Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Women in Indian Diaspora: Redefining Self Between Dislocation and Relocation

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Women in the Indian Diaspora

Abstract

Women have been part of almost all the groups of people moving out of Indian borders which today constitute the Indian Diaspora. However their experiences have largely been subsumed under male-centric homogenised perceptions and meta-narratives. An upsurge in the feminist scholarship on Migration Studies brought the gender from the margins to the centre but nearly all the research centring on Indian diasporic women treated them stereotypically through the ‘victimhood’ paradigm or the ‘passive agents carrying forward the Indian culture and traditions’. In reality, women encounter conflicting situations and subjectivities both in public and the private spheres during the process of migration and settlement. The transnational spaces often give Indian women a freedom for self-exploration and deliberation to conceive new identities and move beyond the fixed definitions of femininity. Women have shown considerable agency and inventive tactics to transform the lives of their own and those of their families holding on to tradition with one hand while also grasping change and modernity with the other in the diasporic conditions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    NRIs are Indian citizens and hold Indian passport. MOIA records their number as 10037761.

  2. 2.

    PIOs are no longer Indian citizens and number around 11872114.

  3. 3.

    OIC is a partial citizenship given to PIOs. Till 2014 around 1203613 OCI cards were issued by Government of India.

  4. 4.

    As a matter of fact the term ‘diaspora’ itself is said to be phallocentric and conveys a male act of dispersal and assert ‘male procreation and patrilinear descent’ (see Gopinath 2005, 5–6; Kosnick 2010, 123).

  5. 5.

    Recent migration statistics by the United Nations (27) Population Division estimates that as of 2000, overall 49% of all international migrants were women or girls, and in the developed regions it is 51%. Although the majority of women migrate as dependent family members they also migrate in several other forms such as professionals moving on their own, conflict-induced migrants, as labour force, illegal, temporary, permanent, forced, and trafficked migrants. All these factors have a significant bearing on the role, the behaviour and identity formation of migrant women.

  6. 6.

    Lord Rama’s wife who is also considered as the incarnation of the “Shakti’ or the female power.

  7. 7.

    It is the epic poem composed by sixteenth-century Indian Bhakti poet Goswami Tulsidas. It narrates the life and deeds of lord Rama and represents the popular faith of Indian people.

References

  • Altamirano, Aha Tollefsen. 1997. Feminist Theories and Migration Research-Making Sense in the Data Feast. Refuge 16 (4).

    Google Scholar 

  • Alund, Aleksandra. 1991. The Power of Definitions: Immigrant Women and Problem Ideologies. In Paradoxes of Multiculturalism: Essays on Swedish Society, ed. Aleksandra Alund, and Carl-Ulrik Schierup. Aldershot; Brookfield, USA: Avesbury.

    Google Scholar 

  • Appadurai, Arjun. 2011. Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. http://www.worldhistory.pitt.edu/DissWorkshop2011/documents/Appadurai.pdf.

  • Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, Monica, Elizabeth Grieco. 2003. Women and Migration: Incorporating Gender into International Migration Theory. Migration Policy Institute. http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/women-and-migration-incorporating-gender-international-migration-theory.

  • Buijs, Gina (ed.). 1993. Migrant Women: Crossing Boundaries and Changing Identities. Oxford: Berg Publishers Limited.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clifford, James. 1994. Diasporas. Cultural Anthropology 9 (3): 302–338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, Robin. 1997. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London: UCL Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Di Stefano, Christine. 1990. Dilemmas of Difference: Feminism, Modernity and Postmodernism. In Feminism/Postmodemism, ed. Linda Nicholson. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gopinath, Gayatri. 2005. Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hom, Sharon K. 1999. Chinese Women Traversing Diaspora: Memoirs, Essays, and Poetry. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hugo, G. 1999. Gender and Migrations in Asian Countries. Liege: International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.

    Google Scholar 

  • Judge, Paramjit. 1992. Patterns of Migration and Intra-family Conflicts among Punjabis in India. Guru Nanak Journal of Sociology 13 (2): 97–113.

    Google Scholar 

  • Judge, Paramjit. 1994. Punjabis in Canada: A Study of Formation of an Ethnic Community. Delhi: Chanakya Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kang, Neelu. 2003. Family Abuse against Punjabi Women in Canada. In Development, Gender and Diaspora, ed. Paramjit Judge, S.L. Sharma, Satish K. Sharma, and Gurpreet Bal, 275–96. Jaipur: Rawat.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kosnick, Kira. 2010. Sexuality and Migration Studies: The Invisible, the Oxymoronic and Heteronormative Othering. In Framing Intersectionality. Debates on a Multi-faceted Concept in Gender Studies, ed. H. Lutz, M.T.H. Vivar, L. Supik. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 121–135.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kurien, Prema. 1999. Gendered Ethnicity: Creating a Hindu Ethnic Identity in the United States. American Behavioral Scientist 42 (4): 648–670.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lal, Brij V. 1985. Kunti’s Cry: Indentured Women on Fiji Plantations. The Indian Economic and Social History Review 22 (1): 55–71.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levitt, Peggy, and B. Nadya Jaworsky. 2007. Transnational Migration Studies: Past Developments and Future Trends. The Annual Review of Sociology 33: 129–56. http://soc.annualreviews.org.

