Abstract
This paper reports on the complex ways in which immigrant young adults make sense of their Americanized ethnic and racial identities. The analysis draws on a large set of in-depth interviews (N = 233) collected with immigrants between the ages of 18 and 29 across three regions in the US (California, New York, and Minnesota) in the early 2000s and is in dialogue with emerging new theories of immigrant incorporation which combine the insights of traditional assimilation and racialization frameworks. The identity narratives that emerge from these interviews demonstrate the overarching significance of racial and ethnic identification for young adults across various immigrant communities. The narratives also highlight some of the contextual factors involved in the construction of an ethnic identity in the US such as experiences with discrimination; or the presence of co-ethnic communities. The final substantive section explores how young American immigrants in the transition to adulthood attempt to cultivate hybrid, bicultural identities that balance their American-ness with the ongoing experience of living in a deeply racialized society. The paper concludes by discussing implications for the literature on identity formation and the transition to adulthood as well as on the immigrant incorporation experience.
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Notes
With Umaña-Taylor et al. (2014), we agree that it is not only difficult but inappropriate and inaccurate to separate out race and ethnic dimensions of collective identification processes, at least in the American context; we thus use language that reflects this multifaceted attention throughout the paper (see also Cornell and Hartmann 2004).
Additional information about each of these longitudinal studies can be found at:
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Immigrant Second Generation of Metropolitan New York Study: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/DSDR/studies/30302/summary;
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Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study in San Diego: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/RCMD/studies/20520/summary
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Youth Development Study: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/24881.
It is worth noting that these three studies also included interviews with a range of native-born American respondents as well (white = 42; black = 12; other non-white = 12). These interviews were analyzed and included in an earlier, descriptive treatment (Baiocchi and Hartmann 2017), and as such provide comparative context for the immigrant narratives presented here.
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Additional analyses of demographic data obtained from the interviews (analyses not shown, due to space) indicate that the majority of respondents reported higher educational attainment levels than their parents, most of whom had completed their education prior to immigrating to the United States. For example, the highest education level attained by 53% of parents was a “high-school degree or less,” whereas 88% of respondents had at least attended some post-secondary education by the time of their interviews (attended some college, vocation training or attained a bachelor’s degree).
Data collected on respondents’ socioeconomic status was not standardized across the three sites. Nonetheless, the qualitative interview schedule asked respondents to reflect on how they subjectively defined their own socioeconomic status. Research assistants later coded responses into one of four general categories; “poor or working poor,” “working class,” “middle class,” “higher than middle class.” Inter-coded reliability across the three assistants was generally high for these generalized categories (Cohen’s κ = .835, p < .005). Respondents had also been asked to estimate their median household income. Consistent with the observation that 78% of respondent identified as working class or working poor, the median household income reported was $35,000 per year (M = $33,401, SD = $19,612), though it should be noted that half of respondents were unwilling or uncertain on how to answer this question accurately.
Trustworthiness refers to what some qualitative researchers consider as the specialized set of criteria for qualitative research that parallel the more conventional—positivist—standards of research such as internal validity, reliability, and generalizability (Lincoln and Guba 2000; Morrow 2005). Though some have questioned the extent to which these criteria do in fact closely parallel the standards of positivistic research, or even whether they should (see overview of critiques by Morrow 2005), trustworthiness is often operationalized as issues of credibility (which parallel concern about internal validity), dependability (reliability), transferability (generalizability), and conformability (objectivity).
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Funding was provided by John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
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Hartmann, D., Baiocchi, A. & Swartz, T.T. Navigating Americanized Identities: Bicultural Ethnicity, Race, and the Incorporation Experience. Race Soc Probl 10, 332–347 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-018-9249-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-018-9249-x