MONEY, MIGRATION, and FAMILY India to Australia

Home , Indian Australians, Jamaican Australians

MONEY, MIGRATION, AND FAMILY India to Australia

SUPRIYA SINGH Money, Migration, and Family

Supriya Singh Money, Migration, and Family

India to Australia Supriya Singh Graduate School of Business and Law RMIT University Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

ISBN 978-1-137-55716-2 ISBN 978-1-137-54886-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54886-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016947983

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Cover illustration: © Arun Roisri

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. New York ALSO BY SUP RIYA SINGH

Bank Negara Malaysia: The First 25 Years, 1959-1984 (1984, Kuala Lumpur: Bank Negara Malaysia). On the Sulu Sea. (1984, Kuala Lumpur: Angsana Publications). The Bankers: Australia’s Leading Bankers Talk About Banking Today. (1991, North Sydney: Allen & Unwin Australia Pty Ltd.). Marriage Money: The Social Shaping of Money in Marriage and Banking. (1997, St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin). Migration, Belonging and the Nation State. (2010, edited with Alperhan Babacan as the fi rst editor, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing). The Girls Ate Last. (2013, Eltham, VIC: Angsana Publications). Globalizatiion and Money: A Global South Perspective. (2013, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefi eld). Searching for Community: Melbourne to Delhi. (2015. Edited with Nadarajah, Y., Mulligan, M., & Chamberlain, C. Delhi: Manohar Publishers).

PREF ACE

The stories of migrants and their families in India and Australia tell of loss and separation. They are also stories of intense family connection via communication and the sending of money. Between the late 1960s and 2014, money and communication have become more reciprocal. Today, migration is experienced as mobility rather than settlement. Ideas of family have been re-imagined in Australia and India to provide care for the children and older people. These themes are intertwined in the real stories of migrants and their families across life stages. I followed some migrants and their families across India and Australia to capture the emotional experience of migration of those who moved and others who stayed behind. The stories of migrants to Australia between the late 1960s and mid-1990s differ from those of the recent migrants who came from the mid-1990s. Placing these stories side by side reveals the signifi cance of the changes over fi ve decades of Indian migration to Australia. The changes are dramatic, particularly when I view them across my personal migration history. For me, migration to Australia was a two-step journey from India to Malaysia in the late 1960s and then to Australia in the late 1980s. When I was in Malaysia and Australia, money only went in one direction and that was to India. My family was not fi nancially able to send money to me. But foreign exchange restrictions would also have prevented it even if it were possible. Today migrants still send money home. But money also comes from India to Australia for education, housing, business and when parents move to stay with their children. As India’s economy opened and grew

vii viii PREFACE in the 1990s, the middle class became richer. Foreign exchange restrictions have loosened. Australian migration policy also changed in the late 1990s. Education in Australia became a possible pathway to migration. So increasingly, recent migrants have had to pay for education in order to have the possibility of migration. Student migrants come as temporary residents unlike the earlier migrants who came with permanent residence visas. Earlier migrants came to settle. Recent migrants remain for long periods in a state of precarious mobility. They hope to settle but only if conditions are suitable for themselves and their families. An important change has happened with the decreasing cost of connection via the mobile phone, the Internet and online applications and travel. I remember in the late 1960s when I moved from India to Malaysia the only communication was via an air letter form. It took at least a month to hear back and so many things remained unsaid. Telegrams and telephones often told of death. One froze at the ring of the telephone at night across time zones. But today migrants ring up to ask how much turmeric to put in the lentils. Grandchildren speak with grandparents. The minutiae of daily life are shared. Things still remain unsaid at times, even though there is constant interaction. These silences sometimes only get fi lled when family visits. These changes in money and communication have taken place along parallel tracks. But when money becomes global, its characteristics change. In the transnational family, the quantum of money is approximated against care rather than calculated in terms of number. A dollar sent means less than the dollar received when communication is patchy and slow. It is valued less than the physical care given or not given. When both sides of the family across borders communicate frequently and instantaneously, they know the sacrifi ce behind money sent and received. Then the dollar received is valued more than the dollar sent. These stories reveal that money sent home, migration and the transnational family are the most personal dimensions of globalization. Sending or receiving money to or from families in India is our experience of money travelling instantaneously across borders. The diffusion of the transnational family across continents is how many of us experience global networks. Entwined with it is the notion of being Indian and being Australian, living lives across India and Australia. Supriya Singh Graduate School of Business and Law RMIT University Melbourne, VIC , Australia ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am beholden to the Indian migrants and their families who spoke of how migration and money shaped their family relationships. Some stories were hard to tell as they spoke of hurts and aborted relationships. At other times, it was a celebration of a continuity of relationship as they shared their lives with me. Their stories took me from Melbourne and Sydney to many of the cities, towns and villages mainly in Punjab on buses, taxis and motorcycles along roads and mud paths across fi elds. Meeting the migrants and their families and briefl y being part of lives extended my world leaving me humbled by their trust and friendship. With some, fi eldwork led to a continuing connection and friendship as I joined the dots between migrants and their families across India and Australia. I hope they can recognize themselves and place their experiences against the major changes in Indian migration to Australia across fi ve decades. The writing of this book drew on long friendships and intellectual relationships in Australia and round the world. Lyn Richards read two versions of the manuscript. Intellectual engagement with her over the structure and content made me remember she has been doing this for me for close to 25 years when I started my PhD with her. She read the second version of the manuscript on a cold winter’s weekend, rugged up with kangaroos looking at her from outside her window. Anuja Cabraal is a friend, colleague and student and was part of the fi rst phase of the study. We learnt a lot about each other as we worked together. It is a relationship that has continued after her research went in a different direction in the last fi ve years. She read the whole manuscript and I was comforted to know it was true to her memory of the part of the project we had shared.

