Identities Journal Blog
  • Home
  • About
    • About Identities
    • Identities Collection
    • Latest Articles
    • Special Issues
    • Open Access Articles
    • Most Read Articles
    • Most Cited Articles
  • Blog
    • Article Blogs
    • Commentary Blogs
    • Blog Categories >
      • Anti-racism
      • Culture
      • Decoloniality
      • Ethnicity
      • Migration
      • Race
      • More Categories
  • COVID-19 Blogs
    • COVID-19 Blog Series
    • COVID-19 Symposium
    • Call for COVID-19 Commentaries
  • Events
    • The Subject of Decolonization: Literary Critical Insights
  • Contact
  • Home
  • About
    • About Identities
    • Identities Collection
    • Latest Articles
    • Special Issues
    • Open Access Articles
    • Most Read Articles
    • Most Cited Articles
  • Blog
    • Article Blogs
    • Commentary Blogs
    • Blog Categories >
      • Anti-racism
      • Culture
      • Decoloniality
      • Ethnicity
      • Migration
      • Race
      • More Categories
  • COVID-19 Blogs
    • COVID-19 Blog Series
    • COVID-19 Symposium
    • Call for COVID-19 Commentaries
  • Events
    • The Subject of Decolonization: Literary Critical Insights
  • Contact

The stigma of being ‘Black’ in Britain

9/12/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
The recent Black Lives Matters (BLM) protests offer a juncture for Britain to have a broad and sensible conversation on race and racism, similar to that headed by the Clinton administration in America 20 years ago. The recent re-appearance of the debate on terminology – the question of how to refer to racialised groups in Britain – may be the beginning of this. It is not a new question but is being posed by a new generation of Black Britons, who having been born in the UK should be unfamiliar with Hall’s sense of living ‘on the hinge between the colonial and post-colonial worlds’ (Hall & Schwarz 2017, 11). 
 
In my Identities article, ‘The stigma of being Black in Britain’, I argued that despite more than 50 years since Britain adopted its first Race Relations Act (1965), colour remains a ‘visible feature of the urban landscape’ (Hall & Schwarz 2017, 184) in the UK. I described Brexit as an indication that, as Stuart Hall wrote many years ago, many of the ‘white underprivileged…believe that what they experienced was not because they were poor and exploited but ‘because the blacks are here' (Hall & Schwarz 2017, 185).

Read More
0 Comments

Constructing Chineseness of Chinese immigrants in Korea

9/9/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
Korea has been said to be one of the most racially and culturally homogenous countries in the world. Although many critics claim that this is a 'myth', it is true that the country has not suffered from the racial and religious conflicts that have troubled so many countries. This alleged racial homogeneity may make a different race the primary indicator of 'the stranger' in Korea.
 
Thus, I was somewhat surprised by the descriptive statistics from a nationally representative survey of the permanent and naturalised immigrants in Korea conducted in 2013. According to the survey, the majority of immigrants who experienced perceived discrimination believed that they were discriminated against because of their national backgrounds, and not race, religion or economic status. From the respondents’ perspective, Koreans seem to be very proud of their nationality. If, as the immigrants claim, Koreans are so proud of being Korean, what is the source of that national pride? Further, could it be the way they justify discrimination against immigrants?
 
My Identities article, 'Constructing Chineseness as other in the evolution of national identity in South Korea', addresses these questions. Drawing on scholarly publications, newspapers, policy reports, surveys and films, I compared two different Chinese immigrant groups who came to Korea in different eras. I traced the narratives of Chineseness used to construct Chinese immigrants as strangers and examined how these narratives are related to Koreans’ evolving self-perceptions. The country’s national goals and sources of pride – in particular, historical eras – constitute the national subjectivity. As the most immediate strangers, Chinese immigrants have been easy targets for Koreans to demonstrate and confirm the new national identities they desire.

Read More
0 Comments

Understanding fear of the ‘Other’, to know and to heal: perceptions of refugees in forced migration contexts

5/8/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture

Othering processes are inherently complex, and in forced migration contexts, national public discourses tend to reverberate with anxieties over antagonism, discrimination and increasing tensions.
​
As an alternative to this public discourse, which ultimately tends to associate migrants and refugees with social threat, we might examine pockets of private and semi-private spaces from which quieter voices – women’s voices, perhaps – could catalyse more positive attitudes and better informed perceptions with a gender lens. One space where such voices might emerge is in all-women ‘gün’ (or ‘day’) groups. These are periodic, informal gatherings of relatives, friends and/or acquaintances, usually hosted in one member’s home, and are crucial spaces for women’s interaction and socialisation in Turkey. In fact, in my Identities article, co-authored with Hatice Mete, ‘The afraid create the fear: perceptions of refugees by “gün” groups in Turkey’, we analysed conversations from several of these groups in Mersin in order to investigate local women’s perceptions of forcibly displaced Syrians.

Read More
0 Comments

    Blog Collection

    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019

    Blog Categories

    All
    Anti-racism
    Asylum Seekers
    Belonging
    Blackness
    Boundary Work
    Citizenship
    Colonialism
    Commentaries
    Conflict
    Cosmopolitanism
    Culture
    Decoloniality
    Diaspora
    Discrimination
    Displacement
    Diversity
    Ethnic Boundaries
    Ethnicity
    Exile
    Gender
    Identity
    Indigenous
    Integration
    Intersectionality
    Islamophobia
    Kinship
    Marginalisation
    Migration
    Multiculturalism
    National Identity
    Nationalism
    Othering
    Populism
    Postcolonial
    Race
    Racialisation
    Racism
    Refugees
    Religion
    Stereotyping
    Stigmatisation
    Subjectivity
    Transnationalism
    Victimhood
    Whiteness

Explore Identities at tandfonline.com/GIDE