Blog post by Owen McNamara, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
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Just as consumers around the world have begun to realize that Mexican food is more than ‘TexMex’ style tacos and burritos, so too have Mexicans themselves undertaken a critical revaluation of their traditional cuisine. Increasingly, foods and drinks that were previously (disparagingly) associated with Indigenous, rural and poor communities are being reappraised within Mexican society.

These two revaluations are linked. The attention garnered by Mexican cuisine among international gourmands (and acts of institutional recognition, such as UNESCO’s 2010 designation of Mexican cooking as part of humanity’s ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage) have created demand in cities across Mexico for a supposedly more ‘authentic’ Mexican cuisine, not only among tourists but among Mexican consumers as well.

Simultaneous with this boom in interest in native corn and traditional cuisine, the stigma which has traditionally been attached to southern Mexican identities has likewise been rethought. Mexican racial geographies commonly divide the country between a relatively prosperous north, associated with European or mestizo culture, and a poor, Indigenous south. This understanding is supported by the higher prevalence of Indigenous people in southern states (particularly Oaxaca, Chiapas and Yucatán), and the historical investment in infrastructure and industry that has favoured the north, driving migration from southern states towards central and northern Mexico. 

Blog post by Dennis Wiedman, Florida International University, USA and Vanessa León León, Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (ESPOL), Ecuador

Collective identity is often presented in neatly defined categories by governments, NGOs and international organizations, like the United Nations framework to recognize ‘Indigenous’ peoples. Such recognition is often tied to resources, visibility and political leverage. Yet, these frameworks of Indigeneity risk freezing identities into fixed categories. What happens when communities decline these categories?

This question guided our long-term research with the Wuankavilkas, the original people of Ecuador’s Santa Elena Peninsula. Using ethnohistorical methods combining oral histories, community archives, archaeological evidence, participant observation and four years of ethnographic fieldwork, we traced how the Wuankavilkas identify themselves in everyday life and in political arenas.

In our Identities article, ‘Identity fluidity and refusal of indigeneity by Wuankavilkas, the place-based original people of the Ecuadorian coast’, the combination of historical and contemporary sources using longitudinal cultural theme analysis allowed us to describe how the Wuankavilkas' collective identity has shifted fluidly over centuries while retaining a deep connection to land and ancestry.

Blog post by Nicola Guerra, University of Turku, Finland

Climate change is one of today’s most urgent global challenges—but it’s also become a highly political battleground. While environmentalism is typically associated with progressive values in mainstream media and public opinion, my Identities article, ‘The dark green agenda: tracing ecofascist ideologies and identities in Italy’, reveals a more complex and unsettling development gaining attention in academic circles: far-right movements are crafting their own ecological narratives in ways that are both sophisticated and contradictory.

In Italy, where far-right activism has deep roots and growing momentum, some groups are blending environmental concerns with anti-modern, anti-capitalist and identity-based ideologies. This phenomenon is increasingly referred to as ecofascism. Ecofascism isn’t a unified ideology. It’s a flexible constellation of ideas in which nature is valued not for its own sake, but as a symbol of purity, order and belonging – often tied to ethnic, territorial, or cultural identity. At its core, ecofascism sees modernity – especially capitalism, consumerism and multiculturalism – as having broken humanity’s bond with the natural world. 

Blog post by Heather Poke, Michigan State University, USA
 
In this blog, Heather Poke, a second-year master’s student in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University, reflects on what it means to navigate higher education as a first-generation Black woman from a low-income, rural community in Alabama.
 
I remember watching the different road signs pass by through the window in my U-Haul, and reality kicked in: I’m really moving 12 hours away from home. My first day of class at the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University was terrifying, yet a proud moment. I was the first of my family to move hours away from home ‘just for school’, as my parents stated. And the only thing I kept repeating to myself was: ‘You’re too country for the north’.
 
