A Comparative Case Study of Student Transnational Identity Positioning in the US and Ireland

• In Event: Culture, Identity, and Discrimination

Proposal

Purpose
In this comparative case study (Barlett & Vavrus, 2016) we explore how Albarko and Victor, two Black male students from immigrant backgrounds in the US and Ireland, negotiated a sense of belonging in their nations of residence. We ask: 1) How are the transnational identities of two Black male youths from immigrant backgrounds in the US and Ireland cultivated and asserted within and beyond school? 2) What resources supported the formation of the youths’ transnational identities?

Theoretical Framework
We draw on positioning theory (Davies & Harré, 1990) to identify the interactive and reflexive positionings of Albarko and Victor to understand how they expressed agency in two national contexts and used resources to inform their transnational identity positioning. We extend work by El Haj (2007), Nguyen (2012), Maira (2004) and Kwon (2022) who, according to Banks (2016), “found that the immigrant youth in their studies did not define their national identity in terms of their place of residence, but felt that they belonged to national communities that transcended boundaries” (p. 42).

Method
This qualitative study is a reanalysis of data from our individual dissertations. All names are pseudonyms.

Research Sites
Author One conducted research at Hallandale High in the U.S, midwest from 2013-2017. The school had 1,600 students including many transnational immigrant youth. Author Two conducted research at St. Hilary, an upper elementary and middle school in Ireland, from 2012-2015. It was a co-educational, Catholic school with 300 students. A large proportion had a Nigerian background.

Participants
Albarko was a 17-year-old senior, Black, Muslim, male refugee from Somalia. He had lived in the US for 3.5 years. Victor was a Black, sixth-grade student at St. Hilary. He was 12 in the 2014-2015 school year, born in Ireland to Nigerian immigrants, and identified as Irish, Nigerian, and pan-African.

Data Sources and Analysis
Data sources included: (1) interviews; (2) observations; (3) classroom artifacts; (4) researcher memos; and (5) focus group interviews from Author Two’s dissertation. They were coded for analysis. The youths’ responses were grouped thematically following the constant comparative method (Strauss & Corbin, 1990).

Findings
Youths’ transnational identities were interactively and reflexively positioned through different resources– media and social media (for Albarko) and sports (for Victor)– both inside and outside school.

Albarko was one of nine Muslim-identifying students in his class, but the only Black male born outside the US. Although his Muslim self-identification was not outwardly visible, he noted how his visible identifications of being male and Black singled him out, leading to interactive positioning. In other classes, Albarko’s interactive positioning led him to assert reflexive positioning. During a discussion on an executive order barring individuals from six predominantly Muslim countries from traveling to the US, Albarko critiqued the Trump administration regarding the individuals’ vetting. Since he was born in Somalia, a travel-ban country, the policy’s negative positioning of Somalis held close, personal meaning.
Victor was interactively positioned as an outsider when he and his family faced racism and anti-immigrant attitudes in a local store in Ireland. He recalled when local white shopkeepers discriminated against his father, a naturalized Irish citizen. “My dad just whipped out the Irish passport and said, ‘Do I look like a foreigner to you? I’ve been in this country for years now!” Victor’s experience as an outsider also influenced his reflexive positioning as one with Irish, Nigerian, and pan-African identities. He claimed he could “act like an Irish person” and “embrace” being African, a description that, for Victor, was a proxy race.

Social media supported Albarko’s transnational identity. Through technology and online networks, Albarko used his cell phone and tablet to maintain cross-border connections he built with youth across nation-states. His social media use and understanding of places and cultures outside the US provided access to localized knowledge and information not immediately available to most individuals raised in one location, such as U.S. military drones in Somalia and a coup unfolding in Turkey . It allowed him to respond to others’ limited positioning.

Sports were an important resource for Victor. He was active in Gaelic football/GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) and soccer. He believed GAA was integral to being Irish, and he used it to position his Irish identity. Playing soccer helped him maintain connections to people and places globally. He suggested that playing soccer informed his sense of belonging and identity through social interactions and practices (Moje and Luke, 2009). He acknowledged soccer’s popularity in Ireland, Nigeria, and elsewhere and recalled playing it with boys his age in Nigeria during a family trip. Nigerians “all love to play football,” he said. “Your feet are your words.”

Discussion
Albarko and Victor experienced interactive positioning based on race and immigrant background. This positioning influenced the students’ reflexive positioning and how they formed transnational identities. They reframed negative interactive positioning into positive reflexive positioning to affirm their identities, resist discrimination, and achieve resilience. They attempted to change, not maintain, social hierarchies.
Albarko and Victor drew on different resources– social media and sports– in response to interactive and reflexive positioning. The interactive positioning of Albarko’s intersecting identifications as a Black, male, Muslim refugee allowed him to refute the broader framing advanced by Hollywood, social media sites, and policy-based discrimination and assert reflexive positioning. He analyzed systemic social inequities, resisted inaccurate framing of Islam in the media, and uncovered underlying beliefs implicit in the so-called Muslim ban. Victor’s participation in GAA was embedded within a broader context of Irish history and tradition. Through his participation in soccer, he understood the sport’s global reach, knowing it was popular in Ireland, Nigeria and elsewhere. It helped him demonstrate strength, agency, and resistance towards racism.

Significance
Our comparative study offers an opening for educational researchers and practitioners to consider the varied ways that listening to, and learning from, the lived experiences of youths can inform curriculum and instruction. It encourages educators to think more deeply about how schools can prepare students for engaged citizenship in pluralistic societies and better explore understandings of transnational identities that shape students’ lives.

Authors

• Matthew Deroo, University of Miami

• Donald McClure, St. John's University