The proliferation of old age homes and increasing numbers of elderly living alone are startling new phenomena in India. These trends are related to extensive overseas migration and the transnational dispersal of families. In this moving and insightful account, Sarah Lamb shows that older persons are innovative agents in the processes of social-cultural change. Lamb's study probes debates and cultural assumptions in both India and the United States regarding how best to age; the proper social-moral relationship among individuals, genders, families, the market, and the state; and ways of finding meaning in the human life course.
In historic and ethnographic accounts of Indians living in diaspora, the elderly seem to receive much less attention than the new generation and its progress, prosperity and success. Using critical pedagogy approach, this book attempts to close that gap by focusing on the voices of the Punjabi, Bengali, Sindhi, and Gujarati diasporic Indians elderly, living in five countries.
Global Indian Diasporas discusses the relationship between South Asian emigrants and their homeland, the reproduction of Indian culture abroad, and the role of the Indian state in reconnecting emigrants to India. Focusing on the limits of the diaspora concept, rather than its possibilities, this volume presents new historical and anthropological research on South Asian emigrants worldwide. From a comparative perspective, examples of South Asian emigrants in Suriname, Mauritius, East Africa, Canada, and the United Kingdom are deployed in order to show that in each of these regions there are South Asian emigrants who do not fit into the Indian diaspora concept—raising questions about the effectiveness of the diaspora as an academic and sociological index, and presenting new and controversial insights in diaspora issues.
Winner of the 2018 Gordon K. and Sybil Farrell Lewis Award for the best book in Caribbean studies from the Caribbean Studies Association This book tells a distinct story of Indians in the Caribbean--one concentrated not only on archival records and institutions, but also on the voices of the people and the ways in which they define themselves and the world around them. Through oral history and ethnography, Lomarsh Roopnarine explores previously marginalized Indians in the Caribbean and their distinct social dynamics and histories, including the French Caribbean and other islands with smaller South Asian populations. He pursues a comparative approach with inclusive themes that cut across the Caribbean. In 1833, the abolition of slavery in the British Empire led to the import of exploited South Asian indentured workers in the Caribbean. Today India bears little relevance to most of these Caribbean Indians. Yet, Caribbean Indians have developed an in-between status, shaped by South Asian customs such as religion, music, folklore, migration, new identities, and Bollywood films. They do not seem akin to Indians in India, nor are they like Caribbean Creoles, or mixed-race Caribbeans. Instead, they have merged India and the Caribbean to produce a distinct, dynamic local entity. The book does not neglect the arrival of nonindentured Indians in the Caribbean since the early 1900s. These people came to the Caribbean without an indentured contract or after indentured emancipation but have formed significant communities in Barbados, the US Virgin Islands, and Jamaica. Drawing upon over twenty-five years of research in the Caribbean and North America, Roopnarine contributes a thorough analysis of the Indo-Caribbean, among the first to look at the entire Indian diaspora across the Caribbean.
What happens to a country when its skilled workers emigrate? The first book to examine the complex economic, social, and political effects of emigration on India, Diaspora, Development, and Democracy provides a conceptual framework for understanding the repercussions of international migration on migrants' home countries. Devesh Kapur finds that migration has influenced India far beyond a simplistic "brain drain"--migration's impact greatly depends on who leaves and why. The book offers new methods and empirical evidence for measuring these traits and shows how data about these characteristics link to specific outcomes. For instance, the positive selection of Indian migrants through education has strengthened India's democracy by creating a political space for previously excluded social groups. Because older Indian elites have an exit option, they are less likely to resist the loss of political power at home. Education and training abroad has played an important role in facilitating the flow of expertise to India, integrating the country into the world economy, positively shaping how India is perceived, and changing traditional conceptions of citizenship. The book highlights a paradox--while international migration is a cause and consequence of globalization, its effects on countries of origin depend largely on factors internal to those countries. A rich portrait of the Indian migrant community, Diaspora, Development, and Democracy explores the complex political and economic consequences of migration for the countries migrants leave behind.
