Constructions of Japanese national identity: Host views using a social markers of acceptance framework

Social markers of acceptance (SMA) are socially constructed criteria (e.g., language skills, shared genealogy, or adherence to social norms) that receiving society nationals use in deciding whether to view an immigrant as a member of the national ingroup. This study had two objectives: 1. to identify the markers considered important by Japanese to accept immigrants in Japanese society, and 2. to examine the type of intergroup conditions that may shape immigrant inclusion by influencing the degree of emphasis placed on SMA: specifically, perceived immigrant threat, contribution, and social status, as well as intergroup boundary permeability and strength of national identification. Native-born Japanese (n = 2000) completed an online survey, where two latent factors emerged representing ethnic and civic markers—suggesting that national identity may have changed in the past 25 years, with Japanese developing a distinct civic conceptualization in addition to a previously existing ethnic one. Multiple hierarchical regressions found significant main effects of perceived immigrant threat, contribution, status, and boundary permeability for both civic and ethnic dimensions, as well as interactions between threat x status and threat x permeability. As hypothesized, threat had positive effects on SMA emphasis, and contribution exerted negative effects—indicating more exclusive and inclusive attitudes among Japanese, respectively. Results for national identity were inconsistent, complementing social identity theory for ethnic markers but contradicting it for civic marker importance. Consistent with social identity theory, immigrants perceived as “low status” triggered endorsement of more restrictive civic and ethnic benchmarks; however, contrary to expectations, increased threat under less porous intergroup boundaries predicted more restrictive civic and ethnic marker utilization.     

What it means to be “one of us”: Discourses of national identity in the United States

In recent years, the transnational movement of people has resulted in increasing tension and debates about national identity. The present research utilized a discourse analytic approach to examine accounts of national identity in the U.S. among native-born U.S. residents, Mexicans living in Mexico, and Mexicans living in the U.S. Our analysis focused on two sets of diverging accounts of national identity. A first set involved participants' explanations of national identity as natural/essential, “felt”, or conditional, which served to either constrain how “American” immigrants could be or allowed for a more inclusive definition of national identity. A second set of accounts involved participants theorizing the national polity as a multicultural or monocultural space which functioned to construct national boundaries as permeable or reinforced (White) American dominance. These patterns of talk emerged across all interviews, although U.S. participants attended to more flexible and dilemmatic (e.g. inclusionary and exclusionary) accounts of national identity. We discuss the implications for the complexity of national identity.     

The effect of perceived overqualification on job satisfaction and career satisfaction among immigrants: Does host national identity matter?

Overqualification is a form of person-job misfit that is common among those who reside in a foreign country. It is associated with poor work-related well-being and can inhibit full adjustment to the host society. The goal of our study is to examine the impact of perceived overqualification on job satisfaction and career satisfaction among immigrants. Furthermore, we investigated immigrants’ host national identity as a moderator of the impact of perceived overqualification on job satisfaction and career satisfaction. We analysed longitudinal online survey data from 124 Italian and Spanish immigrants who migrated to Germany between 2000 and 2014. Regression analyses show that perceived overqualification is negatively associated with job satisfaction six months later. Furthermore, host national identity moderates the association between perceived overqualification and job satisfaction: low overqualification is beneficial for job satisfaction whereas high overqualification is a threat for job satisfaction, especially for immigrants who identify strongly with the host society. We do not find corresponding direct and moderating effects on career satisfaction. We conclude that indicators of acculturation, such as host national identity, are worth considering in order to understand the impact of person-job misfit on work-related well-being among immigrants.     

Research on multiculturalism in Canada

Canada announced a policy of multiculturalism in 1971. The goal of the policy was to improve the quality of intercultural relations. Two main elements of the policy were proposed as steps towards achieving this goal: support for the maintenance and development of cultural communities (the cultural component); and promotion of intercultural contact along with the reduction of barriers to such participation (the intercultural component). Research on these issues can provide a basis for the development and implementation of multiculturalism policies and programmes. A review of psychological research on multiculturalism over the past 40 years is summarised. Topics include: knowledge about the multiculturalism policy; acceptance of multiculturalism; acceptance of ethnocultural groups; acceptance of immigrants; discrimination and exclusion; and attachment and identity. Research assessing three hypotheses derived from the policy is also briefly reviewed. Current evidence is that there is widespread support for these features of the multicultural way of living in Canada. Of particular importance for the success of multiculturalism is the issue of social cohesion: is the first component (the promotion of cultural diversity) compatible with the second component (the full and equitable participation and inclusion of all ethnocultural groups in civic society)? If they are compatible, together do they lead to the attainment of the fundamental goal of attaining positive intercultural relations? Current psychological evidence suggests that these two components are indeed compatible, and that when present, they are associated with mutual acceptance among ethnocultural groups in Canada. I conclude that research in Canada supports the continuation of the multiculturalism policy and programmes that are intended to improve intercultural relations.     