ix x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Margaret Jackson read it for me as a colleague and friend with an out- sider’s perspective leading me to clarify what I had taken for granted in Indian culture. Jan Pahl has been part of my intellectual and personal life and she read part of the manuscript. Her questions led me to further thinking and clarifi cation. I am particularly grateful to Loretta Baldassar for reading the manuscript because her work on different strands of Australian migration has infl uenced part of the framework of the book. And Perle Besserman gave me feedback as one writer and friend to another. Jasvinder Sidhu read relevant excerpts relating to sensitive issues con- fronting the Indian community in Australia. Catherine Gomes read three chapters dealing with communication, settlement and mobility, sparking a lively exchange of ideas across generations. I also had expert reviews from colleagues at RMIT and round the world on Chap. 6 where I write of money, communication and care. Viviana Zelizer, Bill Maurer, Keith Hart, Heather Horst and Raelene Wilding read the chapter suggesting further references and engaging with me in a global discussion. The issues mattered to all of us. I am grateful for their time, attention and friendship. I would like to acknowledge the support of the Global Cities Research Institute at RMIT University for funding the fi rst phase of this research in Australia. Grants from the College of Business at RMIT University funded the transnational phase. The Smart Services Cooperative Research Centre supported the study of mobile money and remittances. I would also like to thank the Graduate School of Business and Law at RMIT University for enabling me to devote time to the writing of this book. The Palgrave Macmillan team took me through the processes of con- verting a manuscript to a book and I thank them for their care. I am grateful to the two reviewers of the proposal to Palgrave Macmillan. They together with subsequent reviewers reminded me not to get lost in the stories but to put them in the context of the changes that have taken place in migration, money and family over fi ve decades. I remembered the advice, but hope the voices of the migrants and their families still remain uppermost. CONTENTS

Part I Introduction 1

1 Telling the Story of Five Decades of Indian Migration to Australia 3

2 ‘Dharma Is Dead’: A Family Loses a Son 25

Part II Migration Money 35

3 Remittances Are a Currency of Care 37

4 The Gender of Migrant Money 65

5 Recent Migrants Transform the Narrative of Remittances 91

Part III Communication, Money and Family 107

6 Communication, Money and the Transnational Family 109

xi xii CONTENTS

Part IV The Migration Experience: From Settlement to Mobility 139

7 A Story of Settlement 141

8 Recent Student Migrants: A Story of Mobility 167

Part V The Transnational Joint Family 191

9 Recent Migrants Re-imagine the Joint Family 193

Part VI Conclusion 209

10 Conclusion: Money, Migration, and the Family 211

Appendix 1: The Participants 215

References 231

Index 249 LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1 India-born migrants in Australia, 2001–2011 7 Table A.1 The Indian migration project, Australia, 2005–2014 218 Table A.2 Early migrants interviewed May 2005–February 2012 219 Table A.3 Second generation interviewed 2009/2010 220 Table A.4 Student migrants, interviewed 2009/2010 221 Table A.5 The transnational family: matched samples interviewed 2011/2012 223 Table A.6 The transnational family: matched sample interviewed 2014 226 Table A.7 The transnational family: unmatched sample interviewed 2011/2012 228 Table A.8 The transnational family: unmatched sample interviewed 2014 229

xiii PART I

Introduction CHAPTER 1

Telling the Story of Five Decades of Indian Migration to Australia

I tell the story of nearly fi ve decades of Indian migration to Australia from the late 1960s to 2015, through the eyes of the migrants and their families. Placing the stories of early and recent migrants side by side shows fi ve dramatic changes. The fi rst major change is the marked increase of Indian migrants, shift- ing from the earlier professionals to a dominance of student migrants. The Indian migrants who came to Australia between the 1960s and mid-1990s were professionals, mainly from the metropolitan cities in India. Some were multiple migrants . They were born in India but moved to Australia after a prior migration to Malaysia, Singapore, Kenya or the UK. I was one of the India-born multiple migrants to Australia who came in 1986. I had migrated to Malaysia at marriage in 1967 to a Malaysian of Indian origin. I moved to Australia 19 years later with my second husband, also a Malaysian Indian, and my younger son, 15 years old. Like the other early migrants, my husband and I were professionals with a graduate education. The early migrant group who arrived between the late 1960s to the mid-1990s grew with family reunion. There was also a second generation who were born in Australia or who arrived before they were 12 years old and so had a signifi cant period in Australian schools.

