Racial Formation in the Post-September 11 Era: The Paradoxical Positioning of Working Class South Asian American Youth
[Thesis]
Veena Hampapur
Cattelino, Jessica
University of California, Los Angeles
2016
343
Committee members: Gupta, Akhil; Mankekar, Purnima; Park, Kyeyoung
Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-339-76971-4
Ph.D.
Anthropology 0063
University of California, Los Angeles
2016
In this dissertation I aim to show that there has been a shift in racial formation in the United States since the terrorist attacks of September 11th. I chart this new racial formation through theorizing from the everyday realities of working class, predominantly Muslim, South Asian and Indo-Caribbean youth in New York City, some of whom were undocumented. By utilizing ethnographic methods, I dissect their seemingly contradictory lived experiences of 1) national belonging stemming from multicultural comfort in a city famous for its diversity and 2) exclusion from cultural citizenship dictated by struggles with modes of racialization, surveillance, and criminalization more commonly associated with Arabs, Blacks, and Latinos.
American studies; Asian American Studies; Ethnic studies
Social sciences;Criminalization;Race;September 11;South Asians;Surveillance;Youth