What does it take to become “one of us?” Redefining ethnic-civic citizenship using markers of everyday nationhood

In this study we examined what are the markers of immigrant naturalisation as seen from the perspectives of recipient nationals. Social markers are perceptual signposts that receiving nationals use in deciding whether a non-native born is a member of the destination country. In short, what should immigrants do in order to be accepted by receiving nationals as “one of us”. Cross national data on 20 indicators of “everyday nationhood” were collected from five countries – Singapore, Japan, Australia, Finland, and Canada. The markers highlight common dispositions, activities, or social norms that are associated with citizenship. Exploratory factor analysis in each sample consistently demonstrated a two-factor structure model that supports the contemporary ethnic-civic distinction, but the markers that make up each of the two dimensions vary between countries. No metric equivalence was found, and that the markers have culture-specific meanings. The framework offers a novel insight to intercultural relations. The results suggest that adaptation and social inclusion need to consider the norms and values practised in the recipient society, and how immigration may redefine intergroup boundaries.     

“Piety Stories”: Muslim Tatar Women’s Identity Performance,Negotiation, and Transformation through Storytelling

This article examines “piety stories”—Muslim Tatar women’s narratives about adopting daily Islamic practices, such as five prayers or headscarves, in Tatarstan, Russia. I argue that sharing piety stories is a communicative way of performing identities, negotiating group memberships, and reaffirming one’s commitment to Muslim piety. These narratives provide a discursive way for the speaker to practice being a Muslim and for the audience, a blueprint for becoming one. By detailing a way of being where Muslim piety becomes one’s moral compass and source of agency, piety stories illustrate a culturally meaningful relationship among identity, Muslim piety, and local communicative practices.     

“You don’t sound black” African immigrant youth experiences of discrimination in the labor market in Calgary

This paper aims to understand the factors promoting racial microaggression from the perspective of first-generation Black African immigrant youth in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Most of the literature on Blacks and other visible minorities [1] in Canada is centered on integration challenges, which have been identified in terms of socioeconomic and political marginalization. Within the context of immigrant challenges of navigating the job market, one realizes that many institutionalized factors influence access to opportunities. However, there is little research on immigrant youth, notably Black youth, and their experiences of racial microaggressions in Canadian society. This study fills this gap by offering an understanding of the experiences of microaggressions among Black African youth in Calgary. This city is arguably becoming increasingly diverse with the influx of immigrants from different countries and other Canadian provinces. Drawing on qualitative research methods (40 semistructured interviews with Ghanaian and Sudanese youth immigrants, 20 females and 20 males between the ages of 18 and 30 years), we incorporate meaningful insights from African immigrant youth on racial drivers of microaggressions. The analysis is grounded in critical race theory (CRT). Findings indicate that the youth face marginalization in the labor market during the hiring process (linguistic discrimination), discrimination at the workplace, and exclusion because their names are exploited as identity markers. Overall, policies advocating for an inclusive society need to be strengthened to address these inequalities that are ingrained in Canadian cities. [1] In this study, a visible minority is defined by the Government of Canada as ‘persons, other than aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour’ (Statistics Canada, 2015).     

How do Indonesians remember Konfrontasi? Indonesia–Malaysia relations and the popular memory of “Confrontation” after the fall of Suharto

After the fall of Suharto in May 1998, mass rallies yelling anti-Malaysia sentiment broke out several times in a number of major cities in Indonesia. The rallies were triggered by various conflicting issues involving the two countries. Every time a mass rally against Malaysia happens, memory of “Konfrontasi” is recalled, as is seen in the use of “Ganyang Malaysia” (Crush Malaysia) rhetoric, whereas during the Suharto era, the narrative of the historical episode of “Konfrontasi” was constructed in the tone of criticizing Sukarno’s “Crush Malaysia” campaign as an escape from the internal economic crisis, rather than as an expression of nationalist sentiment. However, as this article addresses, there is a gap between the “national memory” as is constructed by the history school textbook and “popular memory” as is embodied in society. Beneath this “popular memory,” as this paper contends, there is a sort of nationalist sentiment in the sense of longing for “national pride” as projected upon the “persona” of Sukarno.     

National identity in a divided nation: South Koreans’ attitudes toward North Korean defectors and the reunification of two Koreas

This paper examines how national identity is associated with South Koreans’ attitudes toward North Korean defectors and their opinions on the relationship between two Koreas. Using a nationally representative survey, we find that individuals high on ethnic identity are more likely to harbor negative attitudes toward migrants from North Korea and less likely to believe that the reunification between two Koreas is necessary. The findings suggest that alleged common belief in “one nation, two countries” notwithstanding, political division has led South Koreans to regard North Korean citizens as an out-group, who are not clearly distinguishable from non-coethnic immigrants.     

