Mixed Race Studies

The Palgrave International Handbook of Mixed Racial and Ethnic Classification

Palgrave Macmillan
2020-01-21
817 pages
16 b/w illustrations, 17 illustrations in colour
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-22873-6
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-22874-3
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-22874-3

Edited by:

Zarine L. Rocha, Managing Editor
Current Sociology and Asian Journal of Social Science

Peter J. Aspinall, Emeritus Reader in Population Health
University of Kent, United Kingdom

Highlights

• Shows how classification and collection processes around mixedness differ between countries and how measurement has been changing over time
• Provides a window into the radical global changes in the trend towards multiple racial/ethnic self-identification that has been a feature of the recent past
• The first and only handbook to directly address the classification of mixed race/ethnicity on a global scale
• Pays specific attention to both the standard classifications and the range of uses these are put to – including social surveys and administrative data – rather than just census forms and data

This handbook provides a global study of the classification of mixed race and ethnicity at the state level, bringing together a diverse range of country case studies from around the world.

The classification of race and ethnicity by the state is a common way to organize and make sense of populations in many countries, from the national census and birth and death records, to identity cards and household surveys. As populations have grown, diversified, and become increasingly transnational and mobile, single and mutually exclusive categories struggle to adequately capture the complexity of identities and heritages in multicultural societies. State motivations for classification vary widely, and have shifted over time, ranging from subjugation and exclusion to remediation and addressing inequalities. The chapters in this handbook illustrate how differing histories and contemporary realities have led states to count and classify mixedness in different ways, for different reasons.

This collection will serve as a key reference point on the international classification of mixed race and ethnicity for students and scholars across sociology, ethnic and racial studies, and public policy, as well as policy makers and practitioners.

