Mixed Race Studies

Partnered fathers bringing up their mixed-/multi-race children: an exploratory comparison of racial projects in Britain and New Zealand

Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power
Published online: 2015-09-23
DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2015.1091320

Rosalind Edwards, Professor of Sociology; Social Sciences Director of Research and Enterprise; Co-director, ESRC National Centre for Research Methods
University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

This article explores how fathers in couple relationships where their partner is from a different racial background understand bringing up their children. Drawing on a small-scale, in-depth comparison of fathers’ accounts in Britain and New Zealand, and using the analytic concept of racial projects, fathers’ activities towards and hopes for their children’s identity and affiliation are revealed as keyed into historically situated social and political forces. Particular national racial projects and histories of coloniser and colonised are (re)created and reflected in the various typifications (ideal orientations) informing the fathers’ racial projects. These might be concerned with mixed, single or transcendent senses of belonging, in individual or collective ways, each of which was in various forms of dialogue with race.

Read or purchase the article here.

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

An Exploration of Racial Considerations in Partnered Fathers’ Involvement in Bringing Up Their Mixed-/Multi-Race Children in Britain and New Zealand

Fathering: A Journal of Theory, Research, and Practice about Men as Fathers
Volume 13, Number 2 (2015)
26 pages

Rosalind Edwards, Professor of Sociology
University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

Chamion Caballero, Visiting Senior Fellow
Department for Social Policy
London School of Economics

This article considers how partnered fathers’ involvement may be shaped by their understandings of the salience and impact of their children’s racial belonging where fathers do not share the same race as their (biological) children. We draw on findings from a small-scale study of fathers with a partner from a different racial background living in Britain and New Zealand, to consider their involvement with their mixed or multi-racial children. Bringing up mixed/multi-race children can involve white fathers in thinking about issues that they would not necessarily otherwise have to consider. It could, for example, mean that they supported their children’s access to minority cultural knowledge and challenge racism. Equally, bringing up mixed/multi-race children can involve fathers from racial minorities in thinking about racial considerations in different ways. Notably they may transmit racial pride and cultural history to help their children deal with prejudice from the father’s own minority ethnic group as well as racism from Whites.

Read the entire document (in Microsoft Word format) here.

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.

International Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Mixedness and Mixing

Routledge
2012-05-25
224 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-59804-0

Edited by

Suki Ali, Senior Lecturer of Sociology
London School of Economics and Political Science

Chamion Cabellero, Senior Research Fellow
Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

Rosalind Edwards, Professor of Sociology
University of Southampton

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent

People from a ‘mixed’ racial and ethnic background, and people partnering and parenting across different racial and ethnic backgrounds, are increasingly visible internationally and often construed in diametrically opposed ways. On the one hand, images of racial and ethnic diversity are posed in opposition to unity and solidarity, creating a crisis of cohesive social trust. On the other hand, there are assertions that the portrayals of segregation and conflict ignore the reality of ongoing interactions between a mix of minority and majority racial, ethnic and religious cultures, where multiculture is an ordinary, unremarkable, feature of everyday social life.

This interdisciplinary volume brings internationally well-respected researchers together to explore the different contexts and concepts underpinning discussions about mixedness and mixing. Moving beyond pathologically focused research about confused identities and a dualistic black-white conception of mixedness, the book includes chapters on:

• Multiraciality and race classification
• Mixed race couples
• Mixedness in everyday life
• Mixed race politics

International Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Mixedness and Mixing develops theoretical perspectives and presents intellectually shaped empirical evidence that can deal with complexity and normalcy in order to move the debate onto more fruitful grounds. It is an important book for students and scholars of race and ethnicity.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction / Suki Ali, Chamion Caballero, Rosalind Edwards and Miri Song
2. Multiraciality and census classification in global perspective / Ann Morning
3. Mixed race across time and place: an international perspective / Ilan Katz
4. Scaling diversity: mixed-race couples, segregation and urban America / Steven Holloway
5. The geography of mixedness in England and Wales / Charlie Owen
6. From ‘Draughtboard Alley’ to ‘Brown Britain’: the ordinariness of mixedness in British life / Chamion Caballero
7. How mixedness is understood and experienced in everyday life / Peter Aspinall and Miri Song
8. Finding value on a council estate in Nottingham: voices of white working class women / Lisa McKenzie
9. How to find mixed people in quantitative datasets / Anne Unterreiner
10. When ethnicity became an important family issue in Slovenia / Mateja Sedmak
11. Same difference? Developing a critical methodological stance in critical mixed race studies / Minelle Mahtani
12. Mixed race politics / Suki Ali

Lone mothers of mixed racial and ethnic children in Britain: Comparing experiences of social attitudes and support in the 1960s and 2000s

Women’s Studies International Forum
Volume 34, Issue 6, November-December 2011
Pages 530-538
DOI: 10.1016/j.wsif.2011.06.007

Rosalind Edwards, Professor of Sociology
University of Southampton

Chamion Cabellero, Senior Research Fellow
Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

This article places side-by-side the views from lone mothers bringing up children from mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds in mid-1960s and early 2000s Britain, to consider whether the sorts of social attitudes and support these mothers experienced have changed or persisted over the past half century. The analysis compares and contrasts the general social and official attitudes that lone mothers of mixed children feel that they encounter, the support they receive from the fathers of their children, and their relationships with their own and the father’s wider family, the neighbourhood and friendship networks they draw on, and the formal supports available to them across time. The article concludes by considering some indicative trajectories of change and constancy that looking at these social attitudes and supports reveals, around negative assessments and their social expression, expectations of fathers, the availability of wider family, and the importance of informal daily support from other mothers in the same situation.