Despite moving to a slightly better environment, I had to leave behind things that shaped me, like my hometown. I grew up in a rural town in Alabama, called York, a predominantly Black community with limited resources. Not only were the resources limited for my community (health), but also academically.
My community placed my high school basketball team on a pedestal, and the idea of relying on higher education was considered a shadow or often viewed as a dream rather than a reality. Observing my loved ones struggle to make ends meet while still being classified as ‘lower class’ inspired me to seek education as a means of achieving stability and opportunity. This is what motivated me to further my education. 

Blog post by Tariku Sagoya Gashute, Arba Minch University, Ethiopia; Abebe Lemessa Saka, Haramaya University, Ethiopia; and Tompson Makahamadze, George Mason University, USA

Ethiopian federalism was introduced to manage ethnic conflicts that arose from questions of recognition and autonomy. However, it further solidified ethnic division and conflict: drawing ethnicity at the centre of politics, it created rigid ethnic boundaries that increased division and conflicts.

Our Identities article, ‘Shared identity approach to conflict transformation: the case of the Konso–Derashe–Alle area, Ethiopian federalism in focus’, was based on a research question formulated against these limitations of Ethiopian federalism to mitigate conflict. The emphasis was on its tendency to undermine important bonding and bridging spaces. The system has deemphasized shared sociocultural and historical values that sustained intergroup relationships while exaggerating ethnic differences mainly for elite political ends, in which some sociocultural differences are politicized for a share in the regional and national cake.  

Blog post by Simone Haarbosch, Radboud University, Netherlands and Claire Wallace, University of Aberdeen, UK

Increased mobility within the European Union means that many people have learned to live in new places. However, improved communications meant they no longer had to choose one place or another – they can live in both places simultaneously using what we have analysed as ‘hybrid habitus’ (drawing on Bourdieu’s ideas). Brexit added a further complication by forcing them to adapt to a new situation whereby the UK was no longer part of the facilitated EU migration policy, thus adding new levels of uncertainty to the situation. However, for professional people, the choice is not so much an economic one (can I afford this?) as an existential one leading them to reconsider: Who am I?  Where do I belong?

Our Identities article, ‘Renegotiating female transnational identities after Brexit: the importance of hybrid habitus’, looked at the experiences of 58 middle class women, who were either Dutch people living long term in the UK (Scotland in this case) or British people living in the Netherlands. We looked at how they established a new sense of ‘home’ in another country on the one hand, and how they retained links with their motherlands on the other, as aspects of this hybrid habitus.  

Blog post by Saime Özçürümez, Baskent University, Türkiye and Pınar Sönmez, Bilkent University, Türkiye
 
Scholars working on highly skilled migrants (HSMs) portray them as privileged cosmopolitans who can move effortlessly across borders due to high competition for attracting talent. However, little is known about how HSMs narrate their everyday experiences while reflecting on their sense of belonging. How do the HSMs reconcile national attachments with a global outlook? How do they navigate the complex socio-political landscapes of their host countries?
 
Our Identities article, ‘Patriotic cosmopolitans in Budapest: narratives of belonging among highly skilled migrants’, challenges the dominant framing and research on HSMs as essentially economic actors. We focus on their experience of international mobility and examine how they think through their identity and sense of belonging in complex socio-political settings. Drawing on Kwame Anthony Appiah’s assertion that one can identify as both a cosmopolitan and remain loyal to country of origin, we conceptualize cosmopolitanism and patriotism as intertwined spatial and emotional attachments constituting the foundations of HSMs’ sense of belonging. 

Blog post by Marcus Nicolson, Institute for Minority Rights, Italy

Scotland has been described as having a progressive politics towards immigration and migrant integration, which is closely tied to the civic brand of nationalism that has been promoted by the Scottish government in the 21st century.

But what effects do these narratives have on young adult migrants who have made Scotland their home, and how do they relate to these narratives when negotiating their own identities? These are the key questions which are explored in my Identities article, ‘Transnational identities and agency: navigating everyday life as a young adult migrant in Glasgow, UK'.

