Identity formation and the negotiation of desire: Women of the South Asian diaspora in the United States

This ethnography explores how first and second-generation South Asian women in the U.S. negotiate their desire, or creatively attempt to achieve their will, given the conflicting constraints and possibilities in their social environment, conceptualized as identity formation. Identity formation refers to the range of demands, expectations and possibilities South Asian women in the U.S. face related to gender, power, culture and sexuality through the competing ideological demands, histories, cultural norms and structural conditions of the home countries and the U.S.;The study found that women negotiated their desire through relationships, using the tools available from the demands of ideal South Asian womanhood in the U.S.; the qualities of compromise, adjustment and acceptance and their roles as mothers and daughters. These qualities and roles, repeatedly cited by interviewees as key markers of South Asian womanhood, had a transgressive edge to them in the U.S. context.;First-generation mothers, recognizing the realities of U.S. dating culture, used a variety of negotiations in order to protect their daughters. Some restricted their daughters' social movements while others spoke openly with their daughters about dating and premarital sex. Second-generation daughters embraced cultural practices such as arranged marriage and the idea of matching linguistic, regional, religious and caste identities in marriage as they also selectively followed mainstream "American" cultural practices such as dating and pre-marital sex. First-generation mothers, most of whom did not have arranged marriages themselves, supported arranged marriage for their daughters as a way of ensuring that they have power and security within their relationships by creating matrilineal family systems in the U.S.;This study suggests that immigration adjustment processes for South Asian women in the U.S. are more complex than traditional ideas of acculturation. In social work assessment, treatment, program and policy development this research provides both a conceptual framework with which to view and interpret the lives of South Asian women as well as examples of the creative mix of choices South Asian women in the U.S. make in living their lives.