Performative politics: South Asian children’s identities and political agency

Abstract

This article explores the cultural, youthful, and embodied acts of subject-making of South Asian immigrant teens growing up in a post 9/11 New York City, wherein they experience Islamophobia in their neighborhoods and schools. I argue that these acts of subject-making, situated in particular sociopolitical contexts, and made evident in multiple in-between sites of an after-school center, street corners, and online forums, can be read as performative politics of youth, and offer insights into the political agency of young people.

Childhood, Youth, and Identity: A Roundtable Conversation from the Global South

“…In my work, I engage with questions about South Asian immigrant teenagers' identities and political geographies, at a time when a new racialized identity-of the South Asian, Arab, and Muslim-had emerged as a result of the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in the US (Dar, 2018). What it meant to be South Asian, American, young, and working class was bound to be distinct for that generation because widespread Islamophobia and hate crimes were part of their daily geographies.…”