Domicile and Diaspora investigates geographies of home and identity for Anglo-Indian women in the 50 years before and after Indian independence in 1947. The first book to study the Anglo-Indian community past and present, in India, Britain and Australia. The first book by a geographer to focus on a community of mixed descent. Investigates geographies of home and identity for Anglo-Indian women in the 50 years before and after Indian independence in 1947. Draws on interviews and focus groups with over 150 Anglo-Indians, as well as archival research. Makes a distinctive contribution to debates about home, identity, hybridity, migration and diaspora.

The South Asian women’s diaspora engages in spatio-temporal interactions and power differentials in a variety of narratives, articulating agency, multiplicities of belonging and culturally integrative practices, highlighting homing paradigms. The sense of alienness in a new homeland, rather in worldwide home places, triggers rethinking of diasporic conceptions and epistemes of individual and group histories, personal and collective experiences. Some of the questions that this anthology seeks to consider are: How do women from the South Asian diaspora represent cultural negotiations and alienness of the adopted homeland in various narratives? What are the themes/issues they select to portray their perceptions of foreignness? How do culture, history and politics intervene in their portrayal of lived experiences? How do they locate themselves in the matrix of foreignness and diaspora? The contributors to this anthology examine narratives depicting South Asian women, their complexly positioned voices, gesturing at the proliferating challenges and reflecting the grim realities of a globalized world.

By the end of the twentieth century some nine million people of South Asian descent had left India, Bangladesh or Pakistan and settled in different parts of the world, forming a diverse and significant modern diaspora. In the early nineteenth century, many left reluctantly to seek economic opportunities which were lacking at home. This is the story of their often painful experiences in the diaspora, how they constructed new social communities overseas and how they maintained connections with the countries and the families they had left behind. It is a story compellingly told by one of the premier historians of modern South Asia, Judith Brown, whose particular knowledge of the diaspora in Britain and South Africa gives her insight as a commentator. This is a book which will have a broad appeal to general readers as well as to students of South Asian and colonial history, migration studies and sociology.

Re-energising debates on the conceptualisation of diasporas in migration scholarship and in geography, this work stresses the important role that geographers can play in interrupting assumptions about the spaces and processes of diaspora. The intricate, material and complex ways in which those in diaspora contest, construct and perform identity, politics, development and place is explored throughout this book. The authors ’dismantle’ diasporas in order to re-theorise the concept through empirically grounded, cutting-edge global research. This innovative volume will appeal to an international and interdisciplinary audience in ethnic, migration and diaspora studies as it tackles comparative, multi-sited and multi-method research through compelling case studies in a variety of contexts spanning the Global North and South. The research in this book is guided by four interconnected themes: the ways in which diasporas are constructed and performed through identity, the body, everyday practice and place; how those in diaspora become politicised and how this leads to unities and disunities in relation to 'here' and 'there'; the ways in which diasporas seek to connect and re-connect with their 'homelands' and the consequences of this in terms of identity formation, employment and theorising who 'counts' as a diaspora; and how those in diaspora engage with homeland development and the challenges this creates.

Border walls, shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, separated families at the border, island detention camps: migration is at the centre of contemporary political and academic debates. This ground-breaking Handbook offers an exciting and original analysis of critical research on themes such as these, drawing on cutting-edge theories from an interdisciplinary and international group of leading scholars. With a focus on spatial analysis and geographical context, this volume highlights a range of theoretical, methodological and regional approaches to migration research, while remaining attuned to the underlying politics that bring critical scholars together.

Little research has been done on expatriates who return to their countries of origin in later life--an important issue in a time of aging populations and increasing mobility. Bringing together studies of older adults' migration patterns in North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, South Asia, and Australia, this collection offers the first comprehensive explanation of how and why they return to their homelands. In the process, it addresses such key factors as the strength of family ties; the quality and cost of health and welfare provisions; and psychological adjustment, belonging, and attachment to place.

