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Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity,...
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Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism

A special issue of Genealogy (ISSN 2313-5778).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 December 2021) | Viewed by 119119

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Dan Rodriguez-Garcia

E-Mail Website1 Website2 Website3 Website4
Guest Editor
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), 08193 Bellaterra, Spain
Interests: migration; interethnic relations; management of immigration and diversity; social inclusion; ethnicity and race; racism; mixedness (mixed families and descendants); multiracial and multiethnic identities; methodology in the social sciences

Special Issue Information

Dear colleagues,

This Special Issue of Genealogy invites essays on the topic of “Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism.”

The field of mixed-race studies has experienced an incredible expansion since the pivotal work of Paul Spickard (1989) and Maria Root (1992, 1995). In the last three decades, we have witnessed numerous publications in this area of study, including edited collections and special issues, which have advanced our knowledge of “mixedness,” an encompassing concept that refers to mixed unions, families, and individuals across national, ethnocultural, racial, religious, and class boundaries as well as to the sociocultural processes involved (Rodríguez-García 2015). As the super-diversification of societies continues, the ever-growing research interest in mixedness can be attributed to scholars’ understanding that such an area of study both reveals existing social boundaries and shows how societies are being transformed. Mixedness can be understood to have a transformative potential in the sense that it disturbs, contests, and may reinvent social norms and established identity categories.

While intermarriage is on the rise and multiracial and multiethnic populations continue to grow worldwide, there are still many areas in which our knowledge of mixedness is limited or nascent. This Special Issue aims to expand our understanding of this complex phenomenon by exploring a variety of under-researched issues in the field, by seeking out research on untrodden topics and implications, and by employing innovative analytical approaches.

This Special Issue is intended to be broad in scope and welcomes innovative contributions across disciplines in the social sciences that may be theoretical or empirically based and that address—but are not limited to—one or more of the following topics:

  • New conceptualizations of mixedness, intermarriage, and multiracialism;
  • Mixedness beyond race: ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, class, micro-locations;
  • Intersectional analyses of mixedness;
  • New methods and mixed methods applied to the study of mixedness;
  • Mixedness and statistics: the challenge of counting and categorizing intermarriage and mixed people;
  • Comparative (inter-local/international/inter-continental) analyses of mixedness, including outside European and English-speaking settings;
  • Decentering and decolonizing mixedness: multiracial and multiethnic identity formations outside of white-centric constructions;
  • Mixedness in super-diverse contexts;
  • New forms of cosmopolitanism and creolization;
  • Mixedness and the reconceptualization of majority/minority meanings (reshaping the mainstream);
  • Mixedness in highly segmented societies;
  • Mixedness and religion: interfaith couples, families, and individuals;
  • Mixedness, racialization, color blindness, and post-racialism;
  • Mixedness and colorism: intraracial discrimination and horizontal hostility;
  • Multiracial identifications for understanding racial formation;
  • Ethnoracialism: multiracialism and multiethnicity as different or complementary processes;
  • Mixedness, discrimination, and resilience/agency;
  • Mixedness and whiteness (white privilege, white identities);
  • Mixed-race privilege;
  • Mixedness and (in)visibility;
  • Contextual, multiform, translocational, malleable and shifting mixed identities: fixities and fluidities;
  • Kinning in mixed families: raising and socializing multiracial and multiethnic children; inter-generational changes and continuities;
  • Multiracial parents of multiracial children;
  • Queer, LGBTQ+, same-sex, and transgender interracial and interethnic unions/families;
  • Mixed-race masculinities;
  • Mixedness and indigenous groups;
  • Mixedness involving national ethnic minorities;
  • Transracial adoption;
  • Mixedness and the impact of COVID-19 (e.g., transnational reconfigurations, discrimination);
  • Mixedness and cyberspace (i.e., online identity narratives, dating preferences, and relationships across race and ethnicity);
  • Bridging the research-policy divide: working on mixedness with policymakers and third-sector practitioners.

This Special Issue is also interested in contributions that use novel analytical perspectives and methodologies, whether quantitative or qualitative or a combination of both.

