Phenomenology of ethnic identity and migration among Puerto Rican migrants
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Abstract
The purpose of this study is to describe the relationship between ethnic identity and migration as two interconnected processes of social action. A heuristic model has been devised, in the frame of a phenomenological approach supported by statistical information, in order to accomplish this purpose. Firstly, the model describes the differences or similarities between the ethnic identity of Puerto Rican migrants who, after ten consecutive years of living in the United States, decided to go back to the Island (returnees) and those who decided to remain in the United States (stayers). Secondly, it describes the process of social insertion the migrants are undergoing.
Migrants are conceptualized as active social actors who create and recreate their outer world, and while in this process, they create and recreate their inner world, their ethnic identity and their particular worldview. Migration as a process of social insertion is, in turn, conceptualized as a polymorphic and conflicting process which may take different forms of social interaction ranging from the extreme of hostility, segregation and rebellion, to the other extreme of cooperation, integration and subjugation.
A profile of returnees and stayers is constructed on the basis of data collected through participant observation,in-depth interviews and a questionnaire applied to 120 returnees in Puerto Rico and 50 stayers in the Boston area. A typology of ACCEPT/REJECT Puerto Rico's culture and institutions versus the United States' guided both the gathering and the analysis of information in terms of four possible alternatives: 1) integrarion, accept Puerto Rico reject the United States; 2) segregation, reject Puerto Rico accept the United States; 3) pluralism, accept both Puerto Rico and the United States ; 4) neo-ethnicity, reject both Puerto Rico and the United States.
This study arrives at the hypotheses that returnees exhibit characteristics of a new ethnic identity-to-be which is neither Puerto Rican nor American but Neorican. Consequently, they are undergoing a process of social insertion which falls in the typology of neo-ethnicity. The stayer, on the contrary, portrays a strong Puerto Rican ethnic identity which is tantamount to a process of social insertion that corresponds to the typology of segregation.
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Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Boston University
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