Narrating liminality: A structurational framework of immigrant professionals' identity negotiation

Min Wu, Purdue University

Abstract

This research project reconceptualizes the intercultural experience of contemporary immigrants through the structurational framework of identification to understand the process of immigrant liminality. Liminality is a transitional period experienced by individuals changing from one identity to another. It is characterized by a state of betwixt and between. A narrative analysis of the stories of immigration to the United States and Chinese immigrant professionals’ lives provides contextualized understandings of their identification processes between and within their Chinese and American identities. Moreover, findings generated an adapted structurational model of immigrant identification that specified how three regions of identities--professional, family, and cultural--become salient at different times during identity negotiations. Findings also enabled specification of various intercultural communication practices that shape and are shaped by identity negotiations. This investigation concludes that contemporary Chinese immigrants’ transition into the host (U.S.) society is characterized by a dynamic and multiple identification construction, thus creating the ongoing processes of liminality. This research suggests that immigrant identities could be perpetually liminal. It is increasingly the case in a global and domestically diverse world. Scholars should not look for relatively stable identity constructions in migrating groups but instead, focus on ways to assist and understand more fully the process of liminality.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Morgan, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Communication|Ethnic studies

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