my sample can be described as belonging to an immigrant bourgeoisie that resists
racialization by learning to participate successfully in the U.S. economy while protecting
their “cultural individuality.” Bengalis are a part of the Asian Indian community, which is
considered to be predominantly highly educated and relatively wealthy but finds itself in a
position of subordination defined more through race/nationality than through class
(Bhattacharjee, 1992). These Bengali immigrants from India are upper-caste, upper-class,
Hindus who came as graduate students to elite schools in the US and were then hired as
professionals in high profile American institutes and firms. Nevertheless, for immigrants
who are racialized, assimilation into the white mainstream is never guaranteed. I argue that
studying the incorporation of immigrants of color using the traditional methods of looking
While studies of immigration have treated immigrants as belonging to a national
group, my goal is to provide a more nuanced approach to how racialized immigrants
negotiate their ethnicity. Following some other scholars researching Asian Indians, who
have focused on sub-groups (Ganguly 2001, Jain 1989, Leonard 1997, Gibson 1988) I
focus on the sub-ethnic group of Bengali American immigrants in the San Francisco bay
area to explore how they appropriate their pre-migration ethnicity in constructing their
adaptation and identification processes. Immigrants in my sample come from a multi-ethnic
society, where sub-ethnic identity exists within a national identity and is composed of
numerous indicators such as language, regional origin, and religion. Bozorgmehr
conceptualizes subgroup identity as internal ethnicity which refers to the presence of ethnic
groups within an immigrant group (1997). For these groups, pre-migration ethnicity often
1
It is important to point out that my study does not include Bengalis from Bangladesh who speak the same
language as my interviewees and belonged to the same state of Bengal before India was partitioned in
1947. Bangladeshis are predominantly Muslim and in the US the Bangladeshi community has a working
class identity.
2
Convention