The construction of dual ethnic identity among multi-ethnic adolescents

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between intermarriage and integration in a novel context, centering on Israeli adolescents with ethnic origins from both Europe and Middle Eastern and North African countries. Current analyses explore this relationship mainly through the self-identification of multi-ethnic individuals. One line of studies shows that intermarriage enlarges social networks and lowers social differences thereby weakening ethnic identification among multi-ethnic adolescents; another line points to the continuation of ethnic boundaries within multi-ethnic families and close environments that lead adolescents to identify themselves as ethnic. In contrast to these lines of research, that examine the relationship between intermarriage and integration among different ethnic groups, this article analyses this relationship between two subgroups – Middle Eastern and North African and European Jews – from the same ethnic group: Israeli Jews. Interviews with Israeli multi-ethnic adolescents show that they develop a dual ethnic identity that comprised two opposing elements. The first is a ‘thin’ identity, which enables them to choose and switch between ethnicities, thus blurring ethnic boundaries; the other, a ‘strong’ identity, creates an inner experience of two opposing ethnicities, thereby maintaining a hierarchy between the groups. This article demonstrates that in specific structural conditions, intermarriage does not influence integration in one direction only, but facilitates and impedes this process simultaneously in both directions.