Young Adults’ Race,Wealth, and Entrepreneurship

This study explored relationships among young adults’ wealth and entrepreneurial activities with emphasis on how these relationships differed among racial and ethnic groups. Using data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, results indicated that young adults’ (N = 8984) higher accumulated amounts of wealth were associated with pursuing self-employment at higher rates; however, differences emerged when the associations were explored with various types of wealth and within racial and ethnic groups. Black young adults’ greater debt and net worth were associated with their increased likelihoods of self-employment. Among Latino/a young adults, greater liquid assets and net worth were associated with increased likelihoods of self-employment. Wealth was unrelated to white young adults’ self-employment. Wealth appeared to play an outsized role in the self-employment of black and Latino/a young adults compared to that of their white counterparts. In other words, racial and ethnic minority young adults may have a heavier burden for generating their own capital to embark on entrepreneurial activities when mainstream credit markets are unresponsive or inaccessible. Policy implications are discussed.     

I Do,I Don’t,I Don’t Know: A Study on Inter-religious Marriage in an Iraqi-Shi’a Muslim American Community

In living in heterogeneous Western societies, Muslim immigrant communities are surrounded by individuals from a host of different religious backgrounds. This paper examines the willingness of the Iraqi-Shi’a Muslim community of Dearborn, Michigan, to marry individuals from four different groups, namely another sub-branch of Shi’a Islam, another branch of Islam, the “people of the book” faiths, and those not part of “people of the book” faiths. The paper will test whether spending more time in the United States will make individuals more susceptible to the idea of marrying outside of their sub-branch of Twelver Shi’a Islam. In order to answer this question, the participant community has been divided into two waves, with interviews being conducted with 25 participants from each wave. The results reveal that the first wave is more interested in marrying outside of their sub-branch and religion, while the recently arrived second wave appeared more resistant to the idea of such intermarriages.     

‘Gone,leave, go,move, vanish’: race,public space and (in)visibilities

This chapter is a discussion of the various ways Canadian-born young men of colour (aged 17–26) experience (in)visibilities in the public spaces of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). I begin this chapter by analyzing the different ways ‘visibility’ and ‘invisibility’ have been conceptualized in the scholarly literature, including literatures on homelessness, public space, and race. Invisibilities include ‘invisible homelessness’ as well as material invisibilities in which young men of colour both purposefully and accidentally navigate public spaces in ways that affect whether they are seen or unseen and by whom. This research emphasizes the contingency and indeterminacy of varying (in)visibilities. Despite the various ways they move between visibility and invisibility in public spaces, young men of colour experiencing homelessness maintain an explicit presence in urban street spaces. Understanding their experiences of (in)visibility in urban space helps us understand the geographies of race and racism in the GTA and in North American cities more broadly.     

The ‘isolated ethnics’ and ‘everyday ethnics’: region,identity, and the second-generation Midwest Asian American experience

While studies have documented the Asian American experience in the past two decades, a dearth of research exists on those who grew up in the Midwest. How do Midwest Asian Americans experience their co-ethnic community, culture and pan-ethnic identity? Drawing from in-depth interviews of second-generation Midwest Asian Americans, an analysis of the data reveals two patterns of experiences, including: isolated ethnics and everyday ethnics. The findings are framed around issue of ‘access points’ to the co-ethnic community, and its influence on ethnic identity formation. This research highlights the importance of geographic community context on acculturation of Midwest Asian Americans.     

Between a ‘student abroad’ and ‘being from Latvia’: inequalities of access,prestige, and foreign-earned cultural capital

ABSTRACT

This paper visualises tertiary-level students who study abroad as simultaneously both international students and members of an emerging diaspora. Coming from a country (Latvia) which is peripheral and relatively poor by European standards, students go abroad for multiple reasons not necessarily directly connected with study (e.g. family reasons, labour migration); yet their evolving diasporic status is instrumentalised by the Latvian government which wants them to return and contribute to the country’s development. Based on 27 in-depth interviews with Latvian students and graduates who have studied abroad, our analysis focuses on three interlinked dimensions of inequality: access to education at home and abroad; the varying prestige of higher education qualifications from different countries and universities; and the inequalities involved in getting recognition of the symbolic and cultural capital that derives from a non-Latvian university. Within a setting of neoliberal globalisation and conflicting messages from the homeland, students and graduates are faced with a challenging dilemma: how to balance their materialistic desire for a decent job and career with their patriotic duty to return to Latvia.     

