Diaspora Youth Imagine Home

• In Event: 085 - Regular Session. Arab American Identity

Abstract

This paper emerges from research I conducted in 2011 when I interviewed 93 Arab American [mostly Muslim] transnational teenagers who were attending high school in their parents’ “homelands.” Contrary to my expectations, and to the findings of my prior research, Arab American youth reported having overwhelmingly negative views of what these places would be like prior to living in them. These “homeland imaginings” run in the opposite direction of that proposed by diaspora theorists, who largely speak of “collective memories, visions, or myths” of an imagined “ideal home” {Safran, 1991: 83-84] and positive, even romantic, imaginary constructions, even if “forced dispersal and (…) subsequent unhappiness” (Cohen 1997: 26) are part of the narrative. This paper will report and discuss the homeland imaginings articulated by 43 Palestinian American teenagers (ages 16-18) who were raised in the United States but living in the West Bank on an extended sojourn to their parents’ homeland, and then compare them to those of 37 comparable youth living in Jordan and 13 living in Yemen. Then it will speculate on the reasons for similar or different homeland constructions among these youth in diaspora. Components of the proposed explanation will include the power of the American and Arabic media – which show largely violent or negative representations that are reinforced in school-based and other social encounters, influence of family and community, and relative importance of a non-US nationalistic identity.

Author

• Louise Cainkar, Marquette University