Blog post by Monika Mokre, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria
 
Identity politics were something like a buzz word in the 2024 US election campaign. On the one hand, media speculated why Kamala Harris did not play the ‘identity card’ of her multiethnic origin in a similar way as Barack Obama did. On the other hand, Republicans accused Harris precisely of using her minority identity as a campaign token and reject, at the same time, any kind of anti-racist or gender politics as identity politics of an elite neglecting the problems of the majority population.

Identities and their political usage, thus, might influence the outcome of elections and, in this way, play a role for the most important participatory practice of representative democracy. Their impact, however, goes far beyond ballot box agendas. When democracy is government of the people, for the people, and by the people, identity politics pose the paramount question if there is, in fact, a ‘people’ or if the citizenry consists of fundamentally irreconcilable subgroups

Blog post by Sara Amadasi, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy

In our Identities article, ‘Keeping two cultures together’: the binary construction of belonging in narratives of professionals on children’s cultural identity’, we investigated how the sense of belonging and cultural identity of children with a migration background[1] are socially constructed by Italian professionals who work at schools and in social services with young people. We also investigated whether narratives told by interviewees are affected by the gender of the children they are referring to.
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Our article is based on interviews conducted in the context of the Horizon 2020 project, ‘Child-Up: Children Hybrid Integration: Learning Dialogue as a Way of Upgrading Policies of Participation’. This project investigated the opportunities of children with a migration background to actively exercise their agency to change their social and cultural conditions. While the project involved several groups of people, our Identities article analyzed interviews conducted with teachers, educators, social workers and mediators in three cities in northern Italy.

Blog post by Diditi Mitra, Brookdale Community College, USA

As I explore in my Identities article, ‘The socioeconomics of Sikh American identity’, semi structured interviews conducted with immigrant Sikh taxi drivers in New York City and with immigrant Sikh families show that socioeconomic differences are impactful in shaping the experiences and identities of non-white immigrants of the Sikh religious faith. The respondents of these interviews converged and diverged on their lived experiences and subsequently in terms of making meaning of themselves. While all the respondents converged on their encounter with racism, the specific form of those racist encounters was shaped by socioeconomic status.
 
The spaces occupied by the professional informants were typically suffused with colourblind racial ideology, making it challenging to identify it as such and as a matter of fact casting doubt on the professional respondents’ assessment of those encounters as racist. The taxi drivers, in contrast, reported routine and blatant experiences of racism from passengers, law enforcement and the taxi court judges. In my view, it was possible to remove the mask of liberalism, that usually conceals overt expressions of racism in professional workplaces, in dealings with non-white immigrant cab drivers whose work and social status ranked low in the social order. 

Blog post by Stephen Cho Suh, San Diego State University, USA
 
In April 2024, David Chang, head of the Momofuku food empire, came under fire when lawyers for his brand sent cease-and-desist letters to dozens of companies across the US. At issue was the apparent unauthorized use of ‘chili crunch’, a name that Momofuku was in the process of trademarking for one of its own chili oil products. Though Momofuku eventually pulled these requests, with Chang himself issuing a public apology, it was clear that a metaphorical line had been crossed. Chang, a long-time advocate if not key representative of the Asian American food scene, was roundly criticized by Asian American foodies and food entrepreneurs for doing the very things he frequently railed against – seemingly creating artificial barriers to entry for fledgling entrepreneurs while also policing the culinary boundaries of a dish or cuisine. To many, Chang had become the culinary bully that he had built his career claiming to despise.

It is easy to dismiss this short-lived Asian American food drama as a business decision gone temporarily awry or as the grumblings of a small but loud minority. But doing so would miss the broader cultural significance of this micro-event. We contend that what was at conflict here was not simply the overly complicated nature of trademark law, nor was it just about who gets to claim ownership of an ingredient or dish. No, the predicament here had to do with something that was far more fundamental – the questions of ‘What is Asian American food?’ and ‘Who does Asian American food belong to?’.