References

Rodríguez-García, D., ed. 2015. Intermarriage and Integration Revisited: International Experiences and Cross-disciplinary Approaches. Special Issue of The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 662 (1).
Root, M. 1992. Racially Mixed People in America. London: Sage.
Root, M. 1995. The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier. London: Sage.
Spickard, P. 1989. Mixed Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in Twentieth-Century America. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.


We request that prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 250 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Genealogy Editorial Office ([email protected]) by May 31, 2021. Abstracts will be reviewed by Genealogy and the guest editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. For abstracts that are accepted, full manuscripts will later undergo a double-blind peer review.

This is a journal that provides free access to all readers. For authors without funding who contribute an article to this Special Issue and who have concerns about the one-time article processing charge (APC), the journal may consider waiving or reducing the fee on a case-by-case basis.

Prof. Dr. Dan Rodriguez-Garcia
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Mixedness
  • Intermarriage
  • Mixed families
  • Multiracialism
  • Multiethnicity
  • Colorism
  • Race
  • Ethnicity
  • Multiracial categorization
  • Mixed race studies
  • Post-racialism
  • Whiteness
  • Mixed-race privilege
  • Horizontal hostility
  • Queer studies
  • Intersectional analyses
  • Mixed methods

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Published Papers (16 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 2382 KiB  
Article
Mixedness and Intersectionality: The Use of Relief Maps to Understand the Experiences of Multiracial Women of African Descent in Spain
by Teresa Habimana-Jordana and Dan Rodríguez-García
Genealogy 2023, 7(1), 6; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7010006 - 3 Jan 2023
Viewed by 2964
Abstract
This article analyzes the experiences of multiracial women of African descent in Catalonia, Spain—looking at their identity processes, social relations, experiences of racialization and discrimination, and strategies of resistance—using a novel qualitative research method called “Relief Maps,” a very useful tool for the [...] Read more.
This article analyzes the experiences of multiracial women of African descent in Catalonia, Spain—looking at their identity processes, social relations, experiences of racialization and discrimination, and strategies of resistance—using a novel qualitative research method called “Relief Maps,” a very useful tool for the study of social inequalities from an intersectional and multilocational perspective. Relief Maps are a data collection tool and a means of visualizing and analyzing data—providing a graphical representation of interviewee narratives that discuss processes of social inclusion and exclusion. The maps represent three dimensions of experience: (1) psychological (indicating the respondent’s level of discomfort or well-being); (2) geographical (including at least five physical or experiential locations: e.g., home, street, work, school); and (3) social (examining seven social variables or aspects of identity: i.e., gender, ethnicity/skin color, age, sexual orientation, social class, physical appearance, and religion). In this way, the maps show where greater or lesser well-being or discomfort is experienced by the respondent based on each aspect of identity, thus indicating personal places of oppression, places of controversial intersections, neutral places, and places of relief. We argue that this supplementary investigative technique is highly relevant to research in the social sciences, particularly in the field of mixed-race, critical race, and ethnic studies, as it provides an intersectional, reflective, nuanced, and contextual lens for understanding complex social phenomena, leading to information of greater analytical strength. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism)
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21 pages, 1914 KiB  
Article
What Motivates Mixed Heritage People to Assert Their Ancestries?
by Miri Song and Carolyn Liebler
Genealogy 2022, 6(3), 61; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6030061 - 5 Jul 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3386
Abstract
Research on mixed heritage people has often focused on their reported race(s) and what these self-reports may reveal about their racial leanings. In the U.S., people are also asked: “What is this person’s ancestry or ethnic origin?” as a census fill-in-the-blank question. Existing [...] Read more.