Table 1.1 is based on Supriya Singh & Liliya Gatina (2015) Money fl ows two ways between transnational families in Australia and India, South Asian Diaspora, 7:1, 33–47 http://www.tandfonline.com . With permission.

The story of Indian migration to Australia is one of rapid increase. The India-born in Australia almost tripled between 2004 and 2014 in response to the Australian policy focus on education and skills as pathways to migration. By mid-2014, they numbered 397,200 persons, comprising 1.7 percent of the Australian population. They were the fourth largest overseas born group, after those born in the UK, New Zealand and China. 1 In the 1960s, Indians, if they thought of Australia, saw it as a far away empty land. But in 2015 Hindi and Punjabi are routinely heard on the streets of Melbourne. There are more India-born migrants in Melbourne than those born in Greece or Italy. The 2015 queen of Moomba, a popular Melbourne festival, is a Bollywood actor, Sharda Pallavi, born in Australia of Indian parents. Australia has become part of overseas scenes in Bollywood fi lms such as Dil Chahta Hai (2001), Salaam Namaste (2005), Chak De India (2007), Crook (2010) and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013). Australia is still exotic, but reachable. A large group of the recent migrants, those who came to study and hoped to settle, came with temporary rather than permanent residence visas. But the migrants who came after the mid-1990s differed from the earlier arrivals in important ways. The recent migrants come from metropolitan cities and also from regional cities and villages. They are younger, more often male and single, rather than migrating with their nuclear families. This large intake of young males meant the India-born group in 2011 now has the youngest median age of all overseas groups at 31. The sex ratio also favors males with 125.2 males per 100 females. 2 But like the early migrants, the recent migrants are predominantly from the Indian middle class, because a certain level of skill and competency in English are required. These demographic changes in the population of Indian migrants to Australia are accompanied by changes in the global position of India , the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) and shifts in the Australian migration policy. India in the 1990s emerged as a signifi cant Asian country with a more market-related global economy. The middle class in India is growing in wealth . The new information technologies make for more affordable, instantaneous communication and frequent travel. And Australian migration policy has moved toward temporary permits rather than permanent residence visas. These changes have led to differences in the way early and recent Indian migrants to Australia experience money, migration, communication and family. The second major change is the transformation of the nature of global money fl ows and the characteristics of money as a currency of care. For the early migrants money went one way from Australia to their families in TELLING THE STORY OF FIVE DECADES OF INDIAN MIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA 5

India or their home country. This refl ected the better economic position of the migrant part of the transnational family and the continuation of the norm of money as a currency of care. Recent migrants have had to pay to migrate , and money fl ows two ways between migrants in Australia and their families in India. The third major change relates to communication within the family across borders. Many of the early migrants, particularly those without siblings or parents in Australia, felt a sense of loss, of partial one-way communication with their natal families in India. Migrants visit ed their families in India perhaps once every fi ve or six years. It was unusual for family members in India to visit those in Australia. Recent migrants and their families in India however communicate and visit frequent ly. They speak with their families at least once a week, and sometimes as often as four times a day. The fl uidity and instantaneous nature of communication makes for a feeling of co-presence in the transnational family sited across borders. They are part of the everydayness of family life even though life is lived across borders. This frequent communication shapes the perception of the quantum of money. The fourth change is that the norm of mobility replaces the assumption of settlement . The early migrants came with permanent residence visas and the expectation of settling. The recent migrants hope to settle, but the large group who have come to study, are on temporary visas. They experience a precarious mobility during the substantial period between the application of permanent residence and the outcome. The default is returning to India or a move to another country. The fi fth change is re-imagining family in India and Australia. There was a narrowing of the extended family for the early migrants, combined with diffusion as their children and other kin migrated to different nodes of the Indian diaspora. For most in the second generation, the family was nuclear rather than extended and transnational. Many of the recent migrants, however, plan if possible for a temporary or permanent extended family household. This reimagined joint family if possible means grandparents fl y in to help with the care of the children. And when the grandparents require care, they have the option of settling with their children in Australia. In the rest of the chapter I give the demographic, methodological and conceptual context of the study.

