Social Constructionism/Interpretivism

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CHAPTER TWO THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

Introduction

In this chapter, I first outline my overarching theoretical approach to the study, namely social constructionism.  I  also  draw  on  two  bodies  of  theoretical  work:  Theories  of  race  and ethnicity, and theories of adaptation to identity categories.
Next, I discuss theoretical debates surrounding the concepts of race and ethnicity: between those who subscribe to essentialised notions of race and ethnicity, and those who argue for the socially-constructed aspects of the concepts. I then discuss Omi and Winant‘s (1994) racialisation theory that argues that individuals, such as those previously unracialised immigrants,  confront  assigned  racial  identity  categories  in  their  everyday  life  in  race- conscious host societies. According to this perspective, external racial classification based on the logic of physical markers becomes an everyday racial identity experience for immigrants. Racialisation  theory  assists  me  in  order  to  make  sense  of  the  everyday  racialisation experiences of the participants. I also consider racial identity theories in particular Cross‘ (1995) black racial identity development theory. According to this perspective, individuals follow defined stages until they finally attain an internalised black racial identity. I draw on this approach in order to interpret the black identity formation of Eritreans in the South African racial landscape. I briefly outline Goldberg‘s (2002) theory on the characteristics of a racial state to  conceptualise the South  African  state as  a racialising structure.  I discuss Phinney‘s (1990) ethnic identity formation theory. According to this model, individuals such as immigrants, go through progressively increasing ethnic-identity-awareness phases in a racialised society. I adopted this approach in order to account for the ethnic identity re- awakening of my participants.
In relation to the second body of theoretical work, I discuss identity adjustment theories for transitioning immigrants in their host societies. For example, Milton Gordon (1971) and Gans‘ (1973) linear assimilation theories propose that immigrants follow rigidly predictable patterns of adapting to social identities found in their host societies. Generational status and length of stay are seen as powerful factors in determining how immigrants adopt host- society-based  identity  categories.  Berry‘s  (1997)  acculturation  theory  diverges  from  the straight-line theories argument and advances a more flexible account of how immigrants adjust  to  identity  categories  in  their  new  host  culture.  Berry  proposed  four  paths  that individuals choose to follow, namely the assimilation strategy, the separation strategy, the integration strategy, and the marginalisation strategy. Carola Suárez-Orozco‘s theory (2004) proposes a more flexible and fluid notion of immigrant identity formation by arguing that immigrants tend not to follow predictable paths in adapting to host society-based identity categories but instead tend to be shaped by situational and contextual factors.