Blog post by Emaeyak Sylvanus, University of Nigeria, Nigeria
 
Historically, music has remained a critical unifying feature of the citizens in Nigeria's political processes, particularly during campaigns. Music has achieved this by transcending the many linguistic and ethnic barriers in modern Nigeria. The country’s February 2023 presidential election was no different with campaign songs as a medium through which political ideologies and identities were broadcast and reinforced. These memorable songs laden with cultural references served as a vehicle for political messaging that was both accessible and emotionally compelling.

Our Identities article, ‘Music and political identity salience in Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election’, delves into this phenomenon by exploring how Nigerians used music to signal and express both their political affiliations and national identity. In the analysis, we posit that music has the power to amplify political identity salience, especially when it reflects deeper cultural and socio-political values. This was evident in the 2023 presidential elections, where the campaign songs not only supported political candidates but also conveyed messages of hope, unity, and, at times, dissent.

Blog post by Rozemarijn Weyers, KU Leuven and University of Antwerp, Belgium

On the 22nd of November 2023, the party of far-right politician Geert Wilders was elected the largest in the Netherlands. His statement that 'the Netherlands will be returned to the Dutch' alludes to the question of who is considered Dutch and who is not, and what the role of whiteness is in the construction of Dutch identity? In my research, I look at such questions in the context of urban neighbourhood spaces. More specifically, I research how a distinction between 'us' and 'them', and more specifically, white Dutch identity and racialized otherness, are created through daily interactions in such spaces?
 
The case of Geert Wilders is only one example of how the relationship between whiteness and national identity is marked out. In the context of Europe, several studies show other ways of how national identities are entangled with, and shaped by, notions of race (see for instance Beaman 2019; Muller 2011; Clarke 2023; Garner 2012; Cretton 2018). What those studies have in common is that they argue that those national identities often exist in contexts that claim to be colour-blind and perceive whiteness as the norm.

Blog post by Christian Lamour, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research, Luxembourg

Late modernity in the European Union is characterized by the return of ‘hot nationalism’, with a growing number of citizens supporting radical right parties and leaders. These political entities and personnel have hammered out an electoral winning, ‘nation-first’ agenda, which is notably marketed as protecting the cultural identity and cohesion of a national people, jeopardized by alien threats.

This vivid return of national cultural identities in the agenda of European states has appeared at a time when relationships between EU member states have been remarkably peaceful for generations, whereas their main long-term heritage has been the reproduction of national conflicts, territorial gains and momentary stabilization of borders following treaties torn apart in subsequent wars. The cultural enemies defined by today’s EU radical right within specific nation states are not neighbouring nations, but communities, the identities of which are represented as external to the world of nations. This means the elites are characterized as Europeanized/globalized, whilst the non-European migrants are racialized as oriental/African entities replacing the European national identities with the support of the globalized elite.​

Blog post by Siow-Kian Tan, Xiamen University, Malaysia

Food has the incredible ability to bring people together, yet it can also stir up debates over its origins. Dishes like Laksa, Nasi Lemak, Bak Kut Teh (BKT), Hainanese Chicken Rice and other local favourites have been passionately claimed as national dishes by both Malaysians and Singaporeans.
 
This culinary dispute isn’t new. Back to 2009, Malaysia’s then-tourism minister, Ng Yen Yen, sparked controversy and patriotic fervour in both neighbouring countries by suggesting that Malaysian cuisine had been ‘hijacked’ by others. Each side adamantly defends dishes like nasi lemak, BKT and chilli crab as authentic and original, and criticizing the other of appropriating culinary heritage.
 
However, are such disputes meaningful and can a dish genuinely belong to a single nation? In 2023, Channel News Asia’s ‘On The Red Dot’ programme delved into these questions, interviewing chefs, hawkers and heritage experts to uncover the origins and stories behind iconic dishes like chili crab, BKT, nasi lemak and cendol. Hosted by Ming Tan, a chef and culinary consultant, this captivating series explores how dishes evolve and travel across borders.

