Presumed identities perceived difference: how children of South Asian Indian immigrants experience and negotiate being an American

2025/01/20 by Soulit Chacko · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Diaspora, migration, transnational identity #Migration, Refugees, and Integration #Migration and Labor Dynamics

paper · doi:10.1080/1070289x.2025.2454778

openalex publication_date 2025/01/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/14

Abstract

Using qualitative data with second generation Christian Indian Americans, this article illuminates dimensions of Whiteness and practices of cultural citizenship to highlight the relational and embodied practices of identity. Specifically, the discussion elaborates on dynamics of recognition, shaped by how race, class, caste, and religion intersect for Indian Americans. Second generation Christian Indian Americans experience exclusion when White peers identify them as Hindu, a religious identity for many South Asian Indians. To fend off exclusion, participants identify class mobility and evangelical Christianity as ‘true’ criteria for being an American. I discuss how Whiteness informs how second generation Christian Indian Americans draw symbolic and social boundaries to assert being a ‘cultural’ American as they negotiate ‘othering’ to establish their own Americanness.

Citations

• Conceptualizing from the Inside: Advantages, Complications, and Demands on Insider Positionality
• Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought
• The Making of Class and Gender through Visualizing Moral Subject Formation
• Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies
• The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Discussions

• 'Presumed identities perceived difference: how children of South Asian Indian immigrants experience and negotiate being an American' From #Identities' #LatestIssue, by Soulit Chacko: doi.org/10.1080/ [bsky, 3 points, 0 comments]

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