Social Constructionism/Interpretivism: My Macro-Theoretical Perspective

I  locate  this  study  within  a  social  constructionist,  also  described  as  an  interpretivist framework (see Mertens, 2010; Denzin & Lincoln, 2011). I utilise this perspective in thinking about the nature of racialisation experience and self-identification of the study participants. Following the social constructionist view (Crotty 1998:9), I assume that experiences and identities are historically and culturally embedded. Thus, experiences such as racialisation, racial  identities  and  self-identification  practices  are  socio-culturally located  and  socially constructed artefacts produced and shaped by the history and culture and everyday inter- subjective social interactions among social actors. This perspective fits with phenomenology as a theoretical perspective, and particularly interpretative phenomenological analysis5, the methodological  approach  of  this  study,  which  focuses  on  the  inter-subjective  everyday experience. As Crotty (1998:12) emphasised, ‗Constructitionism and phenomenology are intertwined‘.
Within this philosophical lens, I believe that individuals, in their social world, carry understandings  of  the  world  in  which  they  live  and  act.  Furthermore,  they  construct subjective meanings of their lived experiences of social phenomena. My ontological belief, under  this  world  view  assumes  that  the  subjective  experiences  and  meanings  research participants have about their lived racialisation experiences, as well as their meaning making and self-identification practices are situational, fluid, varied and multiple. This belief led me, as a researcher, to look for the multiplicity, situatedness and complexity of experiences and meanings, instead of collapsing experiences and meanings into pre-determined categories and ideas as is the tradition with objectivist research tradition. Following Lincoln and Guba (2000: 163), the goal of my study, then, is to focus on my research participants‘ subjective views and perspectives to understand the phenomenon under study.
I  believe  that  epistemologically  the  subjective  experiences  and  meanings  of  the participants are negotiated, shaped and produced during social interaction with me, as an interviewer,  during  the  interview  situation  which  is  supported  by  the  view  of  social constructionism. I, as a researcher, co-construct meanings and knowledge together with my research participants as opposed to endeavouring to locate objective ‗truth‘ in participants‘ accounts (Moustakas, 1994: 23).
I  am  aware  that,  when  participants  construct  their  experiences  and  meanings  in interaction with me as a researcher, they do so shaped by their past experiences and the present. As a researcher, I recognise that my own background also shaped my interpretations of study participants‘ accounts of their experiences. My understandings of the experiences of the study participants is coloured by my past experiences, beliefs, and worldviews (Schwandt 2007: 55).
Therefore,   social   constructionism   as   a   perspective   informs   my   interpretative phenomenological analysis methodological approach which in turn shaped the type of data collected that focused on the everyday socially constructed experiences of participants within an inter-subjective interview context.
I now turn to theoretical and conceptual frameworks as they relate to the substance of the study. Below, I offer a brief account of scholarly debates about race and ethnicity. The social constructionist position I adopt has implications for these two conceptual terms that are frequently used in this study.

Theories of Race, Ethnicity, and the Racial State Race: biological essentialism vs. social construction

Conceptually, the idea of race has been a contentious terrain in  academic debates. The debates could be broadly classified between two schools of thought: between those who assert race to be a biologically objective reality (Mayr and Ashlock 1991: 104-105) and those who rejected such position and argued for the socially invented (Omi and Winant 1994: 34) and ideological (Root 1998: 630) nature of the concept.
In the nineteenth and twentieth-century biological realism, the scientific belief that races are ‗real‘ dominated much of the debate in academia. Key proponents of the biological realism  perspective,  such  as  Mayr  and  Ashlock  (1991:  105)  asserted  that  races  were biologically  objective  categories  independent  of  human  classification  endeavours.  This outlook that advocated an essentialist view of race and racial categories believed that there are common essences linking members of a particular racial category. Mayr and Ashlock (1991:  103-107),  specially  argued  that  human  races  exist  as  ‗sub-species‘  within  the overarching human  race  as  more  or  less  mutually exclusive  kinds  with  their  respective cultural distinctions, behavioural dispositions and physiological differences.
However, other academics such as  Lewontin, Rose and Kamin 1984 (as  cited in Andreasen 1998: 654-655) criticised such essentialist views of races by claiming that racial categories  are  socio-politically  constructed  human  inventions.  Smedley  (1998:  690)  for example, noted that, race as a concept and ideology is a recent social construction designed to socially  stratify  human  populations  in  order  to  differentially  distribute  resources  along invented racial categories. Smedley further notes that the idea of naming and categorising people in racial terms appeared around the seventeenth-century. Smedley succinctly captured the socially constructed essence of race by saying ‗Race is a cultural invention that it bears no intrinsic  relationship  to  actual  human  physical  variations,  but  reflects  social  meanings imposed upon these variations‘ (Smedley 1998: 690).
Scholars who subscribe to the social construction school of thought also argued that the belief in the existence of distinct races are unsubstantiated by concrete evidence, such as the mapping genetic composition of the so-called ‗distinct races‘ as believed by scholars such as Mayr and Ashlock (1991). Scholars contended that genetic variation within the so-called races tends to be much greater than those categories deemed distinct by realist scholars. However, scholars of social constructionism do not necessarily believe race to be merely a fiction but a socio-historically and socio-politically created concept that eventually became a common-sense social understanding. For example, as Omi and Winant (1994: 4) argued, the historically invented racial categories continue to shape how ordinary people, living in race- conscious  cultures,  categorise  themselves  and  other  people  based  on  outward  physical markers, such as, inter alia, hair type, skin tone, and facial features. Race has become a social reality for people who live in racialised societies6  such as South Africa. Omi and Winant (1994: 12-14) more specifically employed the concept of ‗racialisation‘ to emphasise the process-driven and socio-culturally embedded nature of racial categories and to stress the socially-created aspect of race. Goldberg (2006: 234-237), employed the notion of ‗racial regionalism‘ to argue that race and racial categories do not have universal meaning and application, but are constructed and given meanings in particular socio-cultural and socio- historical contexts in different geographic regions.
I subscribe to the school of thought that race is a social construct; and it is with this assumption that I conducted my study by focusing on the notion of racialisation as a socially- embedded  phenomenon.  In  studying  Eritrean  refugees  and  asylum-seekers‘  racialisation experiences,  following  Omi  and  Winant  (1994),  I  focus  on  how  racial  categories  were constructed in everyday social interactions between Eritreans and ordinary South Africans through the accounts of the study participants.
Below, Idiscuss  ethnicity,  which  is  a  necessary  corollary  concept  to  race  when studying identity formation of immigrants/refugees/asylum-seekers in their race-conscious socio-cultural contexts. As has been argued by numerous immigration scholars, inter alia, Golash-Boza (2006), Itzigsohn, Giorguli & Vazquez (2006), Kusow (2006) and Vandeyar (2011), when immigrants who originate from ethnicity-based social classification systems transition  into  socio-cultural  contexts  with  racial  classification  systems,  they  engage  in continuous negotiation and re-negotiation of their ethnicities when confronted with imposed racialisation.

