Arab immigrants in metropolitan Detroit: An inquiry into the meanings of social space, whiteness, and health.

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the experiences of Arab immigrants in Detroit and Dearborn, Michigan. It integrates both quantitative data (from the Detroit Arab American Study) and qualitative data (in-depth interviews with 46 Arab immigrant owners of small businesses), and explores questions related to the meanings of social space, Whiteness and health. Acknowledging the importance of works which describe and critique the processes through which Arab and Muslim Americans are increasingly being racialized in the United States, I argue in this dissertation that Arab immigrants themselves actively participate in the construction of the meanings of Whiteness. They do so through the synthesis of disparate ideological frameworks about race and through interacting with racialized social spaces which immigrants come to occupy and later participate in forming. Finally, I argue that an exploration of the health of Arab immigrants necessitates a flexible approach to the nuanced ways in which alterity and othering may manifest through constructs such as culture, and language, in addition to race as it is constructed and understood in the United States.