Constructing the “new ethnicities”: media, sexuality, and diaspora identity in the lives of South Asian immigrant girls

This paper posits that adolescence, as experienced by girls of immigrant diaspora groups, is complicated by issues of race, culture and nation that intersect with discourses of sex and gender. In terms of globalization theory, sexuality is conceptualized as a locus of cultural hybridization; media representations of sexuality often mark the global/local nexus for diaspora peoples. In this study, a series of in‐depth interviews were conducted with South Asian American girls in order to analyze the role of media in their sexual identity constructions. The focus group data revealed radical rearticulations of sexual identity from an “interstitial” audience position that involved oppositional readings of various media texts. These rearticulations can be seen as part of the project of forging new ethnicities in the diaspora context.