Ethnicity: primordialism vs. circumstantialism

Scholars define the concept of ethnicity and ethnic identity in different ways. For example, Negel (1994: 152-153) defined ethnicity as a sense of attachment ‗constructed out of the material  of language, religion,  culture,  appearance, ancestry, or regionality….‘ For such scholars, ethnicity, besides the cultural element, involves a sense of belonging to a group sharing similar phenotypic features (biological similarity). Other scholars, such as Phinney (2007:  272),  emphasised  the  cultural  dimensions  of  ethnicity  and  ethnic  identity  as ‗…speaking the language, eating the food, and associating with members of one‘s group….‘ Such definitions do not refer to physical appearance as constituting the definition of ethnicity, as their emphasis is on the cultural attachments of the individuals involved.
Other immigration  scholars  have  defined  ethnic  identity  in  terms  of  a  sense  of belonging to non-racial forms of social boundaries, such as religion (Kusow and Arjouch 2007), clan (Kusow 2006), regional attachments (Suárez-Orozco‘s 2004), and country of origin (Golash-Boza 2006; Vandeyar 2011; Alemu 2012). In the context of my study, ethnic self-identification refers to a sense of being a member of a social category, found in one‘s country of origin, which is not based on physical appearance but other notions of social differentiation, such as, inter alia, ethno-linguistic groupings, ethno-regional location, village of  origin,  and  myths  of  common  origin,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Eritrean  ethnic  groups (Bereketeab 2000: 35; Naty 2001: 578; Dirar 2007: 257).
Broadly speaking, debates surrounding attachment to ethnic identity is dichotomised into two schools of thought: primordial ethnicity (Gil-White, 1999; Van Evera 2001) vs instrumental/situational ethnicity (Nagel 1994; Gorenburg 1999; Brubaker 2002). Proponents of the primordiality contend that ethnic identity is an enduring, unchanging and deeply-felt attachment individuals have to their ethnic group which they believe they belong to (Gil- White, 1999:799). For example, a key proponent of the primordial camp, Van Evera (2001:20)  argued  that  ‗ethnic  identities  are  not  stamped  on  our  genes,  but  once  a  sense  of attachment to a group is formed, they tend to stay‘. Furthermore, another primordialist, (Gil- White, 1999: 799-722), noted that individuals who exhibit deeply-felt strong attachments to their group, tend to base this on their beliefs and perceptions as opposed to, for example, an actual blood line that bind a group together. However, other proponents of the primordiality of ethnic identification such as Van den Berghe (1981 cited in Hale 2004: 460) argued that a sense of ethnic identification is predicated on actual blood attachment to individuals‘ ethnic group or kinship rather than perceived association.
Those  who  propose  an  instrumental  understanding  of  ethnic  identity contend  that ethnic identity is a social construct, and therefore a dynamic, and situationally dependent phenomenon (Nagel 1994: 154; Gorenburg 1999: 577; Brubaker 2002: 164). Such scholars proposed that people actively and consciously move between different versions of their ethnic identities and change them at will depending on the value and instrumentality of a group identity in a particular situation.
I subscribe to the situational and instrumental school of thought of ethnicity and ethnic identity formation as I believe that individuals, especially in the context of migration, tend to use their ethnic identities as a resource for instrumental reasons depending on contextual circumstances in their everyday life.
In the following section, I discuss racialisation theory, an important theoretical lens that I employed to interpret the participant‘s every day encounters with being seen as having a racial identity.

