared identity based on language, culture, and group history despite major differences in cohort level experiences and cultural fluency. However, I also show that they are experiencing varying levels of acculturation in the US along two major axes of identity: cohort and gender. Despite this emphasis on common group experiences, there are significant cohort divides related to specific personal experiences with multiple displacements, which shifts patterns of integration into the US. Gender acts as a mediator of the effects of cohort through the mechanisms of emotional and caring work by women, who are able to maintain collective identity and symbolic boundaries by what I call ‘identity care-work’. Women have fewer social opportunities in the US because of the demands of identity care-work that the group relies on to remain cohesive to maximize social outcomes.

Author

• Ande Reisman, University of Washington