Navigating Marginalization and Invisibility as Asian Americans in the US

In this paper, we articulate a conceptual model for the process of ethnic identity development and integration among Asian American children and youth that offers potential explanations for their marginalization as they negotiate multiple facets of their identities and locate themselves in local and national contexts. The conceptual model is based on an integration of theory and empirical research on the intertwined processes of ethnic identity development and socialization of children and youth in Asian American families and is anchored in the developmental domain of identity formation and integration. We present the conceptual model as three overlapping circles to represent salient features of physical and social contexts, prevalent metanarratives that have been empirically established as salient meaning-making frames pertinent to the lived experience of Asian Americans in the United States, and the dynamic individual-context interplay and mutual adjustment that is part of developmental process. We then build on the work of scholars who have advanced the theoretical and empirical literature on the Asian American experience in the United States, to illustrate how the three components (features of context, master narratives, and developmental processes) intersect in the overlapping spaces of the model to foreground the dialectic processes whereby identity is constructed as contextualized in place. The primary contribution of the model is to facilitate generating research questions that can unravel the complexities of how specific ethnic backgrounds (e.g., immigration and settlement histories), developmental status, individual position on societal racial/ethnic hierarchy, and prevalent societal metanarratives contextualize the development of an Asian American ethnic-racial identity.