DECLARATION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ABSTRACT
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Why I Embarked on This Study
Research Context
Background to the Research Problem
Problem Statement and Purpose of the Study
Significance of the Stud
Research Question
Research Design and Methodological Orientation
Theoretical and Conceptual Framework for the Study
Thesis Outline
CHAPTER TWO: THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS
Introduction
Social Constructionism/Interpretivism: My Macro-Theoretical Perspective
Theories of Race, Ethnicity and the Racial State
Race: biological essentialism vs. social construction
Ethnicity: primordialism vs. circumstantialism 18
Racialisation theory
Racial identity theories
A racial state
Phinney‘s ethnic identity formation theory
Theories of Adaptation to Identity Categories
Linear assimilation theories
Acculturation strategies theory
Suárez-Orozco‘s fluid identity formation theory
CHAPTER THREE: CONTEXT AND LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
The Eritrean Socio-Cultural Context
Eritrea: A post-colonial identity
Ethnicity-based social stratification systems
The Habesha identity
The meanings of skin colour in Eritrea
The South African Socio-Cultural Context
Race in pre-Apartheid
Race under Apartheid (1948-1994)
The everyday common sense aspects of Apartheid‘s racial identities Petty Apartheid
Apartheid as an ethnicisation project
Race in post-Apartheid South Africa (since 1994)
International Literature on Racialisation of Immigrants Transitioning from one racialised society to another
Resisting racialisation
Multiple self-identifications
CHAPTER FOUR: METHODOLOGY
Introduction
Qualitative Methodology
Justification for choosing IPA for this research
An interpretative phenomenological research approach Phenomenology
Participant recruitment and sampling strategy
Positionality
Reflexivity: my role in the research process
Ethical considerations
CHAPTER FIVE: EXPERIENCING RACIAL CATEGORISATION ON BUREAUCRATIC FORMS
Introduction
Encountering Racialisation on Various Official Forms
Discussion
CHAPTER SIX: EXPERIENCING RACIALISATION IN EVERYDAY SOCIAL INTERACTIONS
Introduction
Racialised as coloured
Racialised as indian
Racialised alternately as indian and coloured
Racialised as black
Discussion
CHAPTER SEVEN: RACIAL CATEGORIES AS MEANINGLESS AND CONSTRUCTING ETHNIC SELF- IDENTIFICATION
Introduction
Race and racial categorisation as meaningless
Discussion
CHAPTER EIGHT: ADOPTING BLACK AND COLOURED SELFIDENTIFICATIONS
Introduction
Self-Identified as Black
Discussion
CHAPTER NINE: CONCLUSION
Introduction
Contributions of the Study
REFERENCES
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