The AKP,sectarianism, and the Alevis’ struggle for equal rights in Turkey

ABSTRACT

The Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been ruling Turkey since 2002, was founded by a splinter group from within the Islamist Virtue Party (FP). The most obvious difference between the old guard of the FP and the younger, reformist cadres who established the AKP was the latter’s deliberate and efficacious implementation of the discourse of democracy and human rights in articulating their political agenda. This discursive shift not only increased the AKP’s votes, but also gained them many supporters among liberal intellectuals in Turkey and abroad, who saw in them a potential to reconcile Islam with democracy. So much was invested in this hopeful vision that pro-AKP liberals for a long time turned a blind eye to many contrary developments in the country or tried to diminish their significance. One such major blind spot has been the Alevis, who after nearly 14 years of AKP rule continue to face formal and informal discrimination on a daily basis. Despite their alleged commitment to religious freedom, and notwithstanding an ephemeral ‘Alevi opening’ in 2007–2008, the disenfranchisement of the Alevis has only deepened under the AKP with its accelerated top-down Islamization of broader Turkish society and the corollary intensification of sectarian discourse both in domestic and foreign policy.     

’93,民族地区经济迅速发展的一年

临近岁末,我们将以什么样的心情回忆1993年?《经济窗》的专题采访将为您提供一个关于民族地区经济发展进步的总体印象,其中涉及经济增长、扶贫、乡镇企业等诸多经济热点问题。     

‘It wasn’t racism; it was more misunderstanding.’ White teachers,Latino/a students,and racial battle fatigue

This article explores how and why a group of Latino/a high school students identify and explain racism differently over the course of an 18-month participatory action research (PAR) project. To do this we examine what recent scholarship has termed racial microaggressions in what is thought of as the Post-Racial America public school system. Pulling examples from student and teacher interview, focus group, and class discussion data we first examine how these students’ teachers conceptualize and talk about racism, cross-racial relationships, and racial misunderstandings, and then we juxtapose that with students’ discursive work to make sense of the ways their teachers make their conceptualizations known and/or seen in school. Focusing on the K-12 context, this study finds racial battle fatigue may be why students switch between how they label these aggressions.     

‘And ever give us cause’: Understanding the investments of the ‘Ur-anthem’, ‘God Save the King/Queen’

This paper engages a close analytical reading of the lyrics of ‘God Save the King/Queen’ in order to understand what the functional survival of this song tells us about the rhetorical/affective investments of national devotion in the British sense. This study asks also how the lyrics of ‘God Save the King/Queen’ figure in the general definition of anthem and in the generic classification of anthems worldwide? Because of the song's international spread, and status as ‘Ur-anthem’, much may be gleaned from it as to both the nature of the speech act entailed in the prayer-type of anthem and the nature of ‘anthem quality’ more generally. ‘Anthem quality’, for the purposes of this paper, is defined as that soul stirring effect which certain combinations of music and lyrics achieve, most typically in the service of national affiliation. Theories of nation and nationalism are drawn on to frame affective relations between nation, state and citizenry as implied by, fostered by and utilized in anthems. Parodies and other derivative texts are considered in order to reach a better understanding of the sources and the pragmatic uses of anthem quality in the world today.     

There is no ‘universal’ knowledge,intercultural collaboration is indispensable

Within some significant circles, where hegemonic representations of the idea of ‘science’ are produced, certain orientations of scientific research are carried out, and science and higher education policies are made and applied, references to the alleged existence of two kinds of knowledge, one of which would have ‘universal’ validity, and ‘the other’ (in fact the several others) would not, are frequent and do have crucial effects over our academic work. Although some outstanding authors within the very Western tradition have criticized from varied perspectives such universalist ambitions/assumptions, and although many colleagues have reached convergent conclusions from diverse kinds of practices and experiences, such hegemonic representations of the idea of science are still current. The acknowledgment of this situation calls for a deep debate. This article responds to such a purpose by attempting to integrate into the debate a reflection on the shortcomings of hegemonic academic knowledge to understand social processes profoundly marked by cultural differences, historical conflicts and inequalities, as well as significant perspectives formulated by some outstanding intellectuals who self-identify as indigenous, and the experiences of some indigenous intercultural universities from several Latin American countries.     

