What it Means to Become a United States American: Afro-Caribbean Immigrants' Constructions of American Citizenship and Experience of Cultural Transition.
With a goal to better understand what it means to become a United States citizen, the present qualitative study uncovered the narratives of 11 Afro-Caribbean immigrants living in Phoenix, Arizona, and included the investigator as a research participant. Grounded theory analysis of the combined auto-...
| Published in: | Journal of Ethnographic & Qualitative Research Vol. 3; no. 3; pp. 196 - 205 |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
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Michael Firmin, PhD
Spring 2009
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| Summary: | With a goal to better understand what it means to become a United States citizen, the present qualitative study uncovered the narratives of 11 Afro-Caribbean immigrants living in Phoenix, Arizona, and included the investigator as a research participant. Grounded theory analysis of the combined auto-ethnographic and interview data yielded narratives that support 3 conclusions: (1) Afro-Caribbean immigrants in the study stated that becoming a United States citizen is an act of transgression; (2) Afro-Caribbean immigrants constructed security within a philosophy of mobility in an effort to recapture their agency and humanity in racialized contexts; and (3) the Afro-Caribbean participants used code-switching as a central strategy in the presentation of self in everyday life in the United States. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. |
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