EARLY INDIAN MIGRANTS TO AUSTRALIA The history of Indian migration to Australia traditionally goes back to the arrival of lone males from British India in the fi rst half of the nineteenth century to work as laborers, camel drivers and hawkers. There has recently 6 S. SINGH been an increased interest in their stories. 3 The early well-established Sikh settlement of Woolgoolga in New South Wales traces itself back to a few Punjabis arriving around 1880s. 4 Recent discoveries of Indian DNA in the Aboriginal population have led to speculation that early Indian history in Australia could go further back and needs to be reassessed. 5 In 1901, under the White Australia Policy migration to Australia was restricted to Europeans. The Australian Census shows the Indian population was nearly static moving from 6644 persons born in India in 1911 to 6774 in 1933. 6 With the independence of India in 1947, a number of Anglo-Indians and India-born British citizens migrated to Australia, bringing the numbers to 8160. 7 The fi rst Anglo-Indian migrants came in 1947. Their arrival was initially questioned as they were not of “pure European descent.” 8 After 1947 Anglo-Indians talked of “going home” and some eventually moved from Britain to Australia. In the 1981 fi lm 36 Chowringhee Lane , the niece of the Anglo-Indian teacher, Violet Stoneham, kept urging her aunt to join her in Australia. The easing of immigration restrictions from the late 1960s to 1973 led to the formal end of the White Australia Policy. There was a slow increase in the numbers of India-born who nearly doubled from 15,754 in 1966 to 28,656 in 1971. 9 Of these, perhaps only 30 percent were of Indian descent. 10 So it was an estimated 10,000 people of Indian descent who met the migration criteria of having qualifi cations for employment and the ability to integrate. Indians who migrated between the late 1960s and the mid-1990s were mainly doctors, teachers and other professionals from varied parts of India. 11 In the Sikh temple in Blackburn I sometimes hear this group of migrants hankering for that period. They comment that in those days when Australians thought of Indians, they thought of doctors. Now when they think of Indians, they think of taxi drivers.

INDIAN MIGRANTS QUADRUPLE, 1996–2011 The number of persons born in India quadrupled in Australia between 1996 and 2011. Student and skilled migration since 2001 accounted for much of the increase. This has contributed to Australia’s characteristics as a migrant nation. In 2011, close to half of Australian’s population was either born overseas (26 percent) or the children of at least one parent born overseas (20 percent). It has also been part of the move from European- led migration to Asian migrants who now comprise one-third (33 percent) TELLING THE STORY OF FIVE DECADES OF INDIAN MIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA 7 of the overseas born population. Persons born in India comprised 5.6 percent of the overseas born population and were the fourth largest migrant group in Australia after the UK, New Zealand and China. 12 This increase in Indian migration has changed the color of Australian cities. Melbourne in Victoria attracts the largest number of the India-born. They more than tripled from 29,000 people in 2001 to 105,000 people in 2011. The India-born population in 2011 in Melbourne accounted for 3 percent of the city’s population, making it the second largest migrant group after those from the UK (150,015). The India-born are now more numerous than those born in China (90,000), Vietnam (66,691), Italy (66,556), New Zealand (62,627) or Greece (47,666). 13 Australia however is a minnow in the wider picture of Indian emigration. Indians in Australia accounted for 1.8 percent of the 27.1 million persons in the Indian diaspora in January 2015. 14 Australians are part of the “Other” category that sent only 2 percent of remittances. 15 Australia however has an important media presence particularly in Punjab through billboards advertising education and through songs and fi lm. There is a buzz around tourism in Australia as offering something new and different from going to London and New York. This has seemingly overcome the negative publicity around the racial assaults on Indian students in Australia between 2008 and 2010 (Table 1.1 ). In my visits to India, people ask about ways to get to Australia when they hear I live there. Today in Punjab, nearly everybody knows of a family

Table 1.1 India-born migrants in Australia, 2001–2011

Born in Number % of total overseas Position among % of population, India born overseas born Australia

2001 98,070 2.2 Ninth largest 0.5 2006 169,720 3.4 Sixth largest 0.8 2011 337,120 5.6 Fourth largest 1.6

Sources : Australian Bureau of Statistics. “3105.0.65.001 – Australian Historical Population Statistics, 2008.” Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008 Australian Bureau of Statistics. “3416.0 – Perspectives on Migrants, 2008”, 2008 Australian Bureau of Statistics. “Cultural Diversity in Australia.” In 2071.0 – Refl ecting a Nation: Stories from the 2011 Census, 2012–2013. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012 Australian Bureau of Statistics. “Migration, Australia, 2010–11.” Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012 Australian Bureau of Statistics. “3412.0 – Migration, Australia, 2011–12 and 2012–13.” Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2013 8 S. SINGH that has a young person living in Australia. One of my participants from Tarn Taran, a regional city about 40 minutes from Amritsar, tells me that young men from six of the 13 houses in his alley have migrated. He points out “This house, Australia. This house, Australia. This house, Australia.” He looks toward the street in front and adds, “That house, Germany. That shop also Australia.” Australia is seen as attractive because it is a high-income country like the USA, Canada, and the UK. It offers education, skilled work and settlement. In terms of the status hierarchy, the USA still ranks the highest. But Australia at times can be a stepping stone. 16 Migration to Australia differs from that to the Middle East and Southeast Asia which attract a large percentage of Indian emigrants. These two regions offer temporary migration to unskilled or semiskilled workers for a contracted period without the possibility of settlement. Indian men and women do not need to migrate alone to Australia, leaving behind spouses and children. Migration to Australia thus stands many notches higher in terms of family mobility and status.

