In southeast Michigan, tens of thousands of Iraqi American transmigrants have made a home for themselves in metro Detroit in recent decades and they sustain most of their religious beliefs, social norms, cultural values, and national ties. At the same time, they have had to change their social life in sometimes radical ways as they adjust to American society. These changes have led them to build their own cultural and social identity which differs from both American and Iraqi identity and consists of a transnational Iraqi American identity. This study will explore the sociocultural identities that have emerged within the Iraqi-American community in Dearborn and Detroit. The study provides an illustration of the transnational networks, activities, patterns of living, and ideologies that recent migrants have created to span their homeland and host societies. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Dearborn and Warrendale in addition to social media, ethnographic discourse analysis, and study of the community social networks.

The Tohono O'odham Nation of southern Arizona and northern Sonora Mexico has two distinct and distinctive cultural, social, political and federal histories. The American government politically acknowledges one group while the other is entrenched in Mexican social policy that regards Indigenous peoples as equals to the Mestizo population known as campesinos or peasants. The Sonoran Tohono O'odham community of Al Pi'ichkin or Pitiquito, Sonora, Mexico, has managed to persist and survive into the twenty first century despite the presence of an international boundary and the assimilative efforts of Mexican socio-federal Indian policy.This is an exploration of the issue of cultural continuity within the community of Pitiquito, Sonora Mexico via the following eight themes which emerged from my field work: the oral tradition; kinship; tradition and modernity in 2007; the Feast of St. Francis at Magdalena de Kino; nationalism; importance of photography; identity; and cultural persistence. The final ceramic mural along with the accompanying essay will constitute my Ph.D. dissertation project.