Who are you? It may seem like a simple question, to which one might respond with a name, a title, a profession, and/or a nationality. But, what are the social and cultural implications of identifying with a particular name, class, job, race, gender, or place? What does it mean to belong? To not belong? To be somewhere in between major identity categories, or outside of them entirely?

 

As more and more people are migrating, whether it’s desired or undesired, for labor purposes or personal ones, temporarily or permanently, or long- or short-distance, we are interested in learning more about the experiences of 21st century migrants. Taking a practical approach based on Homi K. Bhabha’s theories of cultural hybridity, we hope to see how people’s experiences of migration can’t be easily summed up as a story of pure assimilation. Instead, we wonder how the movement of people across different state, national, and transnational borders can foster the creation of “in-between” spaces that allow people to think about new ways of understanding the fluctuating nature of cultural identities (Bhabha 1994: 1-2).

 

A central aim of this project is to draw attention to the real people that underlie major political issues surrounding immigration and identity politics. In order to better understand these issues, we think it is important to collect and share migrants’ personal stories, both in the forms of interviews and images. Although it may initially appear like a simple concept for someone to pledge allegiance to one nation, or to belong to one race, we are learning from our interviews that such identifications are not so simple or clear for some migrants. In this way, we might think about how the intermixing of different races and cultures might allow for the creation of what Gloria Anzaldúa calls an “alien" consciousness (Anzaldua 1987: 99). With this new mentality, people can begin to question and reconstruct ideas of belonging, nationality, and other forms of cultural identification.