Identity and Assimilation Among Young Ethiopian Immigrants in Metropolitan Washington^*

* I would like to thank the immigrants I interviewed for sharing their experiences and thoughts with me. Thanks also to my colleague Tom Foggin and to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article.

Abstract

Ethiopians are a recent immigrant group in the United States, having entered the country in significant numbers during the 1980s and 1990s. This preliminary study examines the ethnic and racial identities of children of first‐generation Ethiopian immigrants living in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The results of twenty in‐depth interviews demonstrate that race is a much more fluid and contested form of identification than is ethnicity to the young immigrants, who equate the latter unilaterally with their Ethiopian heritage. Immigrants also adopt different subject identities in various locales, favoring those that are most in accordance with their needs and sense of self.

• assimilation
• Ethiopian
• identity
• immigrant
• Washington
• D.C.

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Notes on contributors

Elizabeth Chacko

Dr. Chacko is an associate professor of geography at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 20052.