| While studies of ethnic identity and incorporation in the United States have focused on treating immigrants as homogeneous cultural groups, this study seeks to understand the role played by pre-migration, sub-national identity. I look at the process of ethnic identity formation in the incorporation of Asian Indian immigrants who have immigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area. Using in-depth interviews, participant observation and focus group interviews, I explore the strategies of acculturation adopted by two sub-national groups of Asian Indians, Punjabi-Sikhs and Bengali-Hindus. Interviews reveal that these immigrants resist a monolithic, Hinduized Indian identity that has been the dominant image of Asian Indians in American culture. In the process of becoming American, immigrants actively manipulate their sub-national attributes, including their regional, religious, linguistic, and caste attributes, to form a new identity in the host society. |