Research on mixed heritage people has often focused on their reported race(s) and what these self-reports may reveal about their racial leanings. In the U.S., people are also asked: “What is this person’s ancestry or ethnic origin?” as a census fill-in-the-blank question. Existing research has analyzed the census data on race and ancestry and has uncovered meanings about ethnicity among White Americans, but little is known about the importance of ancestry in the case of mixed heritage people. In this paper, we draw on our interviews with 68 American-Indian-White, Black-White, and Asian-White mixed heritage people in the U.S. Given that many mixed heritage people’s connections with their disparate ancestries can be hindered by generational distance, lack of cultural contact and exposure, and social rejection, what motivates mixed heritage people to report their disparate ancestries, and how do their ancestry claims relate to their racial identities? How may the differential histories and racialization of groups in the U.S. shape mixed heritage people’s ability and inclination to assert either their White or minority ancestries? We found that mixed heritage individuals who were motivated to assert their ancestry claims did so for two main reasons: First, by claiming a specific ancestry (or ancestries), participants wished to assert a more individualistic sense of self than was typically allowed, given their racial treatment based upon their racial appearance; this could be especially meaningful if those individuals felt a mismatch between their racial assignment by others and their sense of self. Second, a claim to a specific ancestry was a way for individuals to forge connections with family, relatives, or an ancestry group that had not existed before. Overall, while most of our mixed heritage participants reported details of their European ancestries, it was their Black, American Indian, or Asian ancestries that were deemed to be most salient and/or meaningful to who they were. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism)
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15 pages, 278 KiB  
Article
New Routes to Mixed “Roots”
by Kimberly DaCosta
Genealogy 2022, 6(3), 60; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6030060 - 1 Jul 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2354
Abstract
Developments in reproductive (e.g., assisted reproduction, surrogacy) and genetic technologies (commercial DNA ancestry testing) have opened new routes to mixedness that disrupt the relationship between multiracialism and family. Discussions of racial mixedness, both academic and lay, tend to refer to persons born to [...] Read more.
Developments in reproductive (e.g., assisted reproduction, surrogacy) and genetic technologies (commercial DNA ancestry testing) have opened new routes to mixedness that disrupt the relationship between multiracialism and family. Discussions of racial mixedness, both academic and lay, tend to refer to persons born to parents of different racialized ancestry. Multiracialism is also understood as an outcome of extended generational descent—a family lineage comprised of ancestors of varied “races”. Both modes of mixed subjectivity rely on a notion of race as transmitted through sexual reproduction, and our study of them has often focused on the implications of this boundary crossing for families. These routes to mixedness imply a degree of intimacy and “knownness” between partners, with implications for the broader web of relationships into which one is born or marries. Assisted reproduction allows for the intentional creation of mixed-race babies outside of sexual reproduction and relationship. These technologies make possible mixed race by design, in which one can choose an egg or sperm donor on the basis of their racial difference, without knowing the donor beyond a set of descriptive characteristics. Commercial DNA testing produces another route to mixedness—mixed by revelation—in which previously unknown mixed ancestry is revealed through genetic testing. Ancestry tests, however, deal in estimations of biogenetic markers, rather than specific persons. To varying degrees, these newer routes to mixedness reconfigure the nexus of biogenetic substance and kinship long foregrounded in American notions of mixedness, expand the contours of mixed-race subjectivity, and reshape notions of interracial relatedness. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism)
14 pages, 292 KiB  
Article
Racial Illiteracies and Whiteness: Exploring Black Mixed-Race Narrations of Race in the Family
by Karis Campion and Chantelle Jessica Lewis
Genealogy 2022, 6(3), 58; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6030058 - 22 Jun 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3298
Abstract
Drawing upon fifty-five interviews with Black mixed-race people located in Britain’s second-largest city, Birmingham, and a nearby satellite town, Bromsgrove, this article critically explores how race, identity, and whiteness, are negotiated in mixed-race families. Whilst existing studies tend to centre upon the experiences [...] Read more.
Drawing upon fifty-five interviews with Black mixed-race people located in Britain’s second-largest city, Birmingham, and a nearby satellite town, Bromsgrove, this article critically explores how race, identity, and whiteness, are negotiated in mixed-race families. Whilst existing studies tend to centre upon the experiences of white parents raising their children, in this article, we foreground Black mixed-race perspectives of familial practices. Whiteness can often function as an ever-present non-presence in explorations of mixed identities. We utilise concepts such as white fragility, white complicity and the white gaze to make whiteness visible and to address how racial illiteracies can manifest within everyday family settings. In doing so, we suggest that white family members can, on occasion, participate in processes of white domination even in the smallest everyday acts and conversations that deny, avoid, dismiss and, in some cases, even perpetuate racism. By identifying these moments in Black mixed-race lives, we complicate some of the studies that document the racial literacies of white parents and explore how mistakes are made. We suggest that these encounters can create moments of disjuncture in familial settings that are characterised by a complex layer of love, intimacy and racial difference. By bringing these issues to the fore, we centre the emotional labour it can take on the part of Black mixed-race people to make sense of and resist these experiences whilst simultaneously maintaining closeness within familial relationships. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism)
