Marieke Slootman: Ethnic Identity, Social Mobility and the Role of Soulmates
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BOOK REVIEW
Marieke Slootman: Ethnic Identity, Social Mobility and the Role of Soulmates Springer Nature, Switzerland, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2018, p 196 Maguipuinamei Rejoyson Thangal1
Received: 10 September 2019 / Accepted: 15 May 2020 Ó National Academy of Psychology (NAOP) India 2020
Transnational migration entails profound implications on acculturation, integration, assimilation, home, nation, identity and belonging. Multiple factors mediate these psycho-social processes to produce varying tendencies and trajectories. Set in the ominous background of a global climate of cultural nationalism characterized by a political rhetoric that betrays obligatory assimilation, Slootman’s book—Ethnic Identity, Social Mobility and the Role of Soulmates—is a scholarly account of how immigrants negotiate this landscape of distrust of loyalty towards the host country. The specific purpose of the book is to challenge the static and essentialist views of culture and counter the assimilation rhetoric underscored by the Dutch integration politics. The point of departure is that ethnic identification and national belonging are not a zero-sum game. Both can co-exist concurrently. Evidently enough, the objective of the book is to provide a critical exegesis of the tension between ethnic identification and national belonging among immigrants and debunk the narrative that juxtaposes ethnic and national identifications as antithetical to each other. The import of the work is attested not only by the fact that it is the book avatar of the best Dutch Sociological Dissertation 2013/2014 awarded by the Dutch Sociological Association (NSV) but had also deservingly found its place in the official book series of IMISCOE, the largest network of excellence on migration and diversity. The book is organized into eight carefully curated chapters which logically weaves a lucid narrative covering
& Maguipuinamei Rejoyson Thangal [email protected] 1
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016, India
all conceivable aspects of the project she has undertaken. In addition to the excellent text, the manicured layouts of the content, titles and subtitles, appendices, figures and tables ensured the visual aesthetics of a reader-friendly book. Slootman foregrounds the theme of the book by providing a snapshot of one of the speeches made by an ethnic minority that underscores his ethnic identity at the annual Golden Calf award of the Netherlands Film festival. In the first chapter, the author provides sketches of four secondgeneration Turkish and Moroccan adults to demonstrate that ethnic identification can take different trajectories based on differences in the proximate contextual, relational and temporal circumstances. In the second chapter, the author makes a strong critique of the Warner’s and Srole’s school of straight-line assimilation approach to ethnic identification. Invoking Portes and Zhou’s segmented assimilation theory as well as the symbolic ethnicity theory o
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