Deterritorialization: Fragmented, Hybrid & Multiple Identities

Supranational identities challenge the conceptualization of collective identities as insular, stand-alone and independent. Along with globalization and migration, supranational regionalism changes the forms and manifestations of identities. According to Appadurai (in Basch, Schiller & Szanton-Blanc, 1994:52) globalization and migration are ushering in a deterritorialized world in which “groups are no longer tightly territorialized, spatially bounded, historically

unselfconscious, or culturally homogeneous”. In fact, countries with dispersed populations are increasingly constructing themselves as “deterritorialized nation-states” (Basch, Schiller & Szanton-Blanc, 1994:50), which implies that national identities are increasingly losing their firm grips on their citizens’ identities as they acquire new ones from transnational engagement. Basch

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(2001) notes that in the case of West Indian migrants, these multiple identities are supported by political leaders in home countries, who benefit from the maintenance of these ties in many ways, including through economic and technical assistance. Thus, identities are no longer viewed solely as a national construct, but as something borderless. Heislern agrees, noting that:

The ability to change countries of residence with relative ease and the possibility of reversing the move can mitigate the need to make lasting identity commitments. Identities can thus be partial, intermittent, and reversible in the modern Western democratic state. Order no longer depends on unalloyed loyalty stemming from immutable national identity – identity for which there is no plausible or legitimate alternative. Countries’ borders are not seen as coextensive with a comprehensive political community (Heislern in Vertovec, 2004:27).

Thus, migration has created multiple attachments to nation states, legitimizing post- national identities. However, the proliferation of deterritorialized and fragmented identities are not only the products of globalization and migration. According to Satzewich and Wong

(2006:11), the presence of ethnic communities can also endow contemporary migrants with “dual or multiple identities characterized by hybridity”. For example, migrant communities provide linkages with source countries (though collective memories, language, cross-border economic activities etc.), and yet cater to their members’ day to day needs in destination countries. As a result, individuals often develop identities that are associated with both countries. In fact, Vertovec (2001:578) stipulates that migrants often have multiple identities because their experiences expose them to a myriad of

… Histories and stereotypes of local belonging and exclusion, geographies of cultural difference and class/ethnic segregation, racialized socioeconomic

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hierarchies, degree and type of collective mobilization, access to and nature of resources, and perceptions and regulations surrounding rights and duties.

For Vertovec (2001), migration provides exposure to these different histories, experiences and culture and ways of life that often result in the formation of new identities. Similarly, Plaza (2006) in a study of second generation migrants of Caribbean origin in Canada found that the experience of migration has enamoured respondents with hybrid identities comprising a hybridity of culture, environment, and community. Nonetheless, he notes that hybrid identities are

constantly evolving as individuals interact with others and social institutions (Plaza, 2006). In addition to hybrid identities, Smith (1998) stipulates that contemporary migration has also fragmented the identities. He states that identities are often severely transformed as the self becomes “fragmented and in contention as it is dispersed over a variety of dominant and

peripheral discursive practices rather than existing as a homogeneous, centered steering mechanism” (Smith, in Vertovec, 2004). Smith (1998) further argues that migrants’ selfhood, characters and identity are affected as they traverse through alternative structures. Cross-border activities among migrants therefore result in identities that are ‘fluctuating and contingent… [Just] as the contexts through which people move in time-space change” (Smith in Vertovec, 2004:24). Thus migration challenges the stability of identities, making them difficult to predict, or to neatly categorize. Instead, as section 2.07 below shows, individuals have multiple identities that can be categorized in a concentric circle based on salience or depth. This also suggests that as intra-regional CARICOM migrants move through different countries, they might develop temporary identities, or identities that reflect fragments of the different countries that they visit.

35 2.07 Concentric Identities

Another way in which intra-regional CARICOM migrants might conceive their identities is through the image of a concentric circle. Because individuals categorize and classify

themselves in relation to other social categories and classifications (Stets et al, 2000:225), several identities can coexist (Hogg, Terry & White, 1995). In recognition of the coexisting nature of identities, Bruter (2005) stipulates that identities are often additive and are based on territorial proximity. In other words the coexistence of identities can be conceptualized as a form of concentric model (Bruter, 2005). The concentric model supposes that a person will ‘naturally’ feel closer to people from his/her own city than to people who are from other cities, regions, countries, etc. Identities progressively get weaker as we move from the individual level through the local, regional, national and supranational level such as ‘Caribbean identity’. Premdas (1996) for example, identifies four levels of Caribbean identities (sub-state, national, regional and trans- Caribbean) in a concentric-like model (see chapter 3 for details). The level of identity with a community is the inverse of the distance between the individual and the corresponding circle. Premdas (1996) thus stipulates that the sub-state ethno-cultural identity is strongest while the trans-Caribbean identity engenders the least attachment. However, because communities are included in one another, identity feelings are additive (Bruter, 2005:16).

It is important to note that the salience of one particular identity does not restrict the possibility of developing another. In their study of the connection between identity and

integration in the EU, Hooghe and Marks (2009) find that citizens who attest to a strong national identity are more, not less, likely to identify with Europe. Other studies in Europe also discover that not only do individuals have multiple social identities, they also identify with several territorial communities simultaneously (Burgess, 2002; Citrin & Sides, 2003; Diez Medrano

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2003; Marks 1999). In fact, they confirm that national identities do not weaken supranational ones (Diez Medrano 2003; Marks 1999). Increasingly, it is being found that within a

supranational context, multiple identities add up in a cumulative pattern, much like a multi- layered cake (Risse, 2005). Citrin and Sides (2003) thus conclude that regardless of citizens’ perceptions of integration, they can and have developed multiple identities, including a supranational one.

Despite these assertions, Hooghe and Marks (2004) caution that national and supranational can either reinforce or undermine each other. This is because many factors, including history, social relationships, politics and economic considerations affect identities (Hooghe & Marks, 2004). Hooghe and Marks (2004) therefore suggest that to understand how identities are constructed, one has to probe how identity is socialized, constructed and mobilized.