Racial Immigrant Incorporation: Material-Symbolic Articulation of Identities

Abstract

We advance “incorporation” as a new way to understand immigrant identities as sutured within and sustaining symbolic and material structures of racial inequality. Incorporation elucidates the interlacing of the multidimensional symbolic and material processes overlooked in theorizing adaptation, assimilation, and integration as forms of cultural change in immigrants. We examine how the material and the symbolic articulate in claims to belonging and alignment with whiteness. We demonstrate that Polish immigrants’ narratives of racial identities in (post)apartheid South Africa have been shaped by specific institutional and economic structures regulating immigration and labor. The study also advances understanding of whiteness in its global and culturally specific dimensions.

Keywords:

• Immigrants
• Identity
• Race
• Whiteness
• Incorporation

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jolanta A. Drzewiecka

Jolanta A. Drzewiecka is Associate Professor at E. R. Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University, USA

Melissa Steyn

Melissa Steyn is Associate Professor Sociology Director, Intercultural and Diversity Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa