The intersection of race, ethnicity, and class: The multiple identities of second‐generation Filipinos

Abstract

Through the prism of life stories, this paper examines the construction of identities among the children of professional immigrants from the Philippines. It pays particular attention to the strategies that these Filipino Americans use to construct multiple and overlapping identities and to rework dominant ideologies about their place in contemporary U.S. society. Stressing flux rather than continuity, and multilinearity rather than unilinearity, this analysis indicates that ethnic identification is a more dynamic and complex social phenomenon than has been predicted by either the assimilationist or pluralist model. Because of the class status, racial positioning, and ethnic background of these Filipino Americans, their reconstructed identities represent both resistance to and acceptance of class and racial hierarchy in the United States.