Abstract
Children and young people’s everyday lives and relationships are both situated within their immediate environments (such as within the family or in institutional settings) as well as shaped by wider structural developments and experiences of inequalities. This means that children and young people’s social identities involve multiple and shifting positions in terms of gender, social class, race, ethnicity, age, religion, sexuality, disability/ability, and more. While many writers acknowledge the complexity and relationality of children’s social identities, there are various theoretical frameworks through which these have been conceptualized, with different implications for which children and young people’s lives are explored and which aspects of their social identities are foregrounded through research. This chapter discusses three such theoretical frameworks: (1) hybridity, (2) hyphenated identities, and (3) intersectionality. In doing so, this chapter draws attention to the importance of the historical and ontological bases of theoretical frameworks and how they impact on the understandings of children and young people’s identity work.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anthias, F., & Yuval-Davis, N. (1983). Contextualizing feminism: Gender, ethnic and class divisions. Feminist Review, 15, 62–75.
Asher, N. (2008). Listening to hyphenated Americans: Hybrid identities of youth from immigrant families. Theory Into Practice, 47(1), 12–19.
Bhabha, H. K. (2004). The location of culture. New edition with preface by author. London/New York: Routledge.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Burman, E. (2013). Conceptual resources for questioning ‘child as educator’. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 32(3), 229–243.
Calgar, A. (1997). Hyphenated identities and the limits of “culture”. In T. Modood & P. Werbner (Eds.), The politics of multiculturalism in the New Europe: Racism, identity, and community (pp. 169–185). New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Connolly, P. (1998). Racism, gender identities, and young children: Social relations in a multi-ethnic, inner-city primary school. London/New York: Routledge.
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299.
Davis, K. (2008). Intersectionality as buzzword: A sociology of science perspective on what makes a feminist theory successful. Feminist Theory, 9(1), 67–85.
Davis, J., Watson, N., & Cunnigham-Burley, S. (2008). Disabled children, ethnography and unspoken understandings: The collaborative construction of diverse identities. In P. Christensen & A. James (Eds.), Research with children: Perspectives and practices. Oxon: Routledge.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903/1982). The souls of Black folk. New York: Signet Classics.
Fine, M., & Sirin, S. R. (2007). Theorizing hyphenated selves: Researching youth development in and across contentious political contexts. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 1(1), 16–38.
Frønes, I. (1993). Changing childhood. Childhood, 1(1), 1–2.
Gabriel, S. P. (2013). ‘After the break’: Re-conceptualizing ethnicity, national identity and ‘Malaysian-Chinese’ identities. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 37(7), 1211–1224.
Giampapa, F. (2001). Hyphenated identities: Italian-Canadian youth and the negotiation of ethnic identities in Toronto. International Journal of Bilingualism, 5(3), 279–315.
Gillborn, D., Rollock, N., Vincent, C., & Ball, S. J. (2012). ‘You got a pass, so what more do you want?’: Race, class and gender intersections in the educational experiences of the Black middle class. Race Ethnicity and Education, 15(1), 121–139.
Gordon, T. (1996). Citizenship, difference and marginality in schools: Spatial and embodied aspects of gender construction. In P. Murphy & C. Gipps (Eds.), Equity in the classroom: Towards effective pedagogy for girls and boys (pp. 34–45). London: Falmer Press.
Gupta, A., & Ferguson, J. (1992). Beyond “culture”: Space, identity, and the politics of difference. Cultural Anthropology, 7(1), 6–23.
Gutierrez, C. O. N., & Hopkins, P. (2015). Introduction: Young people, gender and intersectionality. Gender, Place & Culture, 22(3), 383–389.
Haavind, H., Thorne, B., Hollway, W., & Magnusson, E. (2015). “Because nobody likes Chinese girls”: Intersecting identities and emotional experiences of subordination and resistance in school life. Childhood, 22(3), 300–315.
Haraway, D. (1987). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. In S. Harding (Ed.), The feminist standpoint theory reader: Intellectual and political controversies (pp. 81–102). London: Routledge.
Holloway, S., & Valentine, G. (2000). Children’s geographies and the new social studies of childhood. In S. Holloway & G. Valentine (Eds.), Children’s geographies: Playing, living, learning (pp. 1–22). London: Routledge.
Hopkins, P., & Noble, G. (2009). Masculinities in place: Situated identities, relations and intersectionality. Social & Cultural Geography, 10(8), 811–819.
Hopkins, P., & Pain, R. (2007). Geographies of age: Thinking relationally. Area, 39(3), 287–294.
Jenkins, R. (2008). Social identity (3rd ed.). Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge.
Katsiaficas, D., Futch, V. A., Fine, M., & Sirin, S. R. (2011). Everyday hyphens: Exploring youth identities with methodological and analytic pluralism. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 8(2), 120–139.
Khilay, S. (2014). The politics of hyphenated identities. Retrieved from http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/diversity/2014/06/the-politics-of-hyphenated-identities/. Accessed 7 Oct 2015.
Konstantoni, K. (2011). Young children’s perceptions and constructions of social identities and social implications: Promoting social justice in early childhood. Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh.
