Demelza Jones

Migration, everyday life and the ethnicity bias

The purpose of this special issue is to examine how diverse perspectives on difference are experienced and enacted by ordinary people in the everyday contexts of migration. Ethno-cultural interpretations of difference have come to be seen as inextricably linked with migration in political rhetoric, policy prescriptions, media coverage and institutional structures. Ethnicity is the ongoing product of migratory processes that give it both form and meaning, and it is the idiom through which the politics of multiculturalism expresses itself in accommodating (and sometimes constituting) post-immigration difference. This privileging of ethnicity is consequential. But as the contributors to this volume will demonstrate, it is not determinative. Understandings of difference are shaped not only by politicians, the media and public institutions; they are simultaneously the practical accomplishment of ordinary people engaging in routine activities. We situate our examinations of diverse modalities of experience in the everyday lives of the people claiming them. Our analyses neither privilege nor dismiss ethnicity, but rather consider how ethnicised views of the world exist and interact with other perspectives on difference

Cosmopolitans and ‘cliques’: Everyday socialisation amongst Tamil student and young professional migrants to the UK

Among student and young professional migrants to the UK the opportunity for a global or cosmopolitan experience emerges as a motivating factor for migration. This article takes the example of student and young professional migrants to the UK from the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and explores how this cosmopolitan ambition plays out in the formation of UK social networks. Two ‘types’ of research participant are identified; ‘self-conscious cosmopolitans’ whose social networks are cross-ethnic, and others whose networks are largely co-ethnic and who are often derided by their self-consciously cosmopolitan counterparts as ‘clannish’ or ‘cliquey’. The article asks how ethnicity emerges as salient (or not) in these migrants’ talk and practice around UK social network formations. It then considers whether a co-ethnic social network necessarily limits the cosmopolitan experience, or whether this interpretation reflects a narrow understanding of cosmopolitanism which excludes the multiple inter-cultural encounters these migrants experience in their everyday lives.

Diaspora identification and long-distance nationalism among Tamil migrants of diverse state origins in the UK

Accounts of Tamil long-distance nationalism have focused on Sri Lankan Tamil migrants. But the UK is also home to Tamils of non-Sri Lankan state origins. While these migrants may be nominally incorporated into a ‘Tamil diaspora’, they are seldom present in scholarly accounts. Framed by Werbners (2002) conception of diasporas as ‘aesthetic’ and ‘moral’ communities, this article explores whether engagement with a Tamil diaspora and long-distance nationalism is expressed by Tamil migrants of diverse state origins. While migrants identify with an aesthetic community, ‘membership’ of the moral community is contested between those who hold direct experience of suffering as central to belonging, and those who imagine the boundaries of belonging more fluidly – based upon primordial understandings of essential ethnicity and a narrative of Tamil ‘victimhood’ that incorporates experiences of being Tamil in Sri Lanka, India and in other sites, despite obvious differences in these experiences.

Considering (auto)biography in teaching and learning about race and racism in a diverse university

ABSTRACT The ‘sociological imagination’ – the recognition of the relationship between ‘private troubles’ and ‘public issues’ (Mills [1959] 2000. The Sociological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 8) – is central to the discipline of sociology. This article reports findings of a 2014 study which investigated students’ views on whether the development of the sociological imagination could be more explicitly embedded in a module on Race and Racisms through an (auto)biographical approach from teachers and the module’s racially diverse students. After reviewing benefits and challenges to an (auto)biographical approach, the article presents findings from a student focus group, concluding that students would welcome (auto)biographical approaches to the topic of race and racism, with the caveat that this is handled sensitively with steps taken to minimise the risk of emotional harm.

Everyday ethnicity in Sri Lanka:up-country Tamil identity politics

Everyday ethnicity in Sri Lanka: up-country Tamil identity politics, by Daniel Bass, Abingdon, Routledge, 2012, 248 pp., ISBN 978-0-451-52624-1

Our Kith and Kin?: Sri Lankan Tamil Refugees and the Ethnonationalist Parties of Tamil Nadu

This article explains the impact of substate nationalism on the political dynamic surrounding ethnic kin migration through a case study of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in the southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu. Examples drawn from the migration studies literature identify ethnic kinship between refugees and host as an indicator of favorable reception and assistance. While this expectation is borne out to an extent in the Tamil Nadu case, it is tempered by a period of hostility following the 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by an LTTE suicide bomber, when the refugees were figured as a disruptive and dangerous presence by Tamil Nadus political elites. A version of the “triadic nexus” model of kin state relations, reconfigured to accommodate the larger political unit within which the substate nationalism is incorporated, is proposed as a framework of analysis for these events. This can better account for Tamil Nadus substate ethnonationalist elites movement between expressions of coethnic solidarity with the refugees and the more hostile, security-focused response postassassination.