Striking a Balance: Identity, Language, and Belonging in the Gujarati-American Immigrant Community

This project explores the question of how children of immigrants negotiate a sense of belonging through expressions of bilingualism and biculturalism in the public and private spheres. Drawing upon insights from linguistic anthropology, Asian studies, and migration studies in conjunction with information gleaned from a series of semi-structured interviews of a single informant born in the United States to parents who emigrated from India, I seek to understand how a specific experience of an individual fits into the larger discussion of identity, language, and belonging. Experiencing culture is a distinctly and exclusively human process, and this project makes sure to treat the experience of “striking a balance” between cultural identities in terms of its human effects and consequences.