Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher, a Graduate School of Education lecturer, set out in February 2004 to conduct an ethnographic study of working-class Pakistani-American immigrants living in New York City. A Pakistani immigrant herself, she was initially interested in the general immigrant experience, but the focus of her study changed when she found that 9/11 was the defining aspect where she conducted her interviews.
“It shouldn’t have been so surprising,” said Ghaffar-Kucher, referring to 9/11’s influence on everyday life for Pakistani immigrants. “I think that seeing how working class kids were grappling with this was a wake-up call for me.”
Ghaffar-Kucher decided to research how Pakistani kids were experiencing immigration because of her own experience as an immigrant. She grew up in Hong Kong and moved back to Pakistan when she was 12.”It was difficult to go from very different societies and very different educational experiences,” she said. “I was curious how [Pakistani youth] were dealing with their new world in the U.S .”
Sicne Ghaffar-Kucher is from a different background, she said she has had access to different resources and support that weren’t always there for immigrants in the lower-class groups she studied. Although she still had moments when 9/11 felt very real — like going through secondary airport security at John F. Kennedy Airport — “for these kids, 9/11 was showing up in their daily experience.”
Ghaffar-Kucher’s findings are published in a recent issue of the American Educational Research Journal, in which she shares accounts from students that highlight the shift in attitude towards Pakistani youth after 9/11.
For example, then 15-year-old Latif wrote in his article: “My school experience was pretty good before 9/11. However, in sixth grade, after 9/11, I have been looked [at] as a stereotype. Everybody used to call me a terrorist. All through Junior high-school, people called me Ossama or Saddam.”
Ghaffar-Kucher next hopes to study this same age-group of Pakistani-Americans as they enter college. “My hunch is that in college, they might be finding ways to be more active in challenging some of the stereotypes and claiming their American citizenship a little bit more actively,” she said.
She plans to compare experiences at a community college, a public four-year university and a private four-year university.
Note: This article was updated from its original version to reflect the fact that Ghaffar-Kucher is a Pakistani immigrant, not a Pakistani-American.
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