Working as merchants, skilled tradesmen, clerks, lawyers, and journalists, Indians formed the economic and administrative middle class in colonial Kenya. In general, they were wealthier than Africans, but were denied the political and economic privileges that Europeans enjoyed. Moreover, despite their relative prosperity, Indians were precariously positioned in Kenya. Africans usually viewed them as outsiders, and Europeans largely considered them subservient. Indians demanded recognition on their own terms. Indians in Kenya chronicles the competing, often contradictory, strategies by which the South Asian diaspora sought a political voice in Kenya from the beginning of colonial rule in the late 1890s to independence in the 1960s. Indians’ intellectual, economic, and political connections with South Asia shaped their understanding of their lives in Kenya. Sana Aiyar investigates how the many strands of Indians’ diasporic identity influenced Kenya’s political leadership, from claiming partnership with Europeans in their mission to colonize and “civilize” East Africa to successful collaborations with Africans to battle for racial equality, including during the Mau Mau Rebellion. She also explores how the hierarchical structures of colonial governance, the material inequalities between Indians and Africans, and the racialized political discourses that flourished in both colonial and postcolonial Kenya limited the success of alliances across racial and class lines. Aiyar demonstrates that only by examining the ties that bound Indians to worlds on both sides of the Indian Ocean can we understand how Kenya came to terms with its South Asian minority.
Indian Diaspora World Convention was held in Trinidad in 2017 to commemorate the 1917 decision of the Indian legislature to end further recruitment of Indians for overseas indentured service. The eleven essays in this second volume cover a wide range under the heading ‘Charting New Frontiers’. It is a diverse collection, indicating broad scope among the researchers on this theme. The contributors to this volume think through the conundrum of national citizenship, in relation to their routes and roots from a variety of perspectives. The essays compiled in this monograph, thus, reveal that the subject areas comprising the study of the Indian diaspora are interdisciplinary in nature and constantly evolving. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
By examining both gender and aging in this ethnography of an Indian village, Sarah Lamb forces a re-examination of major debates in feminist anthropology and contributes to the small but growing literature on aging in contemporary culture.
This book celebrates both the past and present existence of the Indian diasporic grandparents who live their daily lives in different countries – the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, South Africa, Fiji, Mauritius, Australia, Suriname and Malaysia – and in different economic, social, cultural, religious contexts and specific household and family situations. The achievements of the few rich and the famous Indians living in diaspora have been given the celebratory treatment; similar status is not often given to the achievements of the diasporic Indian grandparents. However, “the vanquished and the victors, the subalterns and the sahibs, have equal claims on our attention ... clearly there are areas where Indian communities have been settled for long periods of time ... without having a significant effect on the countries of their residence ... [but] they, too are integral parts of the diaspora” (Brij Lal, Peter Reeves & Rajesh Rai, 2006, p. 15). This book is about voices of contemporary Indian grandparents and their grand parenting practices. The diasporic Indian grandparents are engaged in keeping diverse “Indian families” and “communities” as strong as possible in the current era of globalization process and social policy initiatives that are dominated by the ideology of neo-liberalism. This book claims that the diasporic Indian grandparents have significant effects on the countries of their residence and too are integral parts of the Indian diaspora who deserve the celebratory treatment and status. The book can be used for courses in the areas of critical social work, family studies, gerontology, nursing, rural development, critical pedagogy, and diaspora studies. “A veritable archive of stories, anecdotes, memories and reminiscences, of love, longing and search for a legacy, by diasporic Indian grandparents across the globe as they transgress boundaries in a socially porous world, negotiate generational differences complicated by the realities of modern living, cross cultures and seek to preserve connections between the past, the present and the future. A necessary contribution to the growing literature in the life of the Indian diaspora.” Brij V. Lal Professor of Pacific and Asian History, The Australian National University & General Editor, Encyclopedia of the Indian Diaspora
Dominant cultural narratives about later life dismiss the value senior citizens hold for society. In her cultural-philosophical critique, Hanne Laceulle outlines counter narratives that acknowledge both potentials and vulnerabilities of later life. She draws on the rich philosophical tradition of thought about self-realization and explores the significance of ethical concepts essential to the process of growing old such as autonomy, authenticity and virtue. These counter narratives aim to support older individuals in their search for a meaningful age identity, while they make society recognize its senior members as valued participants and moral agents of their own lives.
