Doing ethnicity: Ethnic wordplay amongst youths

Abstract

The article illustrates ethnicity as a social construction by highlighting how students use ethnically based concepts to categorize each other as well as the Other. Although the concepts have ethnic connotations, they are mainly concerned with matters of style and behaviour. They are therefore open, fluid and inclusive because the students can alternate between the categories. The analyses draw on 1 year of fieldwork in two eighth grade classes in which all students have experience of migration within their families.

To Be Both (and More): Immigration and Identity Multiplicity

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Polite exclusion: high-performing immigrant students experience of peer exclusion

“…On the contrary, questions about identities have become increasingly important over time (Hall 2000). Identification is constructed through ambivalence and differentiating between that which one is and that which is the other, when it comes to categories such as ethnicity, nationality, gender or class; to say 'I am this, but not that' (Hall 2000, 147;Wiltgren 2017). All individuals belong to several social collectives, sometimes referred to as multiple identities.…”

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