Partnered fathers bringing up their mixed-/multi-race children: an exploratory comparison of racial projects in Britain and New Zealand |
Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power
Published online: 2015-09-23
DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2015.1091320
Rosalind Edwards, Professor of Sociology; Social Sciences Director of Research and Enterprise; Co-director, ESRC National Centre for Research Methods
University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom
This article explores how fathers in couple relationships where their partner is from a different racial background understand bringing up their children. Drawing on a small-scale, in-depth comparison of fathers’ accounts in Britain and New Zealand, and using the analytic concept of racial projects, fathers’ activities towards and hopes for their children’s identity and affiliation are revealed as keyed into historically situated social and political forces. Particular national racial projects and histories of coloniser and colonised are (re)created and reflected in the various typifications (ideal orientations) informing the fathers’ racial projects. These might be concerned with mixed, single or transcendent senses of belonging, in individual or collective ways, each of which was in various forms of dialogue with race.
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Tags: Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, New Zealand, Rosalind Edwards