Citizenship and dissent: South Asian Muslim youth in the US after 9/11

Abstract

This essay focuses on issues of dissent and citizenship for South Asian Muslim immigrant youth after 9/11 as they intersect with questions of youth culture and cultural consumption and are inflected by class and gender. Everyday experiences of national belonging or cultural citizenship for these youth are shaped by US imperial power, and what I call ‘imperial feelings,’ and by the biopolitics of neoliberal capitalism. Based on ethnographic research on a group of working class South Asian immigrants in a US high school, the article explores the expressions of dissenting citizenship of these immigrant youth and their responses to the War on Terror. It discusses the ways in which dissenting citizenship is linked to issues of cultural consumption, cyberculture, and notions of neoliberal citizenship, on the one hand, and the proliferation of gendered notions of dissent and ‘good’ Muslim identity that are marketed and consumed, on the other.

Notes

^1. The 2000 Census reported 2720 Indian immigrants (2.7% of the population), 125 Pakistanis, and 120 Bangladeshis in Wellford, a city that is 68.1% White American, 11.9% African American, 11.9% Asian American, and 7.4% Latino (US Census Bureau). This, of course, does not include undocumented immigrants. The ‘native’ population is 74.1% and foreign-born is 25.9%; 17.7% are not citizens and 31.2% speak a language other than English. Wellford is of course skewed by the presence of the academic community; while 8.2% (3108) of those enrolled in schools are in high school, fully 70.5% are in college or graduate school, and 38.5% of the population over 25 years has a graduate or professional degree.

^2. The high school had approximately 2000 students, of which about 40% were white and the remaining 60% were students of color. African Americans were the largest group of students of color (about 25%), followed by Latinos (15%), and Asian Americans (about 7%). In the year I was doing my field work, there were about 60 students of South Asian origin in the high school, evenly split between immigrant students and second-generation youth.

^3. This study is based on interviews with South Asian Muslim immigrant students, as well as with second-generation South Asian youth and other Muslim immigrant students, parents of immigrant and non-immigrant students, teachers, staff, youth program organizers, community and religious leaders, and immigrant and civil rights activists. I also did field work in a range of sites in Wellford and in the area, in addition to the school, such as homes, workplaces, social gatherings, and cultural and political events.