STUDYING MONEY AND FAMILY AMONG INDIAN MIGRANTS I began studying Indian migrants, money and family in 2005. The immediate trigger was the coming together of personal experience of sending money from Malaysia and Australia to my mother in India during the 1980s and 1990s, my study of the sociology of money and remittances emerging as one of the largest international fl ows of funds around 2003. I was particularly interested in remittances, for I saw them as a natural part of being a family. In India I was different because it is usually sons who send money home. This remains true even today. But in my family we only had daughters. Moreover, our gender norms had been transformed after the Partition of India when we moved from Rawalpindi to Delhi. My mother was a housewife in Rawalpindi. In Delhi she went into paid work so that the family could survive. She continued her education, something that was denied her in Rawalpindi. In time she became the main earner in the family. 17 The vital importance of regular remittances was also brought home to me when I interviewed a Chinese corporate executive in Malaysia in the mid-1980s, to explore the role of remittances in Chinese banks in the 1930s and 1940s. During the Japanese Occupation, communications were disrupted and remittances stopped. In banking history, this is no TELLING THE STORY OF FIVE DECADES OF INDIAN MIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA 9 more than a footnote. But 40 years later, this executive sobbed at his desk as he told how his mother and four brothers and sisters starved to death in Canton during those war years. 18 These personal stories melded with remittances emerging as an important market phenomenon in 2003. The interweaving of the personal and the market aspects of money spoke to one of the key tenets of the sociology of money. Dilip Ratha, lead economist and manager of the Migration and Remittances Development Prospects Group at the World Bank, discovered in 2003 through forensic accounting that remittances to the Philippines were 51 times greater than the IMF fi gures. He is an Indian migrant from Orissa to the USA and sent money home. Coming from a country with a remittance culture, where sons are expected to send money home and brothers are expected to help their sisters, it was easier for him to recognize the importance of remittances as an important international fl ow of funds. 19 India has routinely been top of the league tables with an estimated US$70 billion in formal remittances in 2014 of the US$436 billion to developing countries. 20

Two Phases of the Study My research follows the two waves of Indian migrants to Australia from the late 1960s to the present. It draws on the experiences of 186 persons in 95 families (see Tables A.1, A.2, A.3, A.4, A.5, A.6, A.7 and A.8). The fi rst phase of the project, 2005–2012, focused on Indian migrants in Australia and the second generation. 21 It detailed the perceptions of only the migrant side of the transnational family. Participants were accessed through personal, community, professional and media networks. In two cases, I had a faint connection through India. From 2011 to 2014 in the second phase I also studied the families of migrants left behind in India. This offered a more rounded perspective of migration, giving the perspectives of family members who have migrated and those who have stayed behind. It also gave an additional insight into the lives of student migrants in particular, for 24 of the 32 transnational families had children who had migrated as students. The remaining eight were families of skilled migrants. My own experience as an Indian migrant to Malaysia since 1967 and then an Indian Malaysian migrant to Australia since 1986 helped shape some of my questions, observations and perceptions. Many insights also came from informal conversations with recent migrants who are now taxi 10 S. SINGH drivers, in the Gurdwara (the Sikh temple) at Blackburn, Melbourne, and through participation in community organizations. The early Indian migrants were mainly from metropolitan cities with a fl uent knowledge of English. There were an equal number of men and women among the participants. They told stories of coming with limited funds because of foreign exchange restrictions in India. These restrictions came into place in 1974 and were progressively liberalized after 1998. They came usually to work in their areas of expertise that may or may not require some retraining. Social security payments allowed them to survive in the interim, though the resulting change in status, even if temporary, was diffi cult. Once they were settled, in some cases siblings and extended family members joined them. Some of these migrants were professionals also, whereas others worked in factories or opened businesses such as restaurants, grocery stores or convenience outlets. The study of early migrants led to questions about the second generation, those who were born in Australia or came when they were young enough to go to school. I included those who came before they were 12 years old, sometimes termed the 1.5 generation. 22 Their relationship with India varied, depending on their childhood relationships and whether they had forged individual relationships with family members and the country. For many, one of the most haunting parts of their migration was experiencing racism from students in school. But by the time they reached university, they had become part of multicultural groups, with a wider South Asian identity. Most were professionals, like their parents. The study of student migrants and community leaders followed, in the context of increased racial attacks against Indian students in Australia. The student migrants were mainly between 18 and 29 years old, male and middle class. They came equally from metropolitan cities on the one hand and regional cities, towns and villages on the other. For a few of them, Melbourne and Sydney were their fi rst experiences of metropolitan living. These characteristics set them apart from the professionals who came as families in the late 1960s to 1990s and others who came via the family reunion route. 23 The student sample was predominantly from Punjab. This was partly because of my knowledge of the language and community, but also because roughly half the student migrants to Australia were from Punjab. 24 This has resulted in Sikhism becoming the 16th highest religion practiced in Australia in 2011 with 72,296 persons. Punjabi is now the 13th highest language spoken in Australia, with 0.3 percent of the Australian population speaking it. 25 TELLING THE STORY OF FIVE DECADES OF INDIAN MIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA 11

In the second phase of the study, I tried to cover both sides of the transnational family in India and Australia. Access to the families in India was often through the migrant in Melbourne. There were also times when I met the family in India fi rst and then the migrant in Melbourne. The distinctive characteristic of the transnational families’ sample, 2011–2014, is that it comprises recent migrants and their families. These were student and skilled migrants who came to Australia between 1997 and 2014. Though I had studied student migrants in 2010, the transnational study sought to place the migrant in the context of his or her transnational family. There was some overlap for I connected with the families of two of the student migrants in the fi rst phase to get both sides of the story of money, migration, and family. Hence for 17 of the 32 families studied in the second phase, the story was more two-sided covering both the perspectives of the migrant and the family left behind.