24 pages, 311 KiB  
Article
Regimes beyond the One-Drop Rule: New Models of Multiracial Identity
by Sarah Iverson, Ann Morning, Aliya Saperstein and Janet Xu
Genealogy 2022, 6(2), 57; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6020057 - 20 Jun 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 4801
Abstract
The racial classification of mixed-race people has often been presumed to follow hypo- or hyperdescent rules, where they were assigned to either their lower- or higher-status monoracial ancestor group. This simple framework, however, does not capture actual patterns of self-identification in contemporary societies [...] Read more.
The racial classification of mixed-race people has often been presumed to follow hypo- or hyperdescent rules, where they were assigned to either their lower- or higher-status monoracial ancestor group. This simple framework, however, does not capture actual patterns of self-identification in contemporary societies with multiple racialized groups and numerous mixed-race combinations. Elaborating on previous concepts of multiracial classification regimes, we argue that two other theoretical models must be incorporated to describe and understand mixed-race identification today. One is “co-descent”, where multiracial individuals need not align with one single race or another, but rather be identified with or demonstrate characteristics that are a blend of their parental or ancestral races. The other is the “dominance” framework, a modern extension of the “one-drop” notion that posits that monoracial ancestries fall along a spectrum where some—the “supercessive”—are more likely to dominate mixed-race categorization, and others—the “recessive”—are likely to be dominated. Drawing on the Pew Research Center’s 2015 Survey of Multiracial Adults, we find declining evidence of hypo- and hyperdescent at work in the United States today, some support for a dominance structure that upends conventional expectations about a Black one-drop rule, and a rising regime of co-descent. In addition, we explore how regimes of mixed-race classification vary by racial ancestry combination, gender, generation of multiraciality, and the time period in which multiracial respondents or their mixed-race ancestors were born. These findings show that younger, first-generation multiracial Americans, especially those of partial Asian or Hispanic descent, have left hypo- and hyperdescent regimes behind—unlike other young people today whose mixed-race ancestry stems from further back in their family tree. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism)
21 pages, 5123 KiB  
Article
#Wasian Check: Remixing ‘Asian + White’ Multiraciality on TikTok
by Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain
Genealogy 2022, 6(2), 55; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6020055 - 15 Jun 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 55093
Abstract
TikTok is the fastest growing short video application and immensely popular with younger generations to express their thoughts, ideas, and most relevant to this issue, their identities including mixed-race identity. This paper asks: How did young mixed-race people choose to express their identity [...] Read more.
TikTok is the fastest growing short video application and immensely popular with younger generations to express their thoughts, ideas, and most relevant to this issue, their identities including mixed-race identity. This paper asks: How did young mixed-race people choose to express their identity on TikTok in the #wasian trend and how does the app shape these mixed-race identity expressions? The answer lies in how the emotional affordances of TikTok app itself shape how it is used by creators in mimicking and mimetic ways and how people respond, through video and text. The article argues that the #wasian trends reinforce the racial and genealogical legacy of mixedness, often through showing parents or blood relatives, which is in creative tension with simultaneously remixing and asserting racial multiplicity. The claim to wasianess moves the private sphere (bedroom culture, family and notions of race) into the public and in so doing creates new potentialities for the creation of a global #wasian community on TikTok. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism)
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16 pages, 305 KiB  
Article
Asian-White Mixed Identity after COVID-19: Racist Racial Projects and the Effects on Asian Multiraciality
by Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl, Erica Chito Childs and Stephanie Laudone
