Panethnic boundaries and the making of white-collar minority identity in Hawai’i

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent scholarship on ethnoracial identity formation documents the growth of panethnic and regionalised identities in the United States, which individuals express in response to both external racialisation processes as well as meta-group identity assertions by multiple ethnic groups. Yet how are panethnic identities shaped by organisational contexts, and how might the way individuals enact these group identities contribute to exclusionary processes? Examining the case of Local identity in Hawai’i, this study explores how third and fourth-generation Japanese and Chinese workers articulate a panethnic identity within a white-collar office. They do so by drawing racialized boundaries against Haoles (whites) as well as internal group hierarchies informed by ethnicity and class. The panethnic boundaries that workers enact ultimately reinforce the dominant position of Japanese and Chinese workers within the workplace, and within this region more broadly. I close by elaborating on how panethnic boundary-making reconfigure symbolic ethnoracial hierarchies within institutional settings while simultaneously serving as exclusionary criteria towards panethnic subgroups.