“Support Networks, Ethnic Spaces, and Fictive Kin: Indian Immigrant Women Constructing Community in the United States”
Volume 11:1-2, p. 25 (2013)
by Namita Manohar
ABSTRACT: Framed within the segmented assimilation perspective, this paper examines community construction by middle-class, professional Tamilimmigrant women in Atlanta, Georgia. It argues that community building is a fundamentally gendered settlement activity predominantly performed by Tamil women. Using gendered labor, they construct a dynamic community across the settlement process, encompassing formal and informal, ethnic and non-ethnic components and sites, to take the form of wives’ support and women’s networks, cross-cultural friendships, ethnic spaces and fictive kinship. With the emergent bonding and bridging social capital, they chart their segmented incorporation as model minorities who are ethnic. In the process however, gender, race/ethnic and class hierarchies are often reinforced.
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Article Citation:
Namita Manohar (2013) Support Networks, Ethnic Spaces, and Fictive Kin: Indian Immigrant Women Constructing Community in the United States. AAPI Nexus: Policy, Practice and Community: 2013, Vol. 11, No. 1-2, pp. 25-55.