The Impact of Narratives on Attitudes toward Muslim Immigrants in the U.S.

ABSTRACT

This study examined the impact of narratives on attitudes toward Muslim immigrants in the U.S. Based on a 2 (content: acceptance vs. rejection) × 2 (narrator: Muslim vs. American) plus control condition design, 479 participants read one of five messages. More contact and positive attribution toward Muslim immigrants was associated less threat and exclusion. The American narrator telling a rejection narrative was the most disliked and received little empathy. Overall, narratives describing Muslim immigrants’ experience of rejection were more impactful on participant intention to engage in pro-social behaviours. This study discussed the implications of narratives in bias reduction efforts.     

Affirming conflict and identity in the Korean Peace Park (DMZ) proposals

Abstract

According to their advocates, Peace Parks represent a real and symbolic hope for peace and reconciliation. Peace Parks both create a buffer and a “bridge” for cooperation to generate peace. The South Korean government and elite-led green NGOs are placing the DMZ military buffer zone as a “soft power” Peace Park instrument for peace between the two Korea's. This paper argues that the conventional approaches to explaining the Korean DMZ Peace Park initiatives/proposals fail to address the underlying national identity questions and narratives. These conventional approaches can potentially reinforce conditions for inter-Korean hostility. This is because inter-Korean hostility is based on ongoing contestations from each Korea over what counts as the historically authentic and unified Korean heritage/identity. Contests are also based upon which of the Korea's has the legitimate right to monopolize these master-narratives of what counts as genuine Korean identity. Further investigations of the practices and processes of (South) Korean identity construction through inter-cultural tensions between the two Korea's need to be addressed before a Peace Park as concept and policy can move away from the initiatives that potentially reinforce these contested identity constructions.     

Reclaiming America: the quest for home in Shawn Wong’s Homebase

ABSTRACT

With its dynamic narrative, Shawn Wong's Homebase recounts the story of four generations of a Chinese family searching for a homebase on the land of the United States. Personal experiences, family chronicles, and Chinese American history are portrayed through various forms, including short stories, correspondences, student essays, memories, and dreams. A major theme of the novel is geographically and spiritually “reclaiming America,” or attempts by Chinese Americans to make the United States their “real” home. The protagonist's way to reclaim America involves revisiting landmarks and other places in the United States where his father and grandfather had traveled, through which he tries to discover the meaning of his own life in the United States and thereby to find his personal identity and home in this country. In drawing the topography of Chinese American history, Shawn Wong not only inscribed Chinese American presence on those places where the protagonist's forefathers had lived and worked, but also used legends to implant their heritage into those soils. Shawn Wong hopes that through his writing he can build for Chinese Americans a history, a cultural foundation with myths and legends of their own. Only when a people's myths spread over the land they inhabit can the land truly be considered theirs. The Chinese American identity shaped in Homebase is heroism, rooted in the ethnic identity of the male Chinese American in the American West, and this is the “home” that the protagonist as well as many other Chinese Americans ever quest for.     

Beyond the crisis: the “chaotic formula” of Hong Kong cinema

Abstract

Hong Kong's film industry has been living through and beyond the 1997 handover to China. Along a complicated socio-economic and cultural heritage, the city's “crisis cinema” successfully milked takeover fears for an anarchic display of showmanship. Local filmmaking conditions, popular narratives and aesthetics from that time can be identified as ingredients in a “chaotic formula” that instigated Hong Kong cinema's “Golden Age.” Unlike other film industries, which point to their disaster centres in a search or celebration of national identity, Hong Kong survived at a fragile historic juncture largely by sailing around the cliffs of political affront and resorting to metaphorical speech instead. Yet, following the handover, the film industry has retired its previous attitudes about itself and the future; it has integrated a new “China factor” and riddled cinema with contradictory statements about the “condition” of Hong Kong. System failure, madness and identity theft in crime stories appear alongside celebratory historicism, cultural allegiance and escapist spectacle, especially in Hong Kong-China co-productions. This paper follows the evolution of the crime genre along general dynamics and transformations of the formula from the 1980s, past the turbulent 1990s and into recent postcolonial Hong Kong, in which the inability to formulate a new crisis, or the resolution of the previous one, has put cinema itself into crisis.     

