The hyphen in between: children’s intersectional understandings of national identities

Abstract

This paper examines how children are able to think intersectionally in a context of imagined nationalist discourses and geographies that shape children’s understandings of hyphenated and ethnic identifications. We draw on data from three different field studies we have carried out during the last two decades in a divided Cyprus which examine how Greek-Cypriot children categorize and understand the labels ‘Greek’, ‘Turkish’ and ‘Cypriot’ and their hyphenated versions (i.e. ‘Greek-Cypriot’ and ‘Turkish-Cypriot’). Through its focus on children’s intersectional identities, our paper illustrates how children’s ability to border cross on the island allow for more nuanced understandings of both ‘self’ and ‘other’. The paper situates children’s emerging intersectional identities within the geographic realities of political and territorial division on the island. We argue that the dimension of ‘generation’ is an important intersectional addition to the concepts of gender and race. The paper shows that children’s spatial engagements during their visits to the ‘other side’ gave rise to a new, more intersectional understanding of themselves and others.

Keywords:

• children
• ethnic identity
• intersectionality
• border
• hyphenated

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, the editors of this special issue and Peter Kraftl who provided us with critical feedback that helped us improve our argument. We would also like to thank the following researchers who worked on the third, joint project that is presented here: Sevinc Insay, Louiza Mallouri, Nicolina Karaolia, Athina Tembriou and Maria Kalli.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The northern part of the island unilaterally declared itself in 1983 as the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ (‘TRNC’); a state recognized only by Turkey. Internationally, the Republic of Cyprus is considered to represent the whole island and the areas in the north are recognized as temporarily occupied by Turkey. For Greek-Cypriots the territory in the north is seen as a ‘pseudostate’. The remarks by Rauf Denktash, a former leader of the Turkish-Cypriot community, were made at a conference in 1995.

2. Historically, the Turkish-Cypriot community emerged out of the descendants of the Ottoman army which were stationed on the island following its occupation by the Ottomans in 1571 and/or as a result of religious conversion of Orthodox Christians to Islam under Ottoman rule (Papadopoullos 1965).