Genealogy 2022, 6(2), 53; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6020053 - 15 Jun 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 5879
Abstract
With the onset of the Coronavirus and racist statements about the origins of COVID-19 in 9 China there has been a surge in anti-Asian discrimination in the United States. The U.S. case is worthy of special focus because of former President Trump’s explicit [...] Read more.
With the onset of the Coronavirus and racist statements about the origins of COVID-19 in 9 China there has been a surge in anti-Asian discrimination in the United States. The U.S. case is worthy of special focus because of former President Trump’s explicit racist rhetoric, referring to the 11 Coronavirus as the “China virus” and “Kung-flu”. This rise in anti-Asian discrimination has led to 12 a heightened awareness of racism against Asians and a corollary increase in AAPI activism. Based 13 on survey and in-depth interview data with Asian-White multiracials, we examine how recent 14 spikes in anti-Asian hate has shifted Asian-White multiracials to have a more heightened awareness 15 of racism and a shift in their racial consciousness. We theorize how multiracials intermediary sta-16 tus on the racial hierarchy can be radically shifted at any moment in relation to emerging racist 17 racial projects, which has broader implications for the status of mixed people globally. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism)
23 pages, 647 KiB  
Article
Do Conceptualisations of ‘Mixed Race’, ‘Interracial Unions’, and Race’s ‘Centrality to Understandings of Racism’ Challenge the UK’s Official Categorisation by Ethnic Group?
by Peter J. Aspinall
Genealogy 2022, 6(2), 52; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6020052 - 13 Jun 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3096
Abstract
A focus on ‘mixed race’ and mixedness in Britain has revived a debate around the central question of whether the decennial census and other official data collections should be capturing ‘race’ rather than ethnic group and producing ‘racial’ outputs. The British practice may [...] Read more.
A focus on ‘mixed race’ and mixedness in Britain has revived a debate around the central question of whether the decennial census and other official data collections should be capturing ‘race’ rather than ethnic group and producing ‘racial’ outputs. The British practice may seem out of step by some commentators, given that ‘mixed race’ is the term of choice amongst those it describes, and given scholarly interest in interracial unions. Moreover, the resurgence of interest in ‘race’ and racisms in the context of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement and concern over the down-playing in a UK Government-commissioned report of the role of structural racism has enlivened the debate. However, this paper argues against a shift to ‘race’ in official data collection and for continued use of the conceptually preferable ‘ethnic group’ in the census question title, the section label ‘mixed/multiple ethnic groups’, and the ongoing provision of data on unions at the pan-ethnic and granular levels. A measure of socially constructed ‘race’ is already available in all but name in the pan-ethnic section labels (White, Asian, Black, Mixed, and Other) and the tick boxes under the ‘mixed/multiple’ heading. Ethnic group has been the conceptual basis of the question since the field trials for the 1991 Census, and its position has been strengthened by the increasing granularity of the categorisation (19 categories in the 2021 England and Wales Census) and by substantial distributed free-text provision that underpins the question’s context of self-identification. The wider understanding of ‘race’ identifications invokes ascription, imposition, and social categorisation rather than self-identification and subscription. There is also evidence of the unacceptability of ‘race’ in the context of the census amongst the wider society. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism)
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17 pages, 540 KiB  
Article
Shape Shifting: Toward a Theory of Racial Change
by Paul Spickard
Genealogy 2022, 6(2), 48; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6020048 - 26 May 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 4650
Abstract
We are accustomed to thinking of identities—racial, ethnic, often religious—as if they were permanent, unalterable features of individuals and groups. The theory enunciated here is directed to illumine individuals and groups whose lives are more complicated than that. Such people are shape shifters. [...] Read more.
We are accustomed to thinking of identities—racial, ethnic, often religious—as if they were permanent, unalterable features of individuals and groups. The theory enunciated here is directed to illumine individuals and groups whose lives are more complicated than that. Such people are shape shifters. At different times in their lives, or over generations in their families and communities, their identities have changed from one group to another. This article sets out an agenda for understanding the phenomenon of racial or other primary identity change. It seeks to understand what kinds of circumstances produce racial change, what sorts of people and groups are likely to change identities, what processes facilitate identity change, and what kinds of work that change is doing. It describes three major intertwined processes at work. Sometimes it is mainly a matter of changes in context and the menu of identities that are available. Sometimes changes in identity are imposed by governments, by institutions, or by society at large. And sometimes it is an individual’s, a family’s, or an entire ethnic group’s choice to make a change. The complexity and contingency of these processes may tend to diminish our commitment to the very idea of social inquiry as science. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism)
