^aUniversity of Massachusetts-Amherst, Amherst, MA

Abstract

This article examines shifting negotiations of language, identity, and acculturation among US-raised Dominicans in a changing community in Providence, RI. It documents multiple, situational claims of identity among high-school students and situational discrepancies between the ways US-raised Dominicans see themselves and the black–white racial terms in which others sometimes see them. Narrative and interview data from second-generation adults suggest that issues of ethnic/racial identity shift for many individuals as they become re-immersed in Spanish-speaking contexts as adults. The situational and shifting nature of these identity negotiations suggests limitations of the dominant theories of immigrant acculturation in the US – assimilation and segmented assimilation – for understanding trajectories of acculturation among this second-generation group.