Table of Contents

• Front Matter
• Introduction: Measuring Mixedness Around the World / Zarine L. Rocha, Peter J. Aspinall
• Race and Ethnicity Classification in British Colonial and Early Commonwealth Censuses / Anthony J. Christopher
• The Americas
  • Front Matter
  • Introduction: North and South America / Peter J. Aspinall, Zarine L. Rocha
  • The Canadian Census and Mixed Race: Tracking Mixed Race Through Ancestry, Visible Minority Status, and Métis Population Groups in Canada / Danielle Kwan-Lafond, Shannon Winterstein
  • Methods of Measuring Multiracial Americans / Melissa R. Herman
  • Mixed Race in Brazil: Classification, Quantification, and Identification / G. Reginald Daniel, Rafael J. Hernández
  • Mexico: Creating Mixed Ethnicity Citizens for the Mestizo Nation / Pablo Mateos
  • Boundless Heterogeneity: ‘Callaloo’ Complexity and the Measurement of Mixedness in Trinidad and Tobago / Sue Ann Barratt
  • Mixed race in Argentina: Concealing Mixture in the ‘White’ Nation / Lea Natalia Geler, Mariela Eva Rodríguez
  • Colombia: The Meaning and Measuring of Mixedness / Peter Wade
• Europe and the UK
  • Front Matter
  • Introduction: Europe and the United Kingdom / Peter J. Aspinall, Zarine L. Rocha
  • The Path to Official Recognition of ‘Mixedness’ in the United Kingdom / Peter J. Aspinall
  • Measuring Mixedness in Ireland: Constructing Sameness and Difference / Elaine Moriarty
  • The Identification of Mixed People in France: National Myth and Recognition of Family Migration Paths / Anne Unterreiner
  • Controversial Approaches to Measuring Mixed-Race in Belgium: The (In)Visibility of the Mixed-Race Population / Laura Odasso
  • The Weight of German History: Racial Blindness and Identification of People with a Migration Background / Anne Unterreiner
  • Mixed, Merged, and Split Ethnic Identities in the Russian Federation / Sergei V. Sokolovskiy
  • Mixedness as a Non-Existent Category in Slovenia / Mateja Sedmak
  • Mixed Identities in Italy: A Country in Denial / Angelica Pesarini, Guido Tintori
  • (Not) Measuring Mixedness in the Netherlands / Guno Jones, Betty de Hart
  • Mixed Race and Ethnicity in Sweden: A Sociological Analysis / Ioanna Blasko, Nikolay Zakharov
• Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia and the Caucasus
  • Front Matter
  • Introduction: Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia and the Caucasus / Zarine L. Rocha, Peter J. Aspinall
  • The Classification of South Africa’s Mixed-Heritage Peoples 1910–2011: A Century of Conflation, Contradiction, Containment, and Contention / George T. H. Ellison, Thea de Wet
  • The Immeasurability of Racial and Mixed Identity in Mauritius / Rosabelle Boswell
  • Neither/Nor: The Complex Attachments of Zimbabwe’s Coloureds / Kelly M. Nims
  • Measuring Mixedness in Zambia: Creating and Erasing Coloureds in Zambia’s Colonial and Post-colonial Census, 1921 to 2010 / Juliette Milner-Thornton
  • Racial and Ethnic Mobilization and Classification in Kenya / Babere Kerata Chacha, Wanjiku Chiuri, Kenneth O. Nyangena
  • Making the Invisible Visible: Experiences of Mixedness for Binational People in Morocco / Gwendolyn Gilliéron
  • Measuring Mixedness: A Case Study of the Kyrgyz Republic / Asel Myrzabekova
• Asia and the Pacific
  • Front Matter
  • Introduction: The Asia Pacific Region / Zarine L. Rocha, Peter J. Aspinall
  • Where You Feel You Belong: Classifying Ethnicity and Mixedness in New Zealand / Robert Didham, Zarine L. Rocha
  • Measuring Mixedness in Australia / Farida Fozdar, Catriona Stevens
  • Measuring Race, Mixed Race, and Multiracialism in Singapore / Zarine L. Rocha, Brenda S. A. Yeoh
  • Multiracial in Malaysia: Categories, Classification, and Campur in Contemporary Everyday Life / Geetha Reddy, Hema Preya Selvanathan
  • Anglo-Indians in Colonial India: Historical Demography, Categorization, and Identity / Uther Charlton-Stevens
  • Mixed Racial and Ethnic Classification in the Philippines / Megumi Hara, Jocelyn O. Celero
  • Vaevaeina o le toloa (Counting the Toloa): Counting Mixed Ethnicity in the Pacific, 1975–2014 / Patrick Broman, Polly Atatoa Carr, Byron Malaela Sotiata Seiuli
  • Measuring Mixed Race: ‘We the Half-Castes of Papua and New Guinea’ / Kirsten McGavin
  • Measuring Mixedness in China: A Study in Four Parts / Cathryn H. Clayton
  • Belonging Across Religion, Race, and Nation in Burma-Myanmar / Chie Ikeya
  • Recognition of Multiracial and Multiethnic Japanese: Historical Trends, Classification, and Ways Forward / Sayaka Osanami Törngren, Hyoue Okamura
• Back Matter

Mixed Race Identities in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands

Routledge
2016-12-20
246 pages
Hardback ISBN: 9781138677708

Edited by:

Farida Fozdar, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology
University of Western Australia

Kirsten McGavin, Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Anthropology)
School of Social Science
University of Queensland

This volume offers a “southern,” Pacific Ocean perspective on the topic of racial hybridity, exploring it through a series of case studies from around the Australo-Pacific region, a region unique as a result of its very particular colonial histories. Focusing on the interaction between “race” and culture, especially in terms of visibility and self-defined identity; and the particular characteristics of political, cultural and social formations in the countries of this region, the book explores the complexity of the lived mixed race experience, the structural forces of particular colonial and post-colonial environments and political regimes, and historical influences on contemporary identities and cultural expressions of mixed-ness.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: “Mixed Race” in the Australo-Pacific Region / Kirsten McGavin and Farida Fozdar
• 1. Descentism in Three Acts / Emma Kowal
• 2. Reimagining Ancestry in Northern Australia’s Gulf Country: The Politics of History, Indigeneity and Race / David Trigger and Richard Martin
• 3. Raising “Mixed Race” Asian/European Migrant Children in Australia / Maki Meyer and Farida Fozdar
• 4. “See This Skin, It Is Black and White Together” / Margot Ford and Ailsa Purdon
• 5. Asian (Con)Fusion: Identity Markers Among Mixed-Asian “Race” Individuals in Perth, Western Australia / Crystal Abidin
• 6. Who Are We?German-Tongan Identity in New Zealand and Australia / Kasia Cook
• 7. Constructing and Interpreting “Mixed Race” and “Mixed Parentage” in Papua New Guinea / Helen Johnson and Kirsten McGavin
• 8. Papua New Guinean-Australian Hybridity: Reflections of an “Insider” / Anita Iko Togolo
• 9. The Transformations of the “Métis Question” in New Caledonia (1853-2009) / Adrian Muckle and Benoit Trepied
• 10. A Categorical Failure: “Mixed Race” in Colonial Papua New Guinea / Michael Goddard
• 11. Searching for a Sound: Music and “Mixed Race” Identity in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea / Michael Webb
• 12. Lingering Legacies of German Colonialism: The “Mixed Race” Diasporas in Oceania / Christine Winter
• 13. “Mixed Race” Identity and West Papuan Political Activism: Two Case Studies / Camellia Webb-Gannon
• 14. “It’s a Bicultural Nation. But the Journey Towards True Biculturalism, It’s Not There Yet”: Exploring Fathers’ Involvement in Bringing Up Their Mixed Race Children in New Zealand / Rosalind Edwards
• 15. When “Mixed Race” Is No Longer “Mixed”: A Case from Aotearoa/New Zealand / Neriko Musha Doerr

