ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the theoretical frame underpinning a qualitative research-based study on how second- or late-generation European Americans negotiate and construct their ethnic subjectivities in intergenerational memory narratives about their immigrant ancestors’ assimilation and settlement experiences. The concepts of ethnicity and assimilation in American society are connected with works on memory and subjectivity. Memory and intergenerational memory are defined as the content of personal narratives that appear in two structures, the Labovian or prototypical narrative and conversational storytelling. The chapter explains how the concept of subjectivity more than identity expresses second- or late-generation Europeans’ choice and freedom to construct agency in personal and intergenerationally transferred narratives. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of investment and symbolic capital, and Bonny Norton’s adaptations of the theory will be drawn upon to argue that ethnicity for late-generation Europeans is a choice based on the symbolic value they find in their ethnic ancestry.
