WITHDRAWN: Multiple Meanings of Asian American Identity: A Systematic Review of Qualitative Research

Background and Purpose:

In recent years, Asian American adolescents and young adults have and continue to navigate times of political polarization, xenophobic policies and rhetoric, widespread uprisings in resistance to anti-Black racism, and spikes in violence toward Asian Americans during the Covid-19 pandemic. These events have palpable implications for young Asian Americans’ identity development and wellbeing. Foregrounded is the need to better understand, in their own words, how young people make sense of and experience their Asian American identity, and the ways in which Asian American identity formations that foster and limit their wellbeing, sense of agency, and orientations toward effecting change take shape. The present systematic review of qualitative studies seeks to answer the following question: “What meanings and experiences are connected to Asian American identity, particularly for adolescents and young adults, and how are these meanings shaped?”

Methods:

The process of identifying qualitative literature sources for analysis is iterative, involving first a broad search of peer-reviewed literature with relevant keywords (i.e., “Asian American,” “identity,” and “qualitative”), a review of literature citing relevant sources, then progression into new searches with additional keywords until a saturation point is met. An initial total of 25 sources (peer-reviewed, based in the US, non-meta analysis) have been included in this preliminary thematic analysis. Each of these sources were summarized in the form of data analysis memos detailing its research topic, methods, and findings. These memos were reviewed via a hybrid inductive-deductive qualitative coding process, from which emerged a synthesis of prominent themes.

Findings:

Three primary constructions of Asian American identity emerged from the analysis. Cultural Asian American identity reflects both a sense of shared cultural characteristics and experiences among Asian Americans, as well as one’s own personal journey in navigating multiple cultural contexts. Racialized Asian American identity is largely steeped in nativism and a singularized model minority myth that casts Asian Americans as high-achieving perpetual outsiders. In contrast, political Asian American identity reflects a ‘reclaiming’ of what it means to be Asian American by centering a liberatory ideology and praxis that situates Asian American lives in context of White supremacy, imperialism, xenophobia, and other systems of oppression. Findings also revealed the engagement of narratives and counterstories as burgeoning methods of exploring Asian American identity and experiences.

Conclusions and Implications:

The multiple and shifting dimensions of how young people make sense and meaning of their Asian American identity signify the critical connections between the personal and the political. Reflexive insight into the dynamic interplay between young people’s agentic personhood, lived experiences, and socio-historical contexts and forces in their identity constructions calls for an examination of qualitative inquiries that center the experiential knowledge of young Asian Americans themselves. The sharing of personal (counter)narratives emerged in this review as an emergent method to understand the nuances of how young Asian Americans make sense of their worlds and their places within them, and spotlight opportunities to cultivate an identity that fosters empowered agency, critical hope, and care for themselves and their communities.