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17 pages, 315 KiB  
Article
Homestay, Sleepover, and Commensality: Three Intimate Methods in the Study of “Mixed” Families
by Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot
Genealogy 2022, 6(2), 34; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6020034 - 29 Apr 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2923
Abstract
Scholars most often adopt qualitative data-gathering methods, notably interviews, to access the lifeworld of “mixed” families. Nonetheless, when research questions require vivid details about their lives, other data-collection techniques may be needed. “Intimate” research methods, characterised by proximate contacts and interactions with “mixed” [...] Read more.
Scholars most often adopt qualitative data-gathering methods, notably interviews, to access the lifeworld of “mixed” families. Nonetheless, when research questions require vivid details about their lives, other data-collection techniques may be needed. “Intimate” research methods, characterised by proximate contacts and interactions with “mixed” couples and their families, appear particularly useful in this regard. Drawing from ethnographic studies of mixed families of Filipino and Thai migrant women in Belgium and The Netherlands, the present paper unveils the heuristic value of three intimate methods—homestays, sleepovers, and commensality—in perceiving the realities of these women’s couple and family lives. Homestays and sleepovers allow an in-depth understanding of ways of life within homes, interpersonal interactions, and their intricacies. Commensality (i.e., eating together) offers “snapshots” of the lives of mixed families, providing insights complementary to other methods such as interviews. Hence, the three intimate methods explored in this paper are social sites in which one can view details, otherwise invisible or unspoken, of the lives of mixed families, ranging from power dynamics to intergenerational relations, from the family’s social class status and cross-border social ties to emotional situations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism)
13 pages, 272 KiB  
Article
The Complexities of Mixed Families: Transracial Adoption as a Humanitarian Project
by Devon Goss
Genealogy 2022, 6(2), 33; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6020033 - 29 Apr 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 7576
Abstract
Along with other types of racially mixed families, families built through transracial adoption in the United States have solidified as an increasingly recognized family form. Along with this increasing acknowledgement, transracial families must also contend with narratives that formulate transracial adoption as an [...] Read more.
Along with other types of racially mixed families, families built through transracial adoption in the United States have solidified as an increasingly recognized family form. Along with this increasing acknowledgement, transracial families must also contend with narratives that formulate transracial adoption as an act of humanitarianism on the one hand and as a replication of systemic racism and colonialism on the other. This article explores how members of transracial families respond to these contradictory narratives through interviews with 30 transracial adoptees and their white siblings. Their experiences highlight three responses that transracial family members have regarding the idea of their families being classified as a humanitarian project: recreating transracial adoption as humanitarianism within their own lives, reclaiming their identity and family as separate from humanitarianism, and resisting the humanitarian aspects of transracial adoption altogether. Specifically, this study adds nuance to the question of how mixed families navigate the enduring power of humanitarianism within their own lives. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism)
12 pages, 279 KiB  
Article
Clinical Sociology and Mixedness: Towards Applying Critical Mixed Race Theory in Everyday Life
by Zarine L. Rocha
Genealogy 2022, 6(2), 32; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6020032 - 29 Apr 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3766
Abstract
Research on mixed racial and ethnic identities has developed rapidly over the past decades, increasing in theoretical scope and depth, and exploring mixedness across a growing range of national and social contexts. Recent research has highlighted the huge variations and shifts in conceptions [...] Read more.
