Searching for boxes to check: constructing boundaries of second-generation Indo-Caribbean identity through community initiatives

ABSTRACT

This study uses critical ethnography to examine how young community leaders negotiate ethno-racial boundaries through leading initiatives that advocate for an Indo-Caribbean identity in South Richmond Hill, Queens, one of the largest Indo-Guyanese and Indo-Trinidadian communities in the US. The second-generation constructs their own ethnic project by advocating for an Indo-Caribbean identity through leading organizations and initiatives directed specifically towards this group. This complicates their processes of racialization in relation to Afro-Caribbeans and South Asians. Second-generation Indo-Caribbeans who are marginalized by dominant racial categories actively craft their own ethno-racial identity based on shared diasporic experiences and perceived racial advantages and disadvantages in relation to other groups. Community initiatives facilitate these processes while fostering spaces of belonging for the second-generation. At the same time, dominant narratives related to racial hierarchization and differences in the Caribbean and in the US influence how Indo-Caribbeans negotiate their identity separate from a larger Black Caribbean identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Second-generation identity
• immigrant incorporation
• ethno-racial identity
• racialization
• community organizations

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Correction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Statement on ethics

This study was granted exemption from the IRB at CUNY Graduate Center.

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2023.2220230

Notes

1 Second-generation is used to refer to those born in the US and those who came to the US under the age of ten.

2 Most of the leaders advocating for the term Indo-Caribbean are Indo-Guyanese. However, the term is used to refer to people of Indian descent from the Caribbean. In South Richmond Hill, this refers namely to Indo-Guyanese, who are the majority, and Indo-Trinidadians. Throughout this study, the term Indo-Caribbean will refer to people of Indian descent specifically from Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago.

3 The term ethno-racial is used instead of solely ethnicity or race to point towards the fluidity of these boundaries for the Indo-Caribbean community in which race and ethnicity are often used interchangeably.

4 ‘Coolie’ is a derogatory term directed towards Indian and used under the British Colonial regime (Bahadur, 2014)

5 Black-Caribbean and Black West Indian are used interchangeably in this paper to underscore interviewee’s variation in language. Ultimately, both terms refer to Black populations from the Anglophone Caribbean. Noted scholarship often uses the term West Indian to refer to most Black identities from this region (Waters, 1999; Kasinitz et al., 2008; Bashi Treitler, 2013)