Identity Hybridity and Strategic Essentialism Among Nigerian-Chinese Bilingual Professionals: A Critical Analysis

The growing cohort of Nigerian professionals who are fluent in both Mandarin and Nigerian languages, having studied or worked in Chinese contexts, occupies a unique intercultural space that generates complex identity negotiations and strategic identity performances. This study conducts a critical analysis of identity hybridity and strategic essentialism among Nigerian-Chinese bilingual professionals, making an original theoretical contribution to the sociology of intercultural identity in the context of Sino-African relations. Theoretical foundations draw on Bhabha's hybridity theory, Spivak's strategic essentialism, and African identity theory from the work of Mudimbe and Appiah. Methodologically, the study employs critical narrative inquiry with 50 Nigerian-Chinese bilingual professionals drawn from Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt, conducting extended narrative interviews and identity mapping exercises at two points eighteen months apart. Discourse analysis of interview narratives identifies patterns of identity hybridisation, strategic code-switching, and moments of identity crisis. Original theoretical contributions include a Dual Positioning Identity Model for Nigerian bilingual professionals that maps the strategic deployment of Nigerian and Chinese cultural registers across different professional and social contexts, and the concept of transactional hybridity to describe identity performances that are deliberately constructed for economic advantage rather than expressing authentic cultural fusion. The study challenges essentialist accounts of both Nigerian and Chinese cultural identity and contributes a theoretically original framework to intercultural identity studies in the African context.

Keywords: identity hybridity, strategic essentialism, Nigerian-Chinese bilinguals, Bhabha, critical analysis