Abstract

This paper presents the non-essentializing analysis of ethnic identity formation in comparative research between two groups in the Japanese Canadian community: the Japanese Canadian Sansei and the Ijusha Nisei. Using an oral history approach to understand the development of ethnic identity, I discuss how the social assignment of “otherness” based on the corporeal difference has negatively influenced identity formation in both groups. My comparative analysis further uncovers some of the different strategies that each group takes against the racializing process. Whereas the Japanese Canadian Sansei claim their cultural citizenship in the history of Japanese Canadians by aligning their own personal past with the collective memory of Japanese Canadians, the Ijusha Nisei negotiate it by entitling themselves as a contemporary representative of the ideology of multiculturalism. Finally, understanding the different processes of ethnic identity formation and strategies of negotiation for social inclusion, I discuss the effects of the ideology of multiculturalism on cultural citizenship among Japanese Canadians.

Highlights

  • Addressing this issue, the comparative analysis highlights that the Ijusha Nisei take a different strategy for the negotiation of social inclusion and enact ethnicity through the ethnic identity formation based on the different understanding of the multiculturalism constructed in their lived experiences

  • This research project sets out to reveal the complexity of individual ethnic identity formation among the Sansei and the Ijusha Nisei through the oral history approach

  • In that discursive space that is repeated in their everyday lives, the racialized subjectivity is at workconstructing the negative and unsolid in-between identity of Japanese Canadians

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Summary

Introduction

The predominant focus on the group of Japanese Canadians whose families directly connect their experience to the historical injustice have occupied academic and public discussions, leaving a communal divide within the Japanese Canadian community Addressing this issue, the comparative analysis highlights that the Ijusha Nisei take a different strategy for the negotiation of social inclusion and enact ethnicity through the ethnic identity formation based on the different understanding of the multiculturalism constructed in their lived experiences. The influence of the particular experience of the Japanese Canadian Sansei on their ethnic identity formation and their negotiation for social inclusion in the city embracing multiculturalism will be more clarified in comparison with another emerging Japanese Canadian group, which has recently immigrated to Canada from Japan and has increased its population. I in detail describe those diverse stories and their interpretation of the stories through the oral history approach

Literature review History and Collective Memory
Methodology Oral History in Narrative Research
Conclusion
Limitations
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