Following the Family Across Borders and Over Time I followed the family, rather than focusing on multiple sites. It was more a search for multiple perspectives on the experience of migration, family and money. If the whole family came together in Melbourne or Amritsar, I met them there. The site then became important not as a spatial point in fi eldwork but for the infl uence it had on the perspectives of different family members and the context of the interview. I had already learnt that the nature of transnational family relationships meant that just staying on one side of the picture was insuffi cient. When studying the transnational family, it is a given that the research has to deal with issues across national borders. It only re-emphasizes that methodological nationalism is not appropriate to study global social processes. 26 However, the nation-state was a player in the way it shaped possibilities for international migration in ways that differed from internal migration. My approach was more like that of Ghassan Hage, Karen Leonard, Loretta Baldassar, Cora Baldock and Raelene Wilding, who followed families across borders. 27 I also owed a debt to Robert Browning who wrote of a murder case in Italy in the late seventeenth century from the perspective of the different players and onlookers in The Ring and the Book . Barbara Kingsolver in The Poisonwood Bible also tells a story in fi ve different voices. 28 After that, a one-sided story was never going to be enough. Unlike the literary texts, the stories I heard from different family members were usually of a piece. The stories differed at times about the 12 S. SINGH quantum of remittances sent and received and a varied emphasis on the importance of the migrant’s and the family’s role in deciding to migrate. It was also a difference in narrative. Parents would talk more about how the migration of children affected the parents’ and children’s life choices, whereas children would speak of the settlement process and adapting to different cultural norms relating to work. Sometimes there were silences when I asked about possible return. Perhaps I would have gotten greater discussion if the migrant was not talking in front of his or her family. I know I did not get to hear narratives that were totally different. I heard about fraught relationships relating to migration, family and money. These were one-sided, for the other side did not choose to be interviewed. Most times the stories of confl ict were participants telling other people’s stories. The major breakthrough came not from the differences in narratives but from my continued relationship with the migrant and his or her family. Meeting the migrant’s family set me apart from the migrant’s other relationships, for I now could place him or her in the family perspective in the home town. That itself set up the basis for future interactions. The second phase thus involved more extensive participant observation. The interviews and participant observation in the transnational family phase of the project were spread across 152 hours between October 2011 and July 2014. The emotional aspects of migration, family and money came more to the fore as the research moved from interviews to participation and interaction. Repeated visits set up recurring chains of hospitality and gift giving that have continued till the present. It is important to openly recognize the emotional aspects of fi eldwork and the emotional content of migration and family communication and care. 29 Writing the stories of migration, I hope this emotion comes through. Over the three years, with fi ve transnational families, the interaction moved from the professional to the personal. This meant a longer time frame to observe how decisions talked about in the initial interviews actually panned out over the next three to fi ve years. Charandeep 30 in 2010 was actively considering moving to Canada. He did not invest in a house in Australia, not knowing whether he would have the kind of job he wanted in Australia. But by 2015, he was working in his desired fi eld and was active in community affairs in Australia. His parents have moved to Australia as permanent residents, though they come and go. They have bought a house near a Sikh temple. His father has planted vegetables in TELLING THE STORY OF FIVE DECADES OF INDIAN MIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA 13 the garden. So the long gaze overtook the snapshot view. This changes data and perspective in the study of migration and family. 31 I was part of a wedding celebration when the bride’s family group came from India to Melbourne to celebrate. The distant, affi nal family connection felt more intimate as the family came to my place to eat, sing and dance after the formal marriage celebrations were over. With another family, we celebrated the wife’s graduation over dinner. With a fourth, there are repeated meetings when I visit India. The death of Dharma because of an accident in India brought home the very personal nature of the interview and the deep bonds it gener- ated in the grieving process. I give his story in the next chapter before the data and theory, for his story and the continuing relationship with his family bring to the center the personal and emotional nature of both research and migration. There was a point in the relationship when his circle of friends and family extended to include me. That was when I stopped taking formal notes and putting the interview details in Excel sheets or NVivo.