Blog post by Ece Yoltay, Ahi Evran University, Turkey

My Identities article, ‘Queering trialectics among space, power, and the subject: spatial representations and practices of othered identities in Turkey’, is grounded in a critical analysis of the Foucaldian conceptualization of the relation between power and the subject. It does so by examining the construction of the concept of ‘supra-identity’ with the Repressive and Ideological State Apparatus in Turkey. Since the Republic of Turkey was established as a nation-state in a predominantly Muslim society, various legal and social regulations determining state-citizen relationships have been shaped in its political history (single-party period 1923-1946, multi-party period 1946-2018, Presidential system 2018-present). While each government in this history produces its own political interpretation of the 'ideal' citizen, the emphasis on Turkish and Muslim identities, particularly within the heteronormative social structure associated with Islam, has been common value for defining ‘supra-identity’. In Turkey's multicultural society, homogenizing differences over these identity values of the 'majority' has been deemed necessary for the 'unity of the state'.

Blog post by Fatima Rajina, De Montfort University, UK

When we think about Muslim clothing, often our immediate thoughts turn to Muslim women and their sartorial choices. Much of this has been framed via the media because of its incessant coverage, focusing on many European countries and their legislation monitoring Muslim women's clothing choices. This very discussion is in the press currently, as France has banned wearing the abaya in schools for young Muslim girls. It is precisely this framing that made me think about where Muslim men fit into this equation. How do Muslim men choose what they wear in public? What informs their decisions?
 
As a result, in my Identities article, 'British Muslim men and clothes: the role of stigma and the political (re)configurations around sartorial choices', I diverted from the fixation on Muslim women and interrogated the political imagination and (re)configuration of dress practices among British Bangladeshi Muslim men. I selected three attires, the lungi, the funjabi and the thobe, because of what they represent for Bangladeshis. The lungi and funjabi, although associated with Bangladeshis, carry different meanings in the diaspora than in Bangladesh. I explore how these two garments are worn in the UK and how they (re)appear in public. In contrast, the thobe projects an Islamic universalism not afforded to the first two garbs and carries a different form of visibility. I focus on how British Bangladeshis of varying age groups interact with different forms of attire and what it means for their identity negotiation in the public sphere.

Blog post by Vadricka Etienne, University of Nevada, Reno, USA

Each year, my immigrant father embarks on a summer trip to Haiti. A lump jumps into my throat as he prepares for his journey. He’s excited to return home, but I fear for his safety. This fear grows yearly, and my anxiety spikes whenever he doesn’t answer the phone. My thoughts race to the worst-case scenarios, mainly because we’ve discussed what to do if he was kidnapped. While the rising gang violence demanded that he skip his trip last year, he would not miss another. I understand because he is at peace when in Haiti. But I find myself taking deeper breaths only when he lands in Miami, making his way home.

​During the summer, I consumed conflicting media reports. Mainstream media catastrophized the gang terror, while Haitian content creators shared the mundane, such as dinners out on the town, demonstrating that the violence was not everywhere in the county. These contradictions encapsulate how the children of immigrants could have a fragile relationship with their parents’ birthplace as they often experience the country through the lens of others, very rarely their own. 

Blog post by Les Back, University of Glasgow, UK
 
Howard S Becker’s life provides the archetype for the argument developed in my published Identities article, ‘What sociologists learn from music: identity, music-making, and the sociological imagination’. Its completion coincided with the sad news of his death on 16th August 2023 at his home in San Francisco aged 95. In a way, my Identities article is an homage to one of the greatest sociological minds of our time, and a pretty decent piano player too. The study, based on interviews from 29 contemporary sociologists, found that musical life offers sociologists an interpretive device for understanding society or practical form of insight. This is not only confined to the artful sociology at the more humanities end of the disciplinary spectrum, but can be found even amongst scholars who see sociology as a science. 

Blog post by Hamdullah Baycar, University of Exeter, UK

‘It kind of makes me feel like Batman or Superman. You can say the things you want to say with your own voice and your own style’, said Malcolm Bidali, a Kenyan security guard employed in Qatar, regarding his activism about labour conditions on social media. His activism led to his detention in 2021. The incident gained significant public attention, and 240 Qatar Foundation students, alums, faculty and staff signed a petition asking for his release.
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Two days after the petition, even Qatar's state-owned media, Al Jazeera, was involved in the debate and ran with the headline, ‘Concerns over Qatar's arrest of a Kenyan security guard’. Thus, the digital sphere, which initially caused his detention, ultimately became the tool that freed him. Although Bidali's case cannot be considered representative of the entire Gulf region and is not directly related to the UAE, it does demonstrate the power of social media and the digital sphere, even in supposedly autocratic states.