‘We Lay Claim to Him!’ Berlin,Rothko, Eisenstein,and the Reorientation of Latvian National Identity

Since the late 1990s, Latvia has increasingly made claim on the intellectual and cultural heritage of Sir Isaiah Berlin, Mark Rothko, and Sergei Eisenstein. This article adopts a social constructivist approach in comparing and contrasting the role of intellectuals in framing nineteenth-century national identities and their contemporary instrumentalization as tools in the construction of national identity. The article then considers the “seizure” of Berlin, Rothko, and Eisenstein as “Latvians,” arguing that this process has been undertaken for both international and domestic purposes—to socialize and integrate Latvia with the West, and to promote domestic value change.     

‘If it weren’t for rugby I’d be in prison now’: Pacific Islanders,rugby and the production of natural spaces

This paper examines the positive role of sport in building social cohesion and the accrual of social and cultural capital for many young Pasifika men. In the process, we also critique the disciplinary discourse, underpinned by bio-racism and commodification, which is enacted on the bodies of Pacific Island men in the context of post-colonial, neoliberal, Australia. This results in over-representation in the rugby codes, manual labour, the security industry, and in prison. Of specific interest to this paper are the ways in which certain spaces, and the means to occupy them, become naturalised. This naturalisation serves to obscure the actual regulatory, and at times exploitative, function of sports; instead positing them as exemplars of individualism and self-governance. In positioning neoliberalism as the reengineering, rather than simply the deregulation, of the state, sports such as rugby enact considerable disciplinary power over the bodies of a minority ethnicity. We refer to this diversion from conventional working class employment opportunities as ‘sportfare’. Qualitative data for this paper has been drawn from several independent studies engaging with Pasifika communities in Australia.     

Initial teacher training: understanding ‘race,’ diversity and inclusion

There is little research which has explored how students on Initial Teacher Training (ITT) courses understand and conceptualise discourses of ‘race’, diversity and inclusion. This article will focus on student understandings of racialised identities; it will explore the discourses by which students understand what it means to be White and what it means to be Black, within the context of ITT. The article will examine the different facets and themes of identity within the context of belonging and exclusion which exist within higher education in the cultural and social contexts of English universities. The findings indicate that students’ understandings of ‘race’, diversity and inclusion on ITT courses are complex and multifaceted. The article argues that greater training is needed in relation to the practical assistance that student teachers require in terms of increasing their understanding of diversity and dealing with racism in the classroom.     

‘They Give Evidence’: Bodies,Borders and the Disappeared

In this essay I explore certain relations between bodies and borders as threshold spaces marking both separation and connection, and functioning as the bearers of political meanings. My title refers to Dadang Christanto's installation ‘They Give Evidence’, a series of standing, naked figures, bearing in their outstretched arms the remnants of burnings, drownings, beatings and other mutilations that leave their subjects stripped of any markers of identity. These nameless bodies, an image of contemporary political violence, invite exploration of the relations between the bodies of the dead and the living, between practices of bearing witness and giving evidence. Beginning with the disappeared of the SIEV X sinking, euphemistically referred to in the recent Senate Inquiry as ‘A Certain Maritime Incident’, this essay examines ways in which nameless bodies of the dead and disappeared are made present in contemporary Australia as evidence, as political bodies.     

‘Asian fail’: Chinese Canadian men talk about race,masculinity, and the nerd stereotype

Popular representations of Asians – and especially Asian men – often stereotype them as nerds. Drawing on qualitative field studies of Chinese Canadians' beliefs about ‘authentic’ identity and of an urban ‘nerd-culture scene,’ this article examines the perceived nerdiness of Asians. Membership Categorization Analysis is used as a framework to analyze two Chinese Canadian men's self-categorizing discourses. One embraces his nerdiness but is ambivalent about his racial/ethnic identity; the other is comfortable being categorized as Asian but distances himself from what he describes as the ‘typical’ nerdy Asian male. Although orientations to their presumptive categorization as Chinese or Asian differ, both design their self-presentations to manage inferences made about them. We argue that Canadian multiculturalism complicates these processes by discursively transforming racial difference into ‘cultural diversity’. This produces systematic errors in categorization, leading to inaccurate inferences of cultural competences or stereotypes social attributes from perceptions of physical difference. Under these conditions, the linking of nerds and Asians not only constrains individual life projects but can function as the ‘benign discourse’ that hides a racial subtext, reproducing historic, anti-Asian stereotypes in a seemingly neutral guise.     

