ABSTRACT
Questions of identity lie at the heart of the study of migration and ethnicity. Social scientists, historians and communal leaders generally believe that when people change their location, they also change their understanding of who they are and how they are linked to others (Glazer and Moynihan 1963; Gordon 1964; Portes and Rumbaut 1996; Appadurai 1996; Min and Kim 1999). In fact, the concepts of identity and identity crisis were developed by immigrant social scientist Erik H. Erikson, and inspired by “the experience of emigration, immigration and Americanization” (Gleason 1981: 31; cited in Rumbaut 1994: 753). Ethnic and national identities are the product of a wide range of factors, including the prevailing legal, racial and economic systems in points of settlement, socially prominent notions about identity and individual migrants’ feelings about who they are (Goffman 1963; De Vos and Romanucci-Ross 1982; Soysal 1994; Castles and Miller 1998; Van Hear 1998). In turn, questions of identity affect the viability of social collectivities, ranging from neighborhoods, religious congregations and social movements, to ethnic economies and nation states (Cohen 1969; Calhoun 1994; Warner and Wittner 1998; Light and Gold 2000).
