Polycultural capital and the Pasifika second generation : negotiating identities in diasporic spaces : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
Year: 2010
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This research examines the ways in which the Pasifika second generation who have \ngrown up in Aotearoa are operating culturally and explores the conditions in which \nthey construct identities. The study took a positive deviance approach focusing on \nexisting strengths within the Pasifika generation and learning from success. \nTaking a sequential explanatory mixed-methods approach, the project analysed data \nfrom the Youth2000 Survey, which included over one thousand Pasifika participants \n(n=1114). This showed that pride in Pasifika identities, reporting that Pasifika values \nwere still important, feeling accepted by other people within one’s own ethnic group \nand outside it, and continuing to speak Pasifika languages were all associated \npositively with advantageous health, educational or wellbeing variables. Individual \ninterviews with fourteen high-achieving, second generation Pasifika professionals, \nfurther explored connections between identity, acceptance and belonging. \nSecond generation participants talked about performing identities across many spaces \nof symbolic interaction where they were called into relation with multiple others. \nThese were local, cross-cultural, national and transnational relational spaces made \npossible via migration, diaspora, and relocation resulting in complex negotiations of \nsameness and difference. In these spaces they encountered competing narratives about \nwho Pasifika peoples ought to be. \nThe diasporic second generation often had to negotiate belonging from beyond the \nlimits of what was validated as having most symbolic authority. Symbolic struggle \nand the politics of cultural reproduction came to the fore, as did the contested nature of \nPasifika imaginaries. Identifications were further complicated by demands for crosscultural \ncoherence and legibility across spaces, and shifting politics of recognition. \nPolycultural capital was coined to describe the ability to accumulate culturally diverse \nsymbolic resources, negotiate between them and strategically deploy different cultural \nresources in contextually specific and advantageous ways. Performing strategic \nessentialism, strategic ignorance, strategic hybridity, dialogic distance, and bridging, \nwere just some of the patterns identified. Manulua describes an aesthetic of shifting \nmultidimensional cultural resolutions across many spaces in-between.
Author: Karlo Mila‐Schaaf
Language: English
Subfield: Demography
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W34853001