‘You're becoming more and more English’: Investigating Chinese siblings’ cultural identities

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a growing body of research on the cultural identities of the ‘second generation’ of ethnic minorities and of ‘new ethnicities’ in Britain. Much of this literature to date has explored the identities of ethnic minority youth in the context of inter‐generational relations between parents and children, whereby conflict and ‘culture gap’ between the generations have been investigated. However, there has been very little study of how siblings’ cultural identities within ethnic minority families may differ. The present study of young peoples’ labour participation in Chinese families running take‐away businesses revealed that siblings could be committed to ‘helping‐out’ in the take‐away to different degrees. These differences in ‘helping out’ were understood in terms of siblings’ respective family reputations and cultural identities. This suggests the importance of looking beyond inter‐generational negotiations of ethnic identity and cultural practices, and situating young peoples’ identities in the context of sibling dynamics and relationships as well. Furthermore, the findings suggest that more attention should be paid to forms of economic activity, such as the performance of family labour, for the formation of cultural identities.