Committed to Ethnicity, Committed to America: How Second-Generation Indian Americans’ Ethnic Boundaries Further their Americanisation

Abstract

The children of immigrants raised in the USA (i.e. the second generation) have become a central focus in understanding immigrant adaptation. Groups’ Americanisation is assessed by their degree of commitment to the manifest elements of the nation-state, that is, to what extent groups adopt the dominant cultural norms of native-born whites and become involved in mainstream social institutions, networks and laws. Research on adaptation increasingly argues that groups selectively further their Americanisation into these elements by keeping, rather than abandoning, their ethnic and even transnational ties. Missing in this framework is immigrants’ relationship to the principles of the liberal nation-state, that is, the taken-for-granted ideals that shape how to express civil liberties. This study argues that second-generation Indian Americans convey local and transnational ethnic ties, often within religious and secular organisations. Doing so facilitates their selective commitment to not only the prevailing, manifest dimensions of the nation-state, as others have also found, but also to its broader principles through how informants defend and express their ethnicity. As a result, second-generation Indian Americans further their Americanisation in overlooked ways and more deeply than expected.