  • Macdonald, Catriona M.M. 2007. Imagining the Scottish Diaspora: Emigration and Transnational Literature in the Late Modern Period. Edinberg University Press Journals 5 (1): 12–42.

    Google Scholar 

  • McDowell, Linda. 1993. Space, Place and Gender Relations: Part 11. Identity, Difference, Feminist Geometries and Geographies. Progress in Human Geography 17 (3): 305–318.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1991. Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. In Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. C.T. Mohanty, A. Russo, and L. Torres. Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 2003. Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory. Practicing Solidarity: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Nawyn, Stephanie J. 2010. Gender and Migration: Integrating Feminist Theory into Migration Studies. Sociology Compass 4 (9): 749–765.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pande, Amba. 2013. Conceptualising Indian Diaspora: Diversities within a Common Identity. Economic & Political Weekly 48 (49): 59–65.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pande, Amba. 2014. Diaspora and Development: Theoretical Perspectives. In India Migration Report, 2014, ed. Irudaya Rajan, 36–46. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pande, Amba. 2017. Diaspora: Identities, Spaces and Practices. In Through the Diasporic Lens, 2017, ed. Nandini Sen, 27–37. Authors Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pessar, Patricia R., and Sarah J. Mahler. 2001. Gender and Transnational Migration. Paper presented at the Conference on Transnational Migration: Comparative Perspectives, Princeton University, June 30–July 1. http://www:transcomm.ox.ac.uk/working%25%20papers/Wptc-01-20%25%20Pessar.doc.pdf.

  • Pierrette, Hondagneu-Sotelo. 2000. Feminism and Migration. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 571: 107–120.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Radhakrishnan, Smitha. 2011. Appropriately Indian: Gender and Culture in a New Transnational Class. NC: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ralson, Helen. 1988. Arranged, ‘Semi Arranged’ and ‘Love’ Marriages Among South Asian Immigrant Women in the Diaspora and their Non-migrant Sisters in India and Fiji: A Comparative Study. International Journal of Sociology of the Family 27 (2): 43–68.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rayaprol, Aparna. 1997. Negotiating Identities: Women in the Indian Diaspora, Cambridge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Report of the High Level Committee on India Diaspora. 2002. Government of India. http://indiandiaspora.nic.in.

  • Reddock, Rhoda E. 1985. Latin American Perspectives, vol. 12, No. 1, Latin America’s Colonial History (winter): 63–80.

    Google Scholar 

  • Safran, William. 1991. Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return. Diaspora 1 (1): 83–99.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schiller, Nina Glick, Linda Basch, and Cristina Szanton Blanc. 1995. Immigrant to Transmigrant: Theorizing Transnational Migration. Anthropological Quarterly. 68 (1): 48–63.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sheffer, G. 1986. A New Field of Study: Modern Diasporas in International Politics. In Modern Diasporas in International Politics, ed. G. Sheffer. London: Croom Helm. Retrieved October 2010. http://books.google.co.in/books.

  • Shepporson, George. 1966. The African Diaspora—Or the African Abroad. African Forum 1 (2): 76–93.

    Google Scholar 

  • Talukdar, Jaita. 2012. Appropriately Indian: Gender and Culture in a New Transnational Class (Review Article). American Journal of Sociology 117 (5): 1527–1528.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tejaswini, Niranjana. 2006. Mobilizing India: Women, Music and Migration Between India and Trinidad. North Carolina: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thadani, Veena N., and Michael P. Todaro. 1984. Female Migration: A Conceptual Framework. In Women in the Cities of Asia: Migration and Urban Adaptation, ed. James T. Fawcett, Siew-Ean Khoo, and Peter C. Smith. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tigau, Camelia, Amba Pande, and Yan Yuan. 2017. Diaspora Policies and Co-development: A Comparison between India China and Mexico. Migration Letters 14 (2): 181–195.

    Google Scholar 

  • UN (UNITED NATIONS). 2003. Women and International Migration Division for the Advancement of Women. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations. http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/events/coordination/3/docs/P01_DAW.pdf.

  • Zlotnik, Hania. 1995. The South-to-North Migration of women. International Migration Review xxix (1): 229–254.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Indo-Pacific Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

    Amba Pande

Authors
  1. Amba Pande
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Amba Pande .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Indo-Pacific Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Delhi, India

    Amba Pande

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Pande, A. (2018). Women in Indian Diaspora: Redefining Self Between Dislocation and Relocation. In: Pande, A. (eds) Women in the Indian Diaspora. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5951-3_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5951-3_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-5950-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-5951-3

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation