Afro-Caribbean International Students’ Ethnic Identity Development: Fluidity, Intersectionality, Agency, and Performativity

Abstract

Afro-Caribbean international students (ACIS) often become engrossed in a complex racial and ethnic dialogue wherein they are thrust into homogenous categorizations forcing them to negotiate their Afro-Caribbean self with other identities perceived by others such as African American, first- and second-generation Caribbean immigrant, African, and Latin American. This tendency to homogenize ACIS overlooks their experiences and development, and so their issues become essentially invisible for administrations and in the literature on student identity development. Therefore, higher education stakeholders are unaware of the needs unique to these students (Lacina, 2002; Szelényi & Chang, 2002). This is particularly problematic given that ACIS students are less likely to have high-quality educational and social experiences impacting their development (Anderson, Carmichael, Harper, & Huang, 2009). The purpose of this study is to investigate the ethnic identity development of ACIS at a public research-intensive university in the US Southeast with particular attention on how these students negotiate their identities given the current homogenized discourse on ACIS.

Learning Race and Racism While Learning: Experiences of International Students Pursuing Higher Education in the Midwestern United States

“…The authors developed an emergent framework—learning about race in a U.S. context—to explain how international students of color move from an unexamined awareness of U.S. concepts of race and racism to an integrative awareness, where the students began to acknowledge race and racism and how it influenced their lives. Similarly, Malcolm and Mendoza (2014) developed a framework to explain how Afro-Caribbean international students develop ethnic identities within a U.S. context, introducing the “reactions to negotiating ethnic identity” model.…”

“…Scholars also have explored how discrimination affects international students in the United States (Glass & Westmont, 2014; Hecht, Jung, & Wadsworth, 2008; Lee & Rice, 2007; Sato & Hodge, 2009), often bringing attention to their ethnic identities in U.S. contexts and describing how those identities affect their experiences, opportunities, and struggles (Fries-Britt, George Mwangi, & Peralta, 2014; Glass, 2012; Lee & Rice, 2007; Williams & Johnson, 2011). While researchers have begun to explore how international students of color 1 navigate conventions of race in the context of higher education in the United States (e.g., see Constantine, Anderson, Berkel, Caldwell, & Utsey, 2005; Fries-Britt et al, 2014; Malcolm & Mendoza, 2014; Ritter, 2013), there is room for further documentation of the racial experiences of international students studying in the United States. For example, little is known about nonracial and racial experiences and how these experiences affect the lives of international students beyond international students of color.…”

Leading Online Education from Participation to Success

“…Examples in-clude interactions between Indigeneity and socioeconomic or remote backgrounds, or interactions between field of study, gender and sociodemographic factors and attrition [Gale, Tranter, 2011]. Despite such insights, research in this area has been limited to mostly binary understandings of intersectionality, such as ethnicity and international status [Malcolm, Mendoza, 2014], gender and race [Linder, Rodriguez, 2012], or ethnicity and religion [Rockenbach, Mayhew, Bowman, 2015]. We assert the strategic value of extending the work of student typologies further, both conceptually and technically, to identify people as a series of intersecting vectors.…”

Untitled

“…Despite such insights, research in this area has been limited to mostly binary understandings of intersectionality, such as ethnicity and international status [Malcolm, Mendoza, 2014], gender and race [Linder, Rodriguez, 2012], or ethnicity and religion [Rockenbach, Mayhew, Bowman, 2015]. We assert the strategic value of extending the work of student typologies further, both conceptually and technically, to identify people as a series of intersecting vectors.…”