Research on mixed racial and ethnic identities has developed rapidly over the past decades, increasing in theoretical scope and depth, and exploring mixedness across a growing range of national and social contexts. Recent research has highlighted the huge variations and shifts in conceptions of mixedness around the world, and the different pathways to understanding what it means to be mixed through migration, development, postcolonialism and different forms of nation-building. This paper seeks to connect theory to practice, approaching mixedness through the lens of clinical sociology, applying sociological theory on the ground and exploring the utility of critical mixed race studies in everyday life. Clinical sociology as a practice is first outlined, juxtaposed against the development in theorizing around mixed racial and ethnic identities on an international level. The paper then looks at some possibilities for practical impact: by acknowledging the complexity of mixedness and everyday life, research on mixed identities can go beyond the development of theory and case description, with applied and clinical impacts ranging from the level of the individual to the level of the state. Research on mixedness worldwide illustrates the diversity inherent within ideas of mixing, and the micro, meso and macro applications and potential outcomes of such theories. This paper draws on new and shifting conceptions of mixedness, emphasizing that the sociology of mixedness can have considerable value in effecting positive social change: positioning the (mixed) individual within the (mixed) society and allowing sociology to become action. The development and use of theories around mixedness emphasize the importance of clinical sociology as a practice: a reason for theory, connecting the abstract to the everyday. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism)
15 pages, 309 KiB  
Article
What Non-White Kids Do to White Parents: Whiteness and Secondary Socialization in the Case of White Parents of Mixed-Race and Internationally Adopted Children in France
by Solène Brun
Genealogy 2022, 6(2), 31; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6020031 - 22 Apr 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3521
Abstract
International adoptions have rarely been studied from the angle of racial mixedness in France, as opposed to the way the adoption debate is shaped in the United States and the United Kingdom. However, a large majority of adopted children in France come from [...] Read more.
International adoptions have rarely been studied from the angle of racial mixedness in France, as opposed to the way the adoption debate is shaped in the United States and the United Kingdom. However, a large majority of adopted children in France come from countries colonized by Europe in the past, and are very likely to be racialized as non-white. Adoptive parents, for their part, belong overwhelmingly to the majority population, racialized as white. As such, adoptive families usually involve, like families formed by mixed-race couples, white parents raising non-white kids. These two types of families can thus provide valuable insights on racial boundaries and how they are negotiated at the microsociological level. Moreover, as whiteness is generally characterized by invisibility and unspeakability, white parents of non-white children occupy a singular and heuristic position. They also experience an atypical whiteness: the norm of intrafamilial racial homogeneity being disrupted in their families, they experience racial alterity in a very intimate way—inaccessible to most whites. Drawing upon an ethnographic study conducted between 2015 and 2017, this article explores what racial mixedness does to the whiteness of white parents raising non-white kids in the French colorblind context. Investigating the different ways their whiteness is not only rendered unusually visible, but also questioned, reshaped, and—partially—disrupted, the article considers the socializing power of racial mixedness. As such, it considers parents not only as socializing agents but also as (re)socialized individuals, arguing that parenthood is a site of racial socialization. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism)
17 pages, 352 KiB  
Article
Changing from Visibility to Invisibility—An Intersectional Perspective on Mixedness in Switzerland and Morocco
by Gwendolyn Gilliéron
Genealogy 2022, 6(2), 30; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6020030 - 20 Apr 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3013
Abstract
In the context of intermarriage, mixedness can take different forms. Most often, it refers to a mix of class, religion, nationality, ethnicity or ‘race’ in a couple. In this article, I go beyond a separate analysis of categories, analyzing the interrelation of these [...] Read more.
