The construction of racial and ethnic identity of Balkan immigrants to the United States: A narrative analysis

This study explores the ways Balkan immigrants in the United States constructed their racial and ethnic identity while living in the Balkans, and how these identities have become re-constructed upon immigrants' adaptation in the new country. The study has two goals: to narrow the theoretical gap that surrounds the field of contemporary European immigration to the United States, and to explore the impact of new immigrants' sense of racial and ethnic identity on the complex reality of North American multiculturalism. The theoretical contribution of this study resonates with a mission of critical pedagogy, viewed as a contextual and political practice that has the power to enable people not only to examine their identities, but also to consider their own role in creating, sustaining, and resisting power relations, inequality, and social injustice. Aiming at deeper understanding of a small group of people, the narrative analysis of immigrants' stories was employed. Thirteen immigrants who now reside in the Chicago metropolitan area were interviewed. Immigrants' narratives revealed that racial and ethnic identity is fluid, multi-layered, and contradictory, contingent upon history and geography, as well as various aspects of social life: urban and rural origin, educational level and social mobility, cultural practices, sets of beliefs, webs of family ties and friendships. The identity markers such as race and immigration status grant the Balkan immigrants multiple choices. Depending on the social issue they want to avoid or embrace, immigrants could utilize either their marginality which stems from their foreign status, or their dominance caused by white supremacy. Thus, race could be avoided, unnamed, or transformed, but remains an inescapable part of white immigrants' life in the United States. While the outcome of the contemporary wave of immigration from the Balkans is difficult to predict, several factors indicate immigrants' willingness to incorporate white mainstream American values. Therefore, assimilation is not necessarily an oppressive force, since immigrants are not passive subjects upon whom assimilation is imposed or simply happens; they can choose the aspects of the host society they wish to embrace for their own advancement.