What does a Thai person look like? How do expectations about citizenship create an ethicized cultural phenotype? In our Identities article, ‘Turbaned northern Thai-ness: selective transnationalism, situational ethnicity and local cultural intimacy among Chiang Mai Punjabis’, we explore family histories, selective transnationalism and regional Lanna identities among Thai citizens with Punjabi heritage and selective cultural identity. This article argues that Punjabi Thais maintain their networks and cultural connections with a historic ancestral homeland, but they also cultivate forms of local cultural intimacy in ways which leapfrog the linguistic and cultural hegemony of Thai national identity. In other words, despite their non-Thai appearance, these Punjabi Thais have deeply local cultural knowledge, speak Northern Thai language fluently and have Northern Thai cultural sensibilities. 

In our Identities article, ‘I became a Taiwanese after I left Taiwan’: identity shift among young immigrants in the United States’, we seek to engage with transnationalism literature, which argues that migrants continue to remain concerned with their origin country. As our case study shows, successful assimilation into the host country does not mean migrants will relinquish their previous attachment. In fact, fresh experiences abroad might actually activate and intensify their homeland identity. Our study documents unpleasant contacts with people coming from People’s Republic of China (PRC) and personal experiences with the immigration rules that favour Taiwanese. Our interviewees also share the disenchanting discovery that America was actually lagging behind Taiwan in terms of healthcare, public transportation and recycling, which encourages these young migrants to cherish heir Taiwanese identity. In short, being Taiwanese is something one can take pride of, and therefore, our interviewees explained they do not want to be viewed by people from PRC as their 'compatriots’ or identified as ‘Chinese’ by their American friends.

In 2018, the research department of Awel, a Flemish civil society organization, published a report on the impact of the late terrorist attacks in Europe on the identity formation of minority youth. The report, based on testimonials, revealed that some Muslim children try to hide their ethno-religious background out of fear of being verbally attacked. Some even wish to ‘unbecome’ Moroccan or Muslim to respond to Islamophobia.
 
The largest ethnic minority group in Belgium originates from Morocco. This primarily Muslim group is indeed strongly stigmatized, even more so since 9/11. It is argued that terrorist attacks increase Islamophobic or anti-Muslim sentiments, which hence also impacts the well-being of Muslim children living in Flanders. The findings of the research report nevertheless did not receive as much public and political attention as deserved. Yet, ethnic minority citizens’ identity formation has long been a subject of political interest, especially since many politicians across the spectrum propose that minorities, and particularly Muslims, do not identify as Belgian. 

‘Identity’ is probably amongst the most circulated terms in the academy and beyond. However, a critical reflection on the use of this term in the context of cross-cultural fictional narratives could reveal a major issue. Rather than representing a genuine state of human condition, the term has become a strategic means used by some minority writers to boost readership for their writings.

Given the hierarchies of the world literary system consisting of influential agents such as critics, publishers and marketing expectations, certain languages, regions, styles and poetics are privileged over others. The world literary system thus mirrors the ‘neo-imperial contours of global capitalism’, dominated by multinational publishing conglomerates with powerhouses in London and New York.
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My Identities article, ‘We have much identity’: contesting the claimed hybrid identity in Faqir’s My Name is Salma and Ahdaf Soueif’s In the Eye of the Sun’, examines how some Arab Anglophone women writers manipulate identity constructions and essentialise their hybrid identities as a strategy to boost readership and market values for their works. Through a close reading of Fadia Faqir’s My Name is Salma and Ahdaf Soueif’s In the Eye of the Sun, the article reverses the gaze on the societies that these texts claim to reveal.