Racial Formation in the Post-September 11 Era: The Paradoxical Positioning of Working Class South Asian American Youth

In this dissertation I aim to show that there has been a shift in racial formation in the United States since the terrorist attacks of September 11th. I chart this new racial formation through theorizing from the everyday realities of working class, predominantly Muslim, South Asian and Indo-Caribbean youth in New York City, some of whom were undocumented. By utilizing ethnographic methods, I dissect their seemingly contradictory lived experiences of 1) national belonging stemming from multicultural comfort in a city famous for its diversity and 2) exclusion from cultural citizenship dictated by struggles with modes of racialization, surveillance, and criminalization more commonly associated with Arabs, Blacks, and Latinos.\tI map out the current racial formation, which explains South Asians’ paradoxical positioning, through examining the intersection of state policies with intersubjective and emotional experiences of race and racism. I find that South Asians' seemingly contradictory positioning is produced through three mechanisms of the current racial formation: the emphasis on diversity and pervasiveness of color blind ideology; shifting notions of race that criminalize widening domains of difference, especially religion and immigration status; and national security panics centered on youth, terrorism, and crime. I demonstrate how multicultural belonging, color blind ideology, and racial exclusion — despite their apparent contradictions — shape cultural citizenship and function together as a means of social control in the 21st century. \tAnalyzing the paradoxical position of South Asians, as the country moves toward becoming a majority minority nation, can lead to revelations about race and racism, their connections with cultural citizenship, and their relations to power beyond a single scale. Understanding racial formation after September 11th provides the possibility to learn about race more broadly — including its continued significance and its evolution during times of war, nativism, and coalition building.