RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Identity Constructions and Negotiations Among 1.5- and Second-Generation Nigerians: The Impact of Family, School, and Peer Contexts
JF Harvard Educational Review
JO herp
FD Harvard Educational Press
SP 255
OP 281
DO 10.17763/haer.82.2.9v77p329367116vj
VO 82
IS 2
A1 Awokoya, Janet
YR 2012
UL http://harvardeducationalreview.org/content/82/2/255.abstract
AB Past scholarship on immigrant racial and ethnic identity construction tends to ignore the processes by which social context influences identity at the individual level. In this qualitative study, Janet T. Awokoya presents a complex understanding of 1.5- and second-generation African immigrant youths’ identities. Awokoya explores how three major contexts—family, school, and peer groups—affect the ways in which African immigrant youth construct and negotiate their racial and ethnic identities. Further, she contends that the ways in which African immigrant youth are expected to conform to ideals of what it means to be African, Nigerian, African American, and Black, which dramatically shift across contexts, significantly confound the racial and ethnic identity constructions and negotiations for these youth. The article concludes with a discussion of practical and theoretical implications for identity development among Black immigrant youth.