The Weight of the Hyphen: Freedom, Fusion and Responsibility Embodied by Young Muslim-American Women During a Time of Surveillance

Abstract

This article reports on a qualitative investigation of 15 young Muslim-American women living in New York City, after 9/11 and in the midst of the Patriot Act. Participants completed surveys about identity, discrimination, and coping; drew “identity maps” to represent their multiple identities and alliances; and participated in focus groups on several college campuses in the New York metropolitan area. Focus groups were conducted to investigate collectively their sense of hyphenated identities, their experiences of surveillance and their responses to scrutiny in families, communities, on the streets and in the political public sphere. Implications for the theoretical and empirical study of immigrant youth “under siege” are developed, with a particular focus on the burdens and responsibilities embodied by daughters of the second generation of Muslim-Americans.