An Interlocking Panethnicity: The Negotiation of Multiple Identities among Asian American Social Movement Leaders

Abstract

Existing frameworks in social movement research fall short when examining movements that require a simultaneous exercise of multiple identities. In this study, the author investigates Asian American social movement organizations in metropolitan San Francisco and the relationship between single-ethnic and panethnic identities through in-depth interviews with social movement leaders in order to better understand how multiple identities are negotiated. Leaders of panethnic organizations actively and consciously work toward a panethnic movement identity that necessitates the maintenance of single-ethnic identification. Panethnicity and single-ethnicity are conceptualized as interlocking identity structures. The author argues that this new conceptualization of panethnic identity is made necessary as leaders acknowledge and attempt to address the ethnic and class hierarchies that exist within a diverse Asian American population. The findings of interlocking identities point toward a need to broaden current understandings of identity work whereby multiple movement identities are simultaneous and mutually affecting.

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