Beyond Empowerment and Subordination: Liminal Ethnic Identity in the Middle Class

• In Event: Racial and Ethnic Minorities Section Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table Three: Racialized and Ethnic Migration, Immigration, and Social Integration

Abstract

This article examines how middle-class minority adolescents experience and identify their ethnicity across social settings. Contemporary sociological literature has often conceptualized ethnic identity as expressing either resistance to domination or the internalization of stigmatizing power structures. Rather than viewing ethnic identity as reflecting a uniform experience and meaning—either empowerment or submission—this article argues that, under specific structural conditions, ethnic identity is a dynamic category that incorporates both elements and shifts between them across social settings. Drawing on in-depth interviews with middle-class minority adolescents in Israel, the study demonstrates that these adolescents develop a liminal ethnic identity composed of two constitutive elements. On the one hand, a thin ethnic identity enables fluid movement between ethnic repertoires, facilitates social positioning, and fosters a sense of belonging within middle-class environments. On the other hand, a strong ethnic identity constrains repertoire shifting, generates experiences of marginality, and leads adolescents to withdraw from middle-class spaces. By showing how ethnic identity carries shifting meanings for the same individual across social contexts, the article challenges uniform and binary understandings of ethnic identification.

Author

• Guy Abutbul Selinger, College of Management