Konstantoni, K. (2012). Children’s peer relationships and social identities: Exploring cases of young children’s agency and complex interdependencies from the Minority World. Children’s Geographies, 10(3), 337–346.
Konstantoni, K. (2013). Children’s rights-based approaches: The challenges of listening to taboo/discriminatory issues and moving beyond children’s participation. International Journal of Early Years Education, 21(4), 362–374.
Kraftl, P. (2013). Beyond ‘voice’, beyond ‘agency’, beyond ‘politics’? Hybrid childhoods and some critical reflections on children’s emotional geographies. Emotion, Space and Society, 9, 13–23.
Kustatscher, M. (2015). Exploring young children’s social identities: Performing social class, gender and ethnicity in primary school. Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh.
Larkey, L. K., Hecht, M. L., & Martin, J. (1993). What’s in a name? African American ethnic identity terms and self-determination. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 12(4), 302–317.
Lee, N., & Motzkau, J. (2011). Navigating the bio-politics of childhood. Childhood, 18(1), 7–19.
McLean Hilker, L. C. (2014). Navigating adolescence and young adulthood in Rwanda during and after genocide: Intersections of ethnicity, gender and age. Children’s Geographies, 12(3), 354–368.
Moinian, F. (2009). ‘I’m Just Me!’: Children talking beyond ethnic and religious identities. Childhood, 16(1), 31–48.
Neal, A. (2001). The naming: A conceptualization of an African American connotative struggle. Journal of Black Studies, 32(1), 50–65.
Pinson, H. (2008). The excluded citizenship identity: Palestinian/Arab Israeli young people negotiating their political identities. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 29(2), 201–212.
Prout, A. (2000). Childhood bodies: Construction, agency and hybridity. In A. Prout (Ed.), The body, childhood and society (pp. 1–18). London: McMillan.
Prout, A., & James, A. (1990). A new paradigm for the sociology of childhood? Provenance, promise and problems. In A. James & A. Prout (Eds.), Constructing and reconstructing childhood. Contemporary issues in the sociological study of childhood. London/Philadelphia: Routledge/Falmer.
Raghunandan, K. (2012). Hyphenated identities: Negotiating ‘Indianness’ and being Indo-Trinidadian. The Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, 6, 1–19.
Renold, E. (2005). Girls, boys and junior sexualities: Exploring children’s gender and sexual relations in the primary school. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Rodó-de-Zárate, M. (2015). Young lesbians negotiating public space: An intersectional approach through places. Children’s Geographies, 13(4), 413–434.
Ryan, K. W. (2012). The new wave of childhood studies: Breaking the grip of bio-social dualism? Childhood, 19(4), 439–452.
Sarkar, M., & Allen, D. (2007). Hybrid identities in Quebec hip-hop: Language, territory, and ethnicity in the mix. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 6(2), 117–130.
Sirin, S. R., & Fine, M. (2007). Hyphenated selves: Muslim American youth negotiating identities on the fault lines of global conflict. Applied Developmental Science, 11(3), 151–163.
Smith, T. W. (1992). Changing racial labels: From “colored” to “negro” to “Black” to “African American”. Public Opinion Quarterly, 56(4), 496–514.
Song, S. (2009). Finding one’s place: Shifting ethnic identities of recent immigrant children from China, Haiti and Mexico in the United States. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 33(6), 1006–1031.
Spelman, E. V. (1988). Inessential woman: Problems of exclusion in feminist thought. Boston: Beacon.
Spyrou, S. (2006). Constructing ‘the Turk’ as an enemy: The complexity of stereotypes in children’s everyday worlds. South European Society and Politics, 11(1), 95–110.
Taylor, A. (2011). Reconceptualizing the ‘nature’ of childhood. Childhood, 18(4), 420–433.
Thomson, F. (2007). Are methodologies for children keeping them in their place? Children’s Geographies, 5(3), 207–218.
Thorne, B. (1993). Gender play: Girls and boys in school. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Tisdall, E. K. M. (2012). The challenge and challenging of childhood studies? Learning from disability studies and research with disabled children. Children & Society, 26(3), 181–191.
Van Ausdale, D., & Feagin, J. R. (2001). The first R: How children learn race and racism. Lanham/Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2011). The politics of belonging: Intersectional contestations. London/ Los Angeles: Sage.
Zembylas, M. (2010). Children’s construction and experience of racism and nationalism in Greek-Cypriot primary schools. Childhood, 17(3), 312–328.
Zhou, M., & Xiong, Y. S. (2005). The multifaceted American experiences of the children of Asian immigrants: Lessons for segmented assimilation. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28(6), 1119–1152.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore
About this entry
Cite this entry
Kustatscher, M., Konstantoni, K., Emejulu, A. (2015). Hybridity, Hyphens, and Intersectionality: Relational Understandings of Children and Young People’s Social Identities. In: Punch, S., Vanderbeck, R., Skelton, T. (eds) Families, Intergenerationality, and Peer Group Relations. Geographies of Children and Young People, vol 5. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-92-7_6-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-92-7_6-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Online ISBN: 978-981-4585-92-7
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Social SciencesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences