Immigrant cultural identities form through three modes, most importantly active invention of difference

Evidence

In Europe three main philosophies predominate in the making of these specific identities. The first is one of reproduction, when an old, for example regional, identity in decline resists and is reconstructed. The second is that of the host society to which a migrant group contributes its religious, culinary, and linguistic traditions, in an endeavor to perpetuate them. The third and most important is that of the production of difference. Cultural identity here is the outcome of the work of the society in question on itself, it is the outcome of change, it is invented by the participants who may even endow it with all the appearances of tradition. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3173

Categorization

• DEFINE: A clean three-way conceptual framework distinguishing reproduction, contribution, and production of difference as identity-making modes.
• XREF: Echoes Stuart Hall’s influential account of cultural identity as becoming rather than being, and Homi Bhabha’s production of hybridity.