‘They don’t look like children’: child asylum-seekers,the Dubs amendment and the politics of childhood

In October 2016, following a campaign led by Labour Peer Lord Alfred Dubs, the first child asylum-seekers allowed entry to the UK under new legislation (the ‘Dubs amendment’) arrived in England. Their arrival was captured by a heavy media presence, and very quickly doubts were raised by right-wing tabloids and politicians about their age. In this article, I explore the arguments underpinning the Dubs campaign and the media coverage of the children’s arrival as a starting point for interrogating representational practices around children who seek asylum. I illustrate how the campaign was premised on a universal politics of childhood that inadvertently laid down the terms on which these children would be given protection, namely their innocence. The universality of childhood fuels public sympathy for child asylum-seekers, underlies the ‘child first, migrant second’ approach advocated by humanitarian organisations, and it was a key argument in the ‘Dubs amendment’. Yet the campaign highlights how representations of child asylum-seekers rely on codes that operate to identify ‘unchildlike’ children. As I show, in the context of the criminalisation of undocumented migrants‘, childhood is no longer a stable category which guarantees protection, but is subject to scrutiny and suspicion and can, ultimately, be disproved.     

‘Are you gonna show this to white people?’: Chicana/o and Latina/o students’ counter-narratives on race,place, and representation

This article explores the recurring narratives on race, place and representation that emerged in the talk of Chicana/o and Latina/o sixth-graders at a middle school in East Los Angeles, California. Discourse analytic methods are used to closely examine how these narratives were constructed within the contexts of everyday classroom interactions. Drawing on the notion of counter-storytelling from critical race theory, the article highlights how these sixth-grade students articulated counter-narratives about who they were and what their community was like – often in direct opposition to what they perceived as white people’s stereotypical assumptions and misperceptions. It is argued that these narratives constitute a powerful and sophisticated critique of dominant narratives that frame working-class Chicana/o and Latina/o students in racist and pejorative terms. The article ends with a discussion of implications for understanding youth agency and the politics of representation.     

‘Really really different different’: rurality,regional schools and refugees

Abstract

This article explores the dynamics of difference-making in a regional Australian town. Despite Australia’s high levels of cultural diversity, many rural and regional areas remain predominantly ‘white’ spaces, presided over by people of Anglo-Celtic ancestry but with small populations of indigenous Australians. Over the past decade, however, a growing number of regional centres have become home to refugees from a range of African, Middle Eastern and South-East Asian countries. This study draws on interview, observational and documentary data to shed light on the experiences of people in one such town, focusing on schools as sites of everyday social contact and significant mediators of identity formation and settlement outcomes. A key aim of the article is to illuminate the ways in which constructions of rurality and of difference intersect with local histories and resources to shape relations between the original, ‘old’ and newest settlers.     

‘Race isn't what defines me’: exploring identity choices in transracial,biracial, and monoracial families

Transracial adoption [TRA], particularly the adoption of black children by white parents, has been a controversial issue in the United States for more than half a century. Much of the criticism surrounding transracial adoption has dealt with concerns that black children raised in white homes will fail to develop a positive black identity. Such critiques are often based on assumptions about the identity of black children raised by their biological parents, yet studies of transracial adoption rarely address identity development struggles experienced by black children raised in black homes. Moreover, while the race of parents in relation to children is at the center of the transracial adoption debate, TRA studies rarely delve into socialization practices of biracial families headed by one white and one black parent. This study addresses a void in the literature by examining the experiences of young black adults whose parents may or may not be of the same race. The impact of varying racialized family structures on black identity development is examined by comparing the experiences of young black adults raised in families with two black parents (monoracial), one white and one black parent (biracial), and two white parents (transracial). Drawing from 32 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with middle-class young black adults between the ages of 18 and 30 years old, findings indicate that all informants, regardless of racialized family structure, approach racial identity development similarly by de-emphasizing the ascribed status of race in favor of achieved statuses as part of the identity construction process.