In the context of intermarriage, mixedness can take different forms. Most often, it refers to a mix of class, religion, nationality, ethnicity or ‘race’ in a couple. In this article, I go beyond a separate analysis of categories, analyzing the interrelation of these factors. The article discusses how and under which circumstances mixed children become visible in Switzerland and Morocco using a comparative and intersectional approach to mixedness. Based on 23 biographical narrative interviews, I analyze three situations of stigmatization: racialization, language practices and othering due to religious affiliation. Stigmatization processes due to mixedness, it is argued, are a relational phenomenon depending not only on markers such as ‘race’, ethnicity and religion but also on their interplay with gender, class, language and biographical experiences. The results suggest that mixed individuals have found creative ways to navigate their visibility: they normalize their binational origin, look for alternative spaces of belonging, emphasize their ‘Swiss-ness’ or ‘Moroccan-ness’, use languages to influence their social positioning or acquire knowledge about their binational origin in order to confront stigmatizations. The study reveals further that processes of othering due to mixedness are not only an issue in ‘Western’ societies that look back on a long history of immigration and have pronounced migration discourses. Even in Morocco, a country where immigration has so far been a marginal phenomenon, the importance of social hierarchies for the positioning of people of binational origin is evident. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism)
21 pages, 419 KiB  
Article
From Multiracial to Monoracial: The Formation of Mexican American Identities in the U.S. Southwest
by G. Reginald Daniel
Genealogy 2022, 6(2), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6020028 - 20 Apr 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 6582
Abstract
The racialization of Mexican Americans in northern Mexico, that is, the U.S. Southwest, following the Anglo-Americanization during the second half of the nineteenth century, is an excellent case study of the historical formations of Anglo-American and Spanish American racial orders. Both racial orders [...] Read more.
The racialization of Mexican Americans in northern Mexico, that is, the U.S. Southwest, following the Anglo-Americanization during the second half of the nineteenth century, is an excellent case study of the historical formations of Anglo-American and Spanish American racial orders. Both racial orders were based on a hierarchy that privileged Whiteness and stigmatized Blackness. Yet Spanish America’s high levels of miscegenation resulted in ternary orders allowing for gradation in and fluidity within racial categories, in addition to the formation of multiracial identities, including those of individuals with African ancestry. Anglo-America was characterized by restrictions on miscegenation and more precise definitions of and restrictions on racial categories. This prohibited the formation of multiracial identities while buttressing a binary racial order that broadly necessitated single-race (monoracial) identification as either White or nonWhite, and more specifically, as White or Black, given their polar extremes in racial hierarchy. Within this order, hypodescent applies most stringently to those with African ancestry through the one-drop rule, which designates as Black all such individuals. This article examines monoracialization through historical processes of Mexican–American identity formations. Over the twentieth century, this shifted from White to Brown, but without any acknowledgment of African ancestry. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism)
13 pages, 275 KiB  
Article
Mothering ‘Outsider’ Children: White Women in Black/White Interracial Families in Ireland
by Patti O’Malley
Genealogy 2022, 6(2), 27; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6020027 - 19 Apr 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2788
Abstract
The mixed-race family constellation has emerged as a regular feature of the Irish familial landscape. Such a demographic change invariably leads to the increased presence of white women who are mothering across racialised boundaries. Moreover, in the Irish context, the racial category of [...] Read more.
The mixed-race family constellation has emerged as a regular feature of the Irish familial landscape. Such a demographic change invariably leads to the increased presence of white women who are mothering across racialised boundaries. Moreover, in the Irish context, the racial category of whiteness is privileged at a structural level and remains a central organising principle of Irishness as a mode of national belonging. This paper, therefore, sets out to address the specific gap in the literature related to the racialised experiences of the white mother of mixed-race (i.e., black African/white Irish) children in contemporary Ireland as these women are, in effect, mothering ‘outsider’ children in a context of white supremacy. More specifically, how does the positioning of these women’s mixed-race children impact their subjectivities as mothers categorised normatively as white and Irish? Framed by critical whiteness literature, this paper draws on in-depth interviews with twelve white Irish mothers. Data analysis broadly revealed three themes as relates to the women’s negotiations of the racialising discourses and practices which impact their family units. Findings suggest that these women no longer occupy the default position of whiteness as a category of racial privilege and a condition of ‘structured invisibility’. Perhaps, most significantly, the lived reality of these women disturbs the hegemonic conflation of the categories white and Irish. This paper, therefore, extends our theoretical understanding of both whiteness and mixed-race studies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Beyond the Frontiers of Mixedness: New Approaches to Intermarriage, Multiethnicity, and Multiracialism)
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