Mixed Race in Australia and the region

University of Western Australia (UWA)
2015-06-08 through 2015-06-10

Conveners: Farida Fozdar

People of ‘mixed race’ are often seen as marginal individuals managing cultural and psychological tensions, or alternatively valorised as the vanguard of an integrated, post-racial, cosmopolitan world (Edwards et al. 2012). Such dichotomies ignore the complex lived reality of being mixed – ranging from ‘passing’, to constructing multiracial identities, to embracing a cultural identity not necessarily reflected in one’s appearance (see Perkins, 2007; Paradies, 2006; Song and Aspinall, 2012; Jones, 2011). Mixed identities are not singular and fixed, but multiple and fluid (Nandi & Platt 2012; Tilbury, 2007; Paradies, 2006), often characterised by ‘ordinariness’ (Caballero, 2012). The lived experience of being ‘mixed’ is strongly influenced by political and social context (Luke and Luke, 1999). While a growing body of research exists on ‘mixed race’, more productive approaches are needed to investigate the cultural production of ‘mixedness’.

Perhaps surprisingly, Australia and the region lag behind the rest of the world in research on ‘mixed race’. There has been little public debate about the place of ‘mixed race’ in Australia and New Zealand (see Fozdar and Perkins, 2014). The subject does rate a hearing in Australia, however, in regard to people of mixed Aboriginal descent (Andrew Bolt style) (see Paradies, 2006). The social and political contexts of mixed race in Australia, New Zealand and the region offer complex histories of colonisation and migration, making this region an important counterpoint to the large bodies of research undertaken in the UK and US.

We invite papers on mixed race in Australia and surrounding countries, with a particular focus on mixed race across the life course (Csizmadia, 2012), the health and development of young people and families; cross-country comparison, and transgenerational effects. We are keen to include papers on mixed race of all types.

Invited speakers include:

• Prof Rosalind Edwards (Southampton)
• Dr Chamion Caballero (LSE)
• Prof Yin Paradies (Deakin)
• Prof David Trigger (UQ)
• Dr Kirsten McGavin (UQ)

View the program guide here.

Being “Nesian”: Pacific Islander Identity in Australia

The Contemporary Pacific
Volume 26, Number 1, 2014
pages 126-154
DOI: 10.1353/cp.2014.0013

Kirsten McGavin, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Anthropology
University of Queensland, Australia

Pacific Islanders in Australia use the terms “Islander” and “Pacific Islander” in many ways and in different circumstances to define themselves and others. Through invoking discourses including these terms, Pacific Islanders both consciously draw on “panethnicity” and subconsciously strengthen and support their localized identities. In this way, Pacific Islanders blur the ethno-cultural and sociopolitical boundaries that traditionally separate groups with connections across a diverse range of countries. Indeed, diasporic settings give rise to transnationalist sentiment and actions and serve to strengthen panethnic identity. Using insider and auto-anthropology and ethnographic research techniques, I draw on my experiences as an Australian of Pacific Islander descent and use examples drawn from my involvement in formalized community groups, cultural events, and social functions. In doing so, I argue that the expression of Islander and Pacific Islander identity is entwined with ideas about “race,” place, stereotypes, and behavior that highlight the dynamic ethnogenesis of this group.