This thesis aims to explore how identity takes shape within mixed race persons whom have Latin American background, in today’s Sweden, based on four individual in-depth interviews. The central characters in this paper were found through a convenience sample within my circle of acquaintances, due to the limited framework of this thesis. Six themes were found through coding and thematising: questioning Swedishness, invisible camouflage, it is positive to be mixed, internalized racism, to (en)counter racism and nothing to 100 %.  By means of a feminist phenomenological approach, this thesis has shown that being mixed race creates an ethnic insecurity and a contingency in one’s own identity formation, since the experience of being Swedish constantly is questioned based on physical appearance and/or name. However, all of the informants also experienced joy in having several backgrounds; it was seen as empowering, a possibility and a contribution to the generally white Swedishness. In that way the informants’ refusal to conform to the limiting norms of Swedishness, can be seen as a transcendency of the Swedish hegemony and an expansion of what it means to be Swedish. / Esta tesis trata de explorar como la identidad se crea dentro de personas de raza mixta, quienes tienen origen de América Latina, en Suecia hoy, basado en cuatro entrevistas profundas. Las personas centrales en este ensayo los encontré usando una muestra de conveniencia, ya que el esbozo era restringido. Yo conozco a lxs informantes. Seis temas se cristalizaron a través de codificar y tematizar: Suequidad que es dudoso, camuflaje invisible, ser mixto es positivo, racismo internalizado, enfrentar racismo y nada hasta 100 %. Por lo medio de un enfoque fenomenológico feminista, esta tesis ha encontrado que ser raza mixta crea una inseguridad étnica y contingencia en la formación de identidad en ellas, ya que la experiencia de ser suecx constantemente es dudosa basado en apariencia física y/o nombre. Sin embargo, todas lxs informantes también sintieron alegría en tener varios orígenes; era visto como un poder, una posibilidad y una contribución a la suequidad, que en general es blanca. De esa manera el rechazo de adaptarse a las normas de suequidad limitativas de lxs informantes, puede ser visto como una trascendencia de la hegemonía sueca y una expansión de lo que significa ser suecx.

The aim of the thesis is to examine contemporary constructions of mixed race in the United States and Britain through the examination of two types of racial projects: the national census and voluntary and community organisations focused on mixed race. Using a combination of critical discourse analysis and qualitative interviews, the research analyses the ways in which mixed race is being described, conceptualised, and constructed through macro- and meso-level racial projects in each nation, in order to compare the racial formation processes that are occurring in the early twenty-first century's "mixed race moment". The thesis builds upon racial formation theory, which argues that the concept of "race" is never fully fixed, but rather is made through socio-historical processes that create, inhabit, transform, and destroy racialised notions over time and context (Omi and Winant 1986, 1994, 2015). The theory examines the struggles over racialised meanings that occur between macro-level and micro-level racial projects. This thesis aims to fill the gap left by this focus through examining racial projects that occupy the socio-political "middle ground" between macro- and micro-level projects: the "meso-level."The research examines the ways in which the state constructs mixed race in the United States and Britain. Each nation's census allowed for mixed race self identification in 2000 and 2001, respectively. The thesis examines the social, historical, and political processes that led to mixed race options at that particular time. It argues that the ways in which the census organisations report upon mixed race functions as a discursive practice that provides an official construction of mixed race through simultaneously reflecting and shaping racialised descriptions and narratives within each nation. The thesis examines the usefulness of "meso-level" projects by exploring the role of mixed race organisations in racial formation processes through the examination of six meso-level mechanisms of racialisation: social identity, social capital, collective action, idioculture, extended networks, and civil society (Fine 2012). Incorporating Michel Foucault's notion of "governmentality" (Gordon 1991), the thesis highlights the ways that mixed race organisations have interacted directly and indirectly with macro-level bodies during and after the addition of the mixed race census options as well as other routes of interaction specific to each national context. The thesis argues that the racialisation that occurs at the macro-level holds a "default" role with which mixed race organisations then engage. This highlights the relative roles of power the institutions have in each national context and the ways they are managed through relations fostered through governmentality. The thesis also examines the discourses used by mixed race organisations in the US and Britain as meso-level racial projects and poses the argument that the varied usage of multiple racialised paradigms leads to an increased relative fluidity in the constructions of mixed race than their respective macro-level projects. The systematic cross-national comparison of the ways mixed race is constructed in the US and Britain highlights the ways in which both macro-level and meso-level organisations articulate and promote racialised ideology through their relative levels of power in society. By analysing and comparing these racial projects and their interactions, the paradigms and discourses used reveal the particularities and overlaps by these organisations as they contest, negotiate, and accept formations of mixed race.

