Asian American Ethnic Heterogeneity, Group Boundaries, and Intermarriage

• In Event: 3441 - Gender and Marriage in Asia and Asian America 

Abstract

Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial group in the United States that consists of over 20 national origin groups with distinctive ethnicity, language, religion, cultural practices, immigration history, and socioeconomic status and mobility patterns. Yet, heterogeneity and subsequent intra-group boundary formation among Asian Americans are seldom explored empirically until recently. This paper uses intermarriage, or marriage across group boundaries, to examine the relationship between intra-Asian ethnic heterogeneity and boundary formation. Intermarriage is studied through patterns in interracial and intra-Asian marriages. Intermarriage is a personal, micro-level social process that forges an intimate link between social groups, drawing a culturally accepted parameter between groups. Using the American Community Survey (ACS) and 2016 National Asian American Survey (NAAS) datasets I find that Asian intermarriage patterns reflect social and symbolic ethnoracial boundaries among Asian ethnic groups and between Asians and non-Asians, but only to a certain extent. These boundary-crossing patterns shown in Asian intermarriage patterns have important implications for their assimilation and racialization patterns as well as the group positioning of Asian Americans as a whole in the U.S. race relations.

Author

• Jess Lee, University of California, Irvine