Illuminating the Contours of Ethnoracialization: An Autoethnographic Exploration in Three Stories

This paper examines schooling as a central site of ethnoracialization for second-generation South Asian Americans. Using an autoethnographic approach, the analysis centers three narratives from the author’s school life to examine how educational institutions implicitly and explicitly produce conditional belonging by positioning difference through three mechanisms: benevolent inclusion, anticipatory self-regulation, and public translation. Across educational contexts, ethnoracialization emerges as a cumulative and institutional process that shapes how individuals come to understand their relationship to the nation. For South Asian Americans, this process is marked by unmeltability (Joshi, Citation2006b), a persistent experience of foreignness despite citizenship, cultural fluency, and generational distance from migration. The paper argues that schooling functions not only as a site of identity formation, but as an institutional mechanism that polices the boundaries of Americanness. Additionally, the paper suggests that ethnoracialization serves as an unofficial curriculum through which belonging is repeatedly defined, surveilled, and maintained.