THE SOCIOLOGY OF MONEY, GLOBALIZATION AND COMMUNICATION FRAME THE STUDY I use the conceptual frameworks of the sociology of money, globalization and communication to understand money, migration, and family and their force in personal life and the market. These frameworks draw attention to the fi ve main changes that have taken place over fi ve decades of migration from Australia to India in the increase in Indian migration, fl ow of remittances, communication and the transnational family, mobility and the re- imagining of the joint family. The central tenet of the sociology of money is that money is a social phenomenon. Money shapes and is shaped by social relationships and cultural values. Money belongs to the market and personal life. It is important therefore to go beyond the “hostile worlds” approach that dominates the study of money in personal life and money in the market. 32 The management and the control of money is an important lens for the study of gender and power in families. This plays out in different ways across cultures, but the focus on the gender of money remains important. 33 Remittances are an important case study connecting life stories of money, migration patterns and family norms and practices with one of the largest international fl ow of funds. 14 S. SINGH

The sociology of money also helped me understand money across cultures, refl ecting on how different concepts of money could battle for sov- ereignty within yourself and globally. The sociology of money also brings to the center the gender of money in the way it is perceived, managed, controlled and remitted. The frameworks of globalization complement the sociology of money. Remittances and the transnational family are amongst the most personal dimensions of money and globalization. It is grounded in national states, rather than decentered. 34 I interpret globalization as broader than economic globalization and approach it from the perspective of the global South. Drawing on the work of Manfred Steger, Robert Holton and Saskia Sassen I see globalization as an imaginary and as a social phenomenon. 35 Trying to understand money from a global South perspective changes the story of globalization and money. Extending the gaze to include Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Pacifi c the story centers on the fact that more than a third (38 percent) of the world is unbanked. Women are more fi nancially excluded. Globally in 2014, 42 percent of women did not have an account, compared with 35 percent of men. 36 In most parts of the global South men control the major household resources like land and money. Women earn, control and own less than men. The global South perspective also emphasizes how mobile money has swept sub-Saharan Africa, leading to greater fi nancial inclusion for both men and women. Studying money from a global perspective also shines a light on the characteristics of global money leading to questions: How does money change characteristics when it crosses borders among families? Is calculability central to money in family contexts, or is its approximation to care the more important characteristic? How will the morality of money in families in the global South shape the future of money? The use of the new ICTs has changed the experience of money, migration, and family. It is also important that the use and meanings of ICTs have also changed. There is an increasing interest in the way communication and the migration experience interact with each other. 37 More accessible and affordable ways of communication via the mobile phone, Skype and the Internet increase the circulation of care 38 in the transnational family. Cheaper and more affordable travel permits the two-way visits between migrants and their families across borders. The difference of “there” and “here” in a transnational family is reduced, 39 making possible a greater circulation of care. TELLING THE STORY OF FIVE DECADES OF INDIAN MIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA 15

The literature on money and communication seldom intersect, despite the fact that both are media of care, and money is a medium of communication. Recent focus has been on electronic money and the phenomenon of mobile money. It is interesting to look back at the 1990s and remember people talking of the distinction of real money and plastic money. 40 However, as Simmel pointed out money has always been abstract, imper- sonal and symbolic. 41 With mobile money though, the equivalence of time and money has come upfront in that airtime itself has become a currency. 42 Sending money via the mobile in Kenya is “to M-PESA” money. Mobile money has become a verb. The instantaneous sending of money, that is the activity, the mobile channel and M-PESA money blur into each other. 43 “Mobile money complicates consumption research because the commod- ity consumed slips between being a service and becoming money.” 44 The stories of migration show that money and communication go in tandem in transnational families. The ease and frequency of communication correspond with the greater sharing of money. The use of the new ICTs can lead to a more immediate and everyday experience of the transnational family, bridging time and distance. It is also interesting that with the greater two-way fl ow of communication and money, the meanings of transnational money change. Communication and care infl ate the value of the money received as both sides know the context in which it is sent and received. I discuss this in greater detail in Chap. 6 .

THE CONNECTED TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY Globalization and transnationalism are not new. However, both have been transformed by the use of the new ICTs. The past 25 years of migration research have recognized that migrants “maintain various kinds of ties to their homelands at the same time that they are incorporated into the countries that receive them. Increasingly, social life takes place across borders, even as the political and cultural salience of nation-state boundaries remains strong.” 45 It is this broad view of transnationalism that is the context for the study of the transnational family. I use the term “transnational family” to include the family members who have migrated and those who have been left behind. 46 It refers to any situation in which people have to negotiate and maintain family relationships across geographic boundaries, particularly the boundaries of nation-states. Though these transnational families are separated by distance and national borders, they “hold together and create something that can be seen as a 16 S. SINGH feeling of collective welfare and unity, namely ‘familyhood’, even across national borders.” 47 Transnational family relationships are the most personal and everyday dimensions of globalization. Families have lived apart before. The distinctive characteristic of the transnational family is that the family is spread across national borders. It is also part of a globalized world which has changed because of the new ICTs. This in turn has enabled instantaneous communication changing the norms and practices of the transnational family. The transnational family is dynamic and changes with life stage, having its own developmental cycle. 48 The stories of migration show this: as the parents die, children grow up and move and the family gets more dispersed. The idea and the center of home changes. I talk of this more in Chap. 7 . As Skrbiš says, “The transnational family is a symptom of our increasingly globalised lives, which take place across borders and boundaries, thereby eroding the possibilities that places of birth, life and dying will coincide.” 49 In migration research, this focus on “transnationalism from below” moves the emphasis from the assimilation and integration of the migrant in the destination country to the continuation of business, political and social relationships across borders. But as recent research has emphasized, it is important not to see transnationalism as “an all encompassing equal- ising force.” 50 It is a process that changes with time and the phase of settlement and assimilation. There is a risk of “seeing transnationalism everywhere and overemphasizing its centrality.” 51 The vast majority of the second generation is primarily oriented to the country of their birth and where they have grown up. As Foner says,