A potential pitfall of integration: The case for identity conflict to facilitate social change

Building on intersectional awareness literature, this paper examines how another individual difference regarding one’s perception of identity intersections — bicultural identity conflict (BII-C)— predicts immigrants’ interpretations of their social environment and general orientation to take action to support immigrants from one’s heritage group (GOA-I). While previous research has shown that BII-C, or perceived conflict (vs. harmony) between multiple cultural identities, is related to negative intergroup outcomes, we extend this research to examine how BII-C relates to social change actions that promote a more equitable society. An experimental study with 165 first- and second-generation immigrants living in the United States found support for a moderated mediation model. BII-C moderated the relationship between discrimination and the degree to which participants attributed discrimination to societal factors. These attributions were associated with GOA-I. Future research should consider additional individual differences, beyond intersectional awareness and BII-C, to see how these orientations may also act as a lens through which people interpret their social environment and are willing to take action to change it.     

Negotiations of cultural identities by Indian women engineering students in US engineering programmes

The paper analyses the identities of Indian women engineers in the gendered organizational context of US engineering programmes. Participant narratives discuss the ways in which women are subjected to identity struggles in India due to gendered patrifocal norms that impose structural, societal, and familial pressures on women. Subsequently, when these women enter US engineering programmes, they encounter a highly masculine organizational and cultural space. Participants discuss identity dislocations, transformations, and assimilation as they seek to meld into the existing structures and find a career trajectory. I draw upon liminality theory to explore the cultural transitions, identity restructuring, and negotiations of Indian women engineers, navigating the intersections of competing and intersecting cultural norms of gender and engineering in India and the US, work, and family. The findings indicate the layers of gendered ideology that constitute engineering education in India and the US, the societal pressures of marriage and family rooted in patrifocal Indian norms, the barriers to finding an engineering job, the resources within the structures that support women, and the identification of patriarchy as the enactment of agency and as a site for change.     

Minding the gap: Elucidating the disconnect between arts participation metrics and arts engagement within immigrant communities

A growing gap between national metrics of arts participation and the many, evolving ways in which people participate in artistic and aesthetic activities limits the degree to which such data can usefully inform policy decisions. The National Endowment for the Arts’ Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA) is the primary source of arts participation data in the USA, but this instrument inadequately evaluates how members of minority and immigrant communities participate in the arts. As the USA nears a historic demographic shift to being a majority–minority nation – non-Hispanic White individuals will no longer be a demographic majority by about 2041 – obtaining more accurate measures of artistic activities that are meaningful to a more diverse population will be of increasing importance for public policy-making. To better understand the extent to which the SPPA's questions capture the range of artistic activities engaged in by members of immigrant communities, we cognitively tested a subset of the survey's questions with Chinese immigrants to the USA as a pilot case. We found that interviewees participate in a range of culturally specific and non-culturally specific arts activities that they did not report in response to the survey's questions. In this article, we draw upon these interviews to discuss the reasons underpinning the gap and suggest implications for updating research tools and future research. A better understanding of the gap between measured and actual “arts participation” will lead to improved measures and information to support artistic expression and arts more reflective of contemporary society.     

Gesturing beyond the frames: post-apocalyptic sentiments in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer

ABSTRACT

The Sympathizer is a theoretically sophisticated response to the narratives concerning the Vietnam War in the context of U.S. imperialism through the wars in Iraqi, Afghanistan, and the context of more currently terrorist attacks. What Viet Thanh Nguyen has undertaken in this fierce and bold debut is not an attempt at an authentic delineation of the war in Viet Nam, but a critical reflection on the knowledge production regarding the Vietnam War in particular, and all the other wars in general. With an ambitious and disturbing gesture, The Sympathizer confronts the “frames of war” and endeavors to circulate beyond the limits of the “frames” in order to shed light on an unresolved entanglement encoded in the war narratives. By stitching together conflicting voices and standpoints, The Sympathizer makes visible a complex web of war narratives and the ill-conceived logic that previously undiagnosed. This essay eventually discusses the way in which Nguyen’s post-Apocalyptic sentiments give The Sympathizer an intricate touch and a narrative reenactment that echoes the practice of pacificism.     

Building a new society on the base of locality: transformation of social forces in Taiwan during the 1990s

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explain the transformation of social forces in Taiwan during the 1990s, as well as the “ideals of society” embedded in Community Construction that aims to reconstruct the local community. Based upon the analysis of discourses of movement agents, I differentiate four ideal-types of “good society” configured in the Community Construction. First, by the ideal-type of “indigenous (bentu) society,” people hope to reconstruct local history and local culture. Secondly, by “civilized society,” people want to build a society in which its residents live in solidarity and civility. Thirdly, by “civil society” people emphasize the importance of grassroots democracy and the subject position based on locality in order to respond to forces of the state and the market. Lastly, by “civic society” people aims to construct communities encompassing different geographical ranges, in which people from different backgrounds can live together and integrate into a civic nation. Among these ideal-types, “civic society” is the articulating link between “indigenous society” and “civil society,” while locality has become the fundamental element in defining “culture” and “community” in Taiwan. As a result, the cultural resistance based on locality has transformed into the cultural governance focusing on locality.