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Theory & Psychology
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Culture, Essentialism, Immigration and Representations of Gender

Ramaswami Mahalingam

University of Michigan, ramawasi{at}umich.edu

Janxin Leu

University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco, janleu{at}berkeley.edu

Our paper explores whether a combination of intersectionality and hybridity perspectives will be sufficient to develop a feminist gender psychology of immigrant women that escapes the pitfalls of gender essentialism. Analyses of interviews with Indian immigrant women and self-descriptions of Filipina mail-order brides (MOBs) suggest that intersections of identity can ironically contribute to the essentialization of ‘self’ as well the ‘other’. We argue that essentialist representations among these women mask the role of power between various social intersections of gender. The various modes and contingencies of essentialist idealized representations may be interpreted as psychological strategies employed by Asian immigrant women to locate displaced identity within a transnational and postcolonical history. Further, we argue that the cultural psychological study of gender should examine the costs and benefits of such idealized representations.

Key Words: essentialism • gender • Indian immigrants • mail-order brides

Theory & Psychology, Vol. 15, No. 6, 839-860 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0959354305059335
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