This exploratory study draws from six semi-structured interviews with multiracial Nikkei women living in Canada to investigate their experiences of mixed race belonging. After establishing belonging as intrinsic to the very nature of how multiraciality and Asianness have been historically constructed and are presently experienced in Canada, three areas relevant to how the interviewees experience mixed race belonging are then considered: multiracial name modification (MRNM), the nation and Canadianness, and Japaneseness in Canada. This study also considers how the recent racial climate of pandemic-related anti-Asian racism has potentially impacted how mixed race belonging is experienced by the interviewees, which reveals two additional areas of interest: the amplified experience of multiracial dysmorphia (MRD) during this time and the emergence of pan-Asianness in Canada as a potential new site of belonging. As captured, issues of mixed race belonging arise in various spheres of the interviewees' lives because of the very ways in which multiraciality and Asianness have been constructed and maintained in the Canadian social landscape. In doing so, this study hopes to drive home how issues of mixed race belonging speak more to the problematic nature of "race" itself than of mixed race people themselves.

Racial identity can be defined as the personal understanding, both explicitly and implicitly, that one is similar to some people and different from others, according to concepts based around the idea of race. In the US, there has been a lot of research, including on the identity of persons having parents from different races. However, in the UK, there is the view that race is a taboo topic, and this is particularly true in psychology; hence strikingly little such research has been conducted. This situation seems most evident particularly regarding how mixed-race persons develop their racial identity. This thesis begins to redress the imbalance. A literature review on "race (Chapter 1)", is followed by a literature review on "mixed-race (Chapter 2)", with many ideas forwarded in these two chapters then tested in five further qualitative and/or quantitative research chapters. In order, these investigate the salience of race at the explicit level (Chapter 3), then at the implicit level (Chapter 4, regarding black and white persons). Chapters then investigate the mixed-race identity qualitatively first in adults (Chapter 5), and then qualitatively/quantitatively alongside self-esteem measures in adolescents (Chapter 6); before a fifth empirical chapter considers the implicit level again but this time specifically regarding attitudes by and towards mixed-race persons (Chapter 7). Taken together, the five empirical chapters find that the parental races tend to see "race" differently to each other. Regarding specifically mixed-race, we find that mixed-race persons shift in identity first from childhood (a more black identity) to adolescence (white identity), and then back again from adolescence to young adulthood (black identity). We additionally find that mixed-race persons tend to have a less definite sense of identity than their parental races, and that this view of mixed-race is also held by one of the parental groups (the white group). It is hoped that further research will now begin to build on these findings. The final chapter (Chapter 8) offers a start at this, outlining a new theoretical account of the development of a mixed-race identity.

Studies have shown that adults often categorize mixed-race individuals of White and non-White descent as members of the non-White racial group, an effect said to be reminiscent of the “hypodescent” or “one-drop rule.” This effect has not yet been thoroughly studied in infants, although 9-month-old infants have been shown to be able to categorize mono-racial faces into different racial groups. In the present study, the perception of mixed-race White and Asian/Asian American faces was studied in sixteen 8.5-month-old infants. The infants were randomly assigned to two stimulus groups. The stimuli were the photographed faces of female college students who had self-identified as White, Asian/Asian American, or a 50-50 mix of those two races. Half the infants were habituated to White faces and half were habituated to Asian/Asian American faces, after which all infants were shown a mixed-race face. The results revealed that only infants in the White stimulus group recovered looking to the mixed-race face. This effect suggests that 8.5- month-old infants might see the mixed-race face as part of a different racial group than the White faces, and may see the mixed-race face as part of the same racial group as the Asian faces. Implications of this study on a larger scale are discussed. Further research including a larger sample size and participants of Asian/Asian American descent is recommended.

Pulling from past research on cross-race identifications, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of both mixed race participants and perpetrators on eyewitness accuracy and confidence levels. In the study, participants will be shown a randomly assigned photograph of an individual from one of three racial categories: Asian, Mixed (some part Asian), and non-Asian. They will then be asked to read a fictional convenience store robbery vignette and identify the perpetrator from a 9 person simultaneous photo lineup, rate their confidence, and answer a series of questions regarding the diversity of their neighborhood, past or present school or workplace, and friend group. There are no predicted main effects. However, there are three expected interactions: the first between participant race and perpetrator race, such that the perpetrator race will not influence the accuracy for Asian and non-Asian participants. The second proposed interaction is between exposure and race, such that high exposure will cause race to be irrelevant with regard to identification accuracy. The third expected interaction is between participant race and perpetrator race, such that perpetrator race will not influence the confidence levels for mixed race participants, but will influence the accuracy for Asian and non-Asian participants.

