South Asia Studies Council Colloquium Series: Desis Divided: The Political Lives of South Asian Americans

Event time: 
Thursday, March 3, 2016 - 4:30pm to 6:00pm
Location: 
Luce Hall (LUCE), Room 203 See map
34 Hillhouse Ave.
New Haven, CT 06511
(Location is wheelchair accessible)
Event description: 

For immigrants to America, from Europeans in the early twentieth century through later Latinos, Asians, and Caribbeans, gaining social and political ground has generally been considered an exercise in ethnic and racial solidarity. The experience of South Asian Americans, one of the fastest-growing immigrant populations in recent years, tells a different story of inclusion—one in which distinctions within a group play a significant role.
Focusing on Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi American communities, I analyze features such as class, religion, and nation of origin alongside other distinctions in understanding the patterns of group mobilization. These internal characteristics lead to multiple paths of political inclusion, defying a unified group experience. How, for instance, has religion shaped the fractured political response to intensified discrimination against South Asians—Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs—in the post-9/11 period? How have class and home country concerns played into various strategies for achieving political power? And how do the political engagements of professional and entrepreneurial segments of the community challenge the idea of a unified diaspora? While ethnoracial mobilization remains an important component of South Asian American experience, ethnoracial identity is deployed differently by particular sectors of the South Asian population to produce very specific kinds of mobilizing and organizational infrastructures. And exploring these distinctions is critical to understanding the changing nature of the politics of immigrant inclusion—and difference itself—in America. http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/desis-divided