‘I know my roots are Indian but my thinking is Kiwi’: hybridisation, identity and ‘Indians’ in New Zealand

ABSTRACT

This article explores identity among the South Asian diaspora in New Zealand. Using data from qualitative interviews with South Asian New Zealanders, it argues that analyses of hybridity need to consider different varieties of hybridisation in relation to ethnicity, religion, language and national identity. South Asian identities may be hybridised with ‘Kiwi’ identity variously represented as values, idealised citizenship and a White Western lifestyle. The data analysed in the paper demonstrate the independence and salience of religious as distinct from ethnic identities in the South Asian diaspora in New Zealand. Hybridisation results, in part, from a conscious strategy on the part of parents who encourage children to identify with their ethnic origins, language, nation and religion.

KEYWORDS:

• Diaspora
• hybridity
• identity
• Indian
• New Zealand

Notes on contributor

Yasmin Hussain is an Associate Professor in Ethnicity and Racism Studies in the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds, U.K., where she has been working since 2000. She has researched and published widely on South Asian and Muslim diasporas in the West since 2001. She has been an honorary visiting fellow at the University of Waikato New Zealand where the fieldwork for the research reported here was completed. Her publications include Writing Diaspora: South Asian Women, Culture and Ethnicity (Ashgate, 2005); with Paul Bagguley, Moving on Up: South Asian Women and Higher Education (Trentham Press, 2007); with Paul Bagguley, Riotous Citizens: Ethnic Conflict on Multicultural Britain (Ashgate, 2008); and several journal papers and contributions to edited collections.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Yasmin Hussain http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3333-9196