Mixed Race Antecedents: Black Hybridity in Cultural Production, 1960-1989 looks at how cultural producers of African descent in the U.S. from the 1960s through the 1980s conceptualized racial and cultural hybridity. I analyze writers and artists who were grappling with how to think about their multiple heritages while simultaneously considering the political implications of their racial hybridity. Before the Census Movement of the 1990s narrowed the discussion of racial hybridity to boxes on government forms, these playwrights, authors, and visual artists were thinking about hybridity in a different register. They explored connections between personal and political identities, the relationships between experiences and art, and the significance of having multiple racial/ethnic heritages when race in America was still very much operating under the auspices of the one-drop rule. Their creative explorations during this time distinguishes them as mixed race antecedents, those who were looking for the political and aesthetic uses of black hybridity during the Civil Rights Movement, Women’s and Gay Liberation, and their corollary art movements. I draw from critical race theory, performance studies, autobiography studies, and cultural studies to understand the complex relationship artists and writers had to the social movements that defined their historical moment while asserting their own conceptions of how racial hybridity functions for those of African descent in the U.S. In so doing, this project challenges the predominant narrative of critical mixed race studies by arguing that mixed race identity formations were emerging in American culture during and after the civil rights era, not just during the Census Movement. Particularly, I focus on the possibility of racial and cultural hybridity not replacing blackness, like what a post-racial world would ask us to do, but instead, prompting further exploration and expansion of blackness.

Previous research has indicated that racial identity invalidation has negative effects on multiracial individuals. Using a 2x2 mixed factorial design, this study investigates the effects of who does the invalidating (between subjects: Ingroup A vs. Unspecified Outgroup) and which of a multiracial individual’s strongest two racial identities is being invalidated (within subjects: Racial Identity A vs. Racial Identity B). Participants were 65 multiracial individuals recruited via social media to complete an online Qualtrics survey. Participants’ levels of psychological distress and identification with their strongest racial group were measured after they read each of two racial identity invalidation scenarios. We found that multiracial individuals reported higher levels of distress when the source of invalidation was an ingroup member belonging to their strongest racial ingroup and the basis of invalidation was the shared racial identity. Additionally, controlling for baseline racial group identification, multiracial individuals reported lower identification with their strongest racial group when the source of invalidation was an ingroup member belonging to their strongest racial ingroup and the basis of invalidation was the shared racial identity. Therefore, it is not necessarily the source or basis of invalidation that matters, but rather the interaction between them – racial identity invalidation only has negative effects on multiracial individuals when the identity of the source of invalidation matches the racial identity being invalidated.

I struggle to present work that reflects a psychological expressivity which at the same time conveys intellectual concepts that are of concern to me. It seems that the fluidity of an image can communicate a certain pathos, and correspond to the fluid nature of one’s identity. Drippy paint, distorted bodies, and vertiginous video clips can give an indication about what a body feels like from within. Depictions of these bodily feelings help to communicate ideas about what it means to be alive in general, and a mixed race woman, in particular.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis explores the experiences of white women who partnered Chinese men and their children in southern Australia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has been based on a wide range of sources, including newspapers, government reports, birth and marriage records, personal reminiscences and family lore, and highlights the contradictory images and representations of Chinese-European couples and their families which exist in those sources. It reveals that in spite of the hostility towards intimate interracial relationships so strongly expressed in discourse, hundreds of white women and Chinese men in colonial Australia came together for reasons of love, companionship, security, sexual fulfilment and the formation of family. They lived, worked and loved in and between two very different communities and cultures, each of which could be disapproving and critical of their crossing of racial boundaries. As part of this exploration of lives across and between cultures, the thesis further considers those families who spent time in Hong Kong and China. The lives of these couples and their Anglo-Chinese families are largely missing from the history of the Chinese in Australia and of migration and colonial race relations more generally. They are historical subjects whose experiences have remained in the shadows and on the margins. This thesis aims to throw light on those shadows, contributing to our knowledge not only of interactions between individual Chinese men and white women, but also of the way mixed race couples and their children interacted with their extended families and communities in Australia and China. This thesis demonstrates that their lives were complex negotiations across race, culture and geography which challenged strict racial and social categorisation.