The study investigates the intersectionality of race, gender, and language learning by focusing on three multiracial women in China. Interviews and recorded conversations show complex strategies to negotiate identity. By asserting their Chinese-ness but rejecting the Chinese discourse about gender, they engaged in the construction of a hybrid identity.
This study examines multiracial female students’ experience in China. Gender has frequently been a theme in study abroad research (Kinginger, 2009). In recent years, scholars are also exploring study abroad experiences among ethnically minoritized populations (e.g., Anya, 2016; Du, 2018; Quan, 2018). Yet there is still a need to further address the relationship between race and language learning in international education (King & Bigelow, 2018), and how race may intersect with other identities such as gender to influence language learning and use (De Costa & Norton, 2017). By focusing on female multiracial Chinese learners, this study investigates such intersectionality in the study abroad context. Multiracial Americans are the fastest growing demographic group in the U.S., and their experiences often challenge traditional concepts of race (Parker et al., 2015). The three focal students, pseudonyms Elisa, Mae, and Tiffany, were all white and Chinese biracial women who studied abroad in China in the fall of 2016. Data for this study came from multiple sources, including interviews, audio recorded interactions between themselves and their Chinese peers, and field notes. Findings show that, although these multiracial learners could “pass as whites” (Khanna & Johnson, 2010) and conceal their Chinese-ness by not speaking, they routinely chose to assert their hybrid Chinese identity and spoke Mandarin in China. They also frequently used Mandarin to cope with their gendered and racialized experience that took place in both China and the U.S. Yet, while gender allowed them to construct solidarity with the their same-sex Chinese peers, they also sometimes had to reject their peers’ interpretations of gender and positioned themselves as not Chinese. These strategies reveal the complex and sometimes contradictory understanding of their multiracial identity; they further point the importance to understand the multiracial, multilingual, and transnational experience in future study abroad research.