Read or purchase the article here.

Difference and Belonging, Hopes and Fears: Parenting ‘mixed’ children and the implications for career development

International Center for Guidence Studies (iCEGS)
University of Derby
Occasional Paper
2008
16 pages
3 charts; 1 table

Rosalind Edwards, Professor in Social Policy and Director of the Families & Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

From the CeGS 10th Annual Lecture held at the University of Derby on 18th December 2007

I am very pleased to give the International Centre for Guidance Studies 10th annual lecture, and to indicate some of the implications of our research on ‘mixed’ families for your field of career development and guidance. I must stress, though, that I am no expert in your field. My interest and experience lies in people’s family lives in general. So, I will do my best in making links between my interest and yours, and I hope that you will be able to fill in any gaps.

In my lecture, I will address some of the debates about how to refer to children and young people who are from a ‘mixed’ racial or ethnic, and maybe also a ‘mixed’ faith, background, and how these relate to the politics of identity. I hope that this will explain to any of you who are perplexed as to why my lecture title refers to ‘mixed’ children. Having done that, I will be moving on to more important issues. I will give you a picture of ‘mixed’ families across Britain, before looking at the ways that parents from different backgrounds attempt to deal with difference and a sense of belonging for their children, how schools may be a resource in this, and their hopes for their children’s future…

Read the entire paper here.

What’s in a name? An exploration of the significance of personal naming of ‘mixed’ children for parents from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds

The Sociological Review
Volume 56, Issue 1, February 2008
pages 39–60
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2008.00776.x

Rosalind Edwards, Professor in Social Policy
Families & Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

Chamion Caballero, Senior Research Fellow
Families & Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

This article is concerned with how and why parent couples from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds choose their children’s personal names? The limited literature on the topic of names often focuses on outcomes, using birth name registration data sets, rather than process. In particular, we consider the extent to which the personal names that ‘mixed’ couples give their children represent an individualised taste, or reflect a form of collective affiliation to family, race, ethnicity or faith. We place this discussion in the context of debates about the racial and faith affiliation of ‘mixed’ people, positing various forms of ‘pro’ or ‘post’ collective identity. We draw on in-depth interview data to show that, in the case of ‘mixed’ couple parents, while most wanted names for their children that they liked, they also wanted names that symbolised their children’s heritages. This could involve parents in complicated practices concerning who was involved in naming the children and what those names were. We conclude that, for a full understanding of naming practices and the extent to which these are individualised or affiliative it is important to address process, and that the processes we have identified for ‘mixed’ parents reveal the persistence of collective identity associated with race, ethnicity and faith alongside elements of individualised taste and transcendence, as well as some gendered features.

Read or purchase the article here.

Lone Mothers of Mixed Racial and Ethnic Children: Then and Now

Runnymede Trust
June 2010

Chamion Caballero, Senior Research Fellow
Families & Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

Rosalind Edwards, Professor in Social Policy
Families & Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

Information from the UK Census indicates that parents of children from mixed racial or ethnic backgrounds constitute one of the highest lone parent groups in the country. Like all other groups of lone parent families, these are overwhelmingly headed by mothers.

In this research report Dr. Chamion Caballero and Prof. Rosalind Edwards, of the London South Bank University, pulls together data from interviews with mothers of mixed-race children whose fathers are absent. Some of the anecdotal evidence is from those who brought up their children decades ago, and this is compared with the experiences of women doing the same today.

The report explores the specific racisms, prejudices and stereotypes that this group of women and children have been faced with – both then and now – and where, if anywhere, they have been able to turn for support.

To read the report, login or register for free here.

Parenting children from ‘mixed’ racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds: typifications of difference and belonging

Ethnic and Racial Studies
First Published on: 2009-10-29
Volume 33, Issue 6 (preview)
DOI: 10.1080/01419870903318185

Rosalind Edwards, Professor in Social Policy
Families & Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

Chamion Caballero, Senior Research Fellow
Families & Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

Shuby Puthussery, Senior Research Fellow
Family and Parenting Institute, London

In this article, we draw on data from an in-depth study of thirty-five parent couples from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds to explore how they understood and negotiated difference and belonging in bringing up their children. We identify and abstract three main typifications the mothers and fathers drew on in their accounts: open individualized, mix collective and single collective, and elaborate their constituent discursive motifs. Using in-depth case studies, we then consider the part played by these typifications in how parents negotiate their understandings with their partner where they hold divergent views. We conclude that parents’ understandings are developed and situated in different personal and structural contexts that shape rather than determine their understandings and negotiations.

Read or purchase the article here.