Graduate student Nicole Truesdell, under the guidance of Dr. Linda Hunt, will undertake research on the relationship between racial identity, national identity, and citizenship. She will examine the varied and shifting racial and ethnic identities of long-time residents and new immigrants in England. She will focus particularly on how those identities are related to ideas of nationality; how they compare to the official new governmental racial and ethnic category system that includes a mixed-race category; and how recent immigration, which has made Britain more racially and ethnically heterogeneous, affects understandings of what it means to be British.
The researcher will conduct her research in various locations, including shopping areas, pubs, coffee shops, and markets, throughout the middle-sized city of Bristol, England. Her methodologies will include participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and textual analysis. She will also interview 50 individuals to 1) understand how Britons of different racial and ethnic backgrounds understand their place within British society; 2) examine how different ethnic populations, both individually and collectively, think about notions of Britishness; and 3) examine the use and influence of race and ethnicity in the construction of British national identity.
This research is important because it will contribute to current theoretical and policy debates centered on issues of citizenship, race and ethnicity, and rights of belonging in a context of increasing worldwide immigration. Much of the social science research on race has been done in the United States, and this project will add a useful comparative case. It also will contribute to the education of a social scientist.
