American Amazigh - by Heide Castañeda (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

How an indigenous group from North Africa challenges dominant narratives of race, migration, and belonging in the United States

American Amazigh examines the complex identity negotiations of Amazigh people--also known as Berbers--as they build community and claim visibility in the American landscape. These distinct ethnic groups, whose histories predate the arrival of Arabs in North Africa, unsettle categories of race and ethnicity in the U.S., challenging dominant assumptions about what it means to be African, Indigenous, and Muslim. Their experiences also disrupt familiar immigration narratives, revealing the complexities and challenges of legal migration processes such as family reunification and the Diversity Immigrant Visa program.

In seeking to make their struggles for recognition legible within the American context, Amazigh communities grapple with conditional belonging while also bearing the legacy of marginalization in their home countries, which is rooted in colonial divisions, postcolonial nationalism, and Arabization policies, fostering systemic discrimination. In the diaspora, Amazigh identity is being actively reshaped as individuals and organizations engage with new ideological frameworks, global Indigenous rights movements, and recent political gains in North Africa, where they have long fought for linguistic, cultural, and legal equality.

The Indigenous perspective has been largely missing from the literature on migration. Drawing on four years of ethnographic research, and framed around the concept of diasporic indigeneity, the book explores how the Amazigh people forge new anchors of belonging and create spaces of social cohesion. By uncovering both the opportunities and challenges presented in the American context, the book moves beyond conventional migration narratives to illuminate how identity and belonging are continually translated and reconfigured within new places.

Review Quotes

"This illuminating and empathetic deep dive into the lived experiences of the small Amazigh diaspora community in the United States offers much food for thought, regarding both the nature of contemporary Amazigh identities and the broader dynamics surrounding US government immigration policies and societal attitudes towards non-European immigrants."--Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, author of Amazigh Politics in the Wake of the Arab Spring

"American Amazigh is a welcome, original contribution to migration, Indigenous, and diaspora studies, offering a distinct angle to questions of identity. Centering on a small North African community, Castañeda situates their lives broadly, offering fresh theorizing on the fluidity and contextual nature of identity. The book deserves--and will find--a broad readership."--Cecilia Menjívar, author of Enduring Violence: Ladina Women's Lives in Guatemala

"In this well-written ethnography of the American Amazigh presence, Dr. Castaneda sheds light on the racialized experiences of conditional citizenship and compounded foreignness which all immigrants to the US face to one extent or another."--Paul A. Silverstein, author of Postcolonial France: Race, Islam, and the Future of the Republic

About the Author

Heide Castañeda is Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida and author of Borders of Belonging: Struggle and Solidarity in Mixed-Status Immigrant Families (Stanford University Press, 2019).