From “in-betweenness” to “positioned belongings”: second-generation Palestinian-Americans negotiate the tensions of assimilation and transnationalism

Abstract

In this article, I argue that second-generation migrants experience multiple tensions and exclusions as a result of the interaction of transnationalism, assimilation, diaspora and racialization in their lives. Yet, I suggest that they are reflexive actors who respond by crafting their own “positioned belongings”. The paper draws on ethnographic research conducted with Palestinian-American second-generation interlocutors conducted in New Jersey and the West Bank in the wake of Donald Trump’s election as President. It presents data regarding this understudied yet significant second-generation group and their relationship to their diaspora community, hostland and homeland. I argue that a feeling of exclusion and “in-betweenness” is navigated by the second-generation through discursive and material practices that centre the second-generation “self”. In doing so, I give new insight into how assimilation and transnationalism interact in dynamic and plural fields and what is lost and gained amongst the children of migrants in the process.

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