The term ‘circulatory transnational migration’ best describes the unconventional migratory route of many contemporary Chinese migrants – that is an unfinished set of circulatory movements that these migrants engage in between the homeland and various host countries. ‘Return migration’, ‘step migration’ to a third destination and the ‘astronauting’ strategy are all included within this circulatory migration movement wherein ‘returning’ to the country of origin does not always mean to settle back to the homeland permanently; while ‘step migration’ also does not necessarily mean to re-migrate to a third destination country for a permanent purpose. Liu takes a longitudinal perspective to study Chinese migrants’ transnational movements and looks at their transnational migratory movements as a family matter and progressive and dynamic process, using New Zealand as a primary case study. She examines Chinese migrants’ initial motives for immigrating to New Zealand; the driving forces behind their adoption of a transnational lifestyle which includes leaving New Zealand to return to China, moving to a third country – typically Australia - or commuting across borders; family-related considerations; inter-generational dynamics in transnational migration; as well as their future movement intentions. Liu also discusses Chinese migrants’ conceptualisation of ‘home’, citizenship, identity, and sense of belonging to provide a deeper understanding of their transnational migratory experiences.

Anglo-Indians form the human legacy created and left behind on the Indian subcontinent by European imperialism. When Independence was achieved from the British Raj in 1947, an exodus numbering an estimated 50,000 emigrated to Great Britain between 1948–62, under the terms of the British Nationality Act of 1948. But sixty odd years after their resettlement in Britain, the “First Wave” Anglo-Indian immigrant community continues to remain obscure among India’s global diaspora. This book examines and critiques the convoluted routes of adaptation and assimilation employed by immigrant Anglo-Indians in the process of finding their niche within the context of globalization in contemporary multi-cultural Britain. As they progressed from immigrants to settlers, they underwent a cultural metamorphosis. The homogenizing labyrinth of ethnic cultures through which they negotiated their way—Indian, Anglo-Indian, then Anglo-Saxon—effaced difference but created yet another hybrid identity: British Anglo-Indianness. Through meticulous ethnographic field research conducted amidst the community in Britain over a decade, Rochelle Almeida provides evidence that immigrant Anglo-Indians remain on the cultural periphery despite more than half a century. Indeed, it might be argued that they have attained virtual invisibility—in having created an altogether interesting new amalgamated sub-culture in the UK, this Christian minority has ceased to be counted: both, among South Asia’s diaspora and within mainstream Britain. Through a critical scrutiny of multi-ethnic Anglophone literature and cinema, the modes and methods they employed in seeking integration and the reasons for their near-invisibility in Britain as an immigrant South Asian community are closely examined in this much-needed volume.

Firsthand accounts of migrants who settled in Britain offer new insights into empire, belonging, migration, and diaspora Homeward Bound shines a light on a neglected aspect of twentieth-century migration history. It compares two groups of migrants—Southern Irish Protestants and the British in India—who “returned” to Britain from Ireland and India after independence in 1922 and 1947. By looking across national boundaries, Niamh Dillon explores both individual and collective narratives of imperial identity in the late British Empire and the prompts for return. For both groups, the success of national independence movements in the first half of the twentieth century was cataclysmic and prompted a large-scale migration to Britain. Between 1911 and 1926, the number of Protestants in the Irish Free State dropped from approximately 313,000 to 208,000, and much of the British population left India. Although these numbers are significant, these two groups have largely been ignored by historians and have not been compared before. Though instability in the new political order and lack of livelihood were determining factors in the decision to migrate, Dillon argues that Southern Irish Protestants and the British community in India “returned” to Britain after independence principally because these former elites no longer had a clearly defined role in the new post-colonial era. Return migrants chose Britain because of continuing connections with it as “home,” but often found their colonial experience was not valued in a country re-orienting itself to the post-war order. Through interviews with those who experienced these events first-hand and the recently opened files of the Irish Grants Committee at the National Archives in Britain, this book offers new insights into the history of migration and the affinity these migrants felt with Britain and with the empire.

Why do immigrants return home? Is return migration a failure or a success? How do returnees settle back into their original homeland while retaining their connections to their host society? How do returnees contribute to their homeland with their skills gained from overseas? Transnational Return Migration of 1.5 Generation Korean New Zealanders: A Quest for Home seeks to answer these complex questions surrounding return migration through a case study of the 1.5 generation Korean New Zealander returnees. Jane Lee questions and unpacks the very meaning of “home” and “return” through the personal and intimate stories that are shared by the Korean New Zealander returnees. This book tells a compelling story of the strong desire contemporary transnational migrants feel to belong to one particular identity group. In addition, the author highlights the realities and disconnections of transnationalism as the returnees’ transnational activities and experiences change over time and space.