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" Exploring 'mixed-race' identities in Scotland through a familial lens "
Pang, Mengxi
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Latin Dissertation
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| Record Number
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896208
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TLets810452
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| Main Entry
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University of Glasgow
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| Title & Author
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Exploring 'mixed-race' identities in Scotland through a familial lens\ Pang, Mengxi
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| College
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University of Glasgow
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| Date
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2018
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| Degree
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Thesis (Ph.D.)
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| student score
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2018
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| Abstract
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This thesis takes ‘mixed-race’ individuals and parents of ‘mixed-race’ children in Scotland as its subject, exploring the meanings and significance of ‘mixed-race’ and the process by which ‘mixed-race’ identities are constructed. Contributing to the burgeoning ‘mixed-race’ scholarship in Britain, and more broadly to the intersection of the sociology of ‘race’ and the sociology of family relationships literature, this thesis presents a qualitative analysis of ‘mixed-race’ identities by exploring how mixed individuals view themselves through interactions with others. Informed by a theoretical approach combining interactionist and intersectional perspectives, this thesis stresses the role of everyday interactions with family members in shaping one’s views of the self, but it also pays attention to the ways in which meanings associated with ‘mixed-race’ are conditioned by and produced in the wider social context. Based upon thirty-one in-depth interviews with ‘mixed-race’ individuals and parents of mixed children conducted over a 24-month period, this thesis qualitatively examines interviewees’ experiences and interpretations of ‘mixed-race’ by locating them within the wider socio-cultural context. Focusing on personal and family experiences of being ´mixed race’ or being associated with mixedness, this thesis pays particular attention to family dynamics, seeking to explore the ways in which family practices influence children’s attitudes towards mixed heritages. In so doing, empirical data is analysed and presented in a ‘thick description’ fashion. Illustrative cases are employed to draw out and exemplify the complex processes of negotiating and constructing meanings of ‘mixed-race’. Contending that the relative centrality of mixedness varies between individuals, the analysis shows that ‘mixed-race’ identities are embedded in various forms of social relations and conditioned by structural constraints. Due to the uneven access to symbolic and material resources, mixed individuals have different capacities to mobilise collective meanings ascribed to ethnicities in order to negotiate racialised differences. Within this process, ‘mixed-race’ families play a pertinent role in providing their children with access to knowledge about their mixed heritage. Furthermore, parents have an impact on children’s early attitudes towards their ethnic heritages by either reinterpreting or reproducing racial ideologies. Once again, parents’ priorities, strategies and specific plans to communicate the idea of ‘mixed-race’ are structured by their racialised, classed and gendered positions.
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| Subject
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HM Sociology; HQ The family. Marriage. Woman; HT Communities. Classes. Races
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| Added Entry
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University of Glasgow
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