One of the great insights of the recent transnational literature is that individuals can keep up ties to their own (or their parents’) home countries at the very same time as they are committed to, and infl uenced by involvements in activities, institutions, and relationships… 52

in the country of destination. So transnationalism and assimilation need to be studied as infl uencing each other. 53

IMPLICATIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT, MIGRATION AND REMITTANCE INFRASTRUCTURE In this book I detail changes in money, migration, communication and family through life stories across fi ve decades of Indian migration to Australia. This approach builds on the “connected worlds” methodology TELLING THE STORY OF FIVE DECADES OF INDIAN MIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA 17 of Zelizer which links the personal and the market dimensions of money. 54 I trace the ways in which personal, family and community money connect to global fl ows of money, communication and family forms and practices. The sociological and anthropological study of remittances, migration and family has implications for migration policy, fi nancial inclusion, gender equity and the shaping of the migration and remittance infrastructure. The literature, however, exists in fi ve silos. The fi rst and most marginal to policy is the sociological and anthropological study of remittances. The second measures the scale and importance of international remittances. It is best represented in the migration briefs and the Migration and Remittance Factbook produced periodically by the World Bank. 55 The third deals with the economic determinants and impact of remittances on the alleviation of poverty and development. 56 The fourth and the fi fth silos are more recent. They deal with how countries have succeeded in using remittances for development 57 and the migration and remittance infrastructure. 58 The importance of linking sociological and anthropological study to policy is part of a long Australian tradition going back to Jean Martin in the 1960s, one of the founders of anthropological and sociological studies in Australia. She held it was important to produce new knowledge that is valid in its own right and also useful for addressing social problems. 59 This became urgent for me in 2014, as major banks in Australia closed the accounts of some of the smaller community money transfer organizations dealing with countries in Africa, such as South Sudan and Somalia. There was little understanding that cultural factors shaped the morality and gender of money. 60 Policy makers need to recognize the cultural distinctiveness of the ways in which money, family and migration intersect, if policies are going to speak to the lived experience of migration. At present, migration policy in Australia has not drawn conspicuously on the sociological study of migration. It has continued to focus on the characteristics of its “designer migrants,” that is migrants who are selected because they fi t the country’s need for specifi c skills. 61 The policy does not suffi ciently take account of the family, cultural and social factors that are important for migrants in their decisions to come, stay or leave. Economic modelling forecasts the implications of migration for Australia, without placing migrants and their families at the center. There is even less awareness that the changes in the last fi ve decades of migration from India to Australia can have a wider impact and modify the way we think of migration in middle-income source countries and high-income countries that offer permanent settlement. 18 S. SINGH

Part of this failure can be attributed to sociologists and anthropologists who are not translating their insights for policy makers. Until recently I too remained within my own comfort zone without seeking connection with policy makers. I am now in a different space and studying how we can actualize this connection in policy in Bangladesh. 62 Closer to home I am beginning to connect with media about the social cost of the closure of remittance organizations’ bank accounts on migrants and their families. 63 This is leading to more interdisciplinary work which will seek empirical data on the social and cultural costs of the regulation of remittances. The narrative of money, migration, and family is changing. So I now ask: How can policy makers’ models take into account remittances as a currency of care, fl owing two ways between the source and destination country? How can the gender of money become more equitable? How can regulators become aware that most of the world goes by a morality of family money that focuses on intergenerational sharing rather than individual fi nancial responsibility? How will the mobility of recent migrants infl uence policy that has focused primarily on laying down the rules for allowing migrants to stay temporarily or permanently? And how can we begin to take into account the everyday communication across the transnational family that changes our ideas of care in the family? How can we incorporate the transnational family and community in our conceptualiza- tion and tracking of family, household and community in the source and destination countries? These are important questions. I engage with them in the rest of the book.

NOTES 1. Australian Bureau of Statistics, “3412.0 – Migration, Australia, 2013–14,” (Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2015). 2. “Cultural Diversity in Australia,” in 2071.0 – Refl ecting a Nation : Stories from the 2011 Census , 2012 – 2013 (Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012). 3. Ed Yong, “Genomes Link Aboriginal Australians to Indians,” Nature (2013); Carmen Voigt-Graf, “Indians at Home in the Antipodes: Migrating with Ph.D.S, Bytes or Kava in Their Bags,” in Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora , ed. Bhikhu Parekh, Gurharpal Singh, and Steven Vertovec (London: Routledge, 2003); Asia Education Foundation, “Dying Wish,” http://identities.asiaeducation.edu.au/resources/resource_page.html?res ourceId=3030&pathwayId=0&showSectionId=2 . Accessed 5 August 2014; Manpreet Kaur Singh, “Traders of Goodwill: Sikh Pioneers of Australia,” TELLING THE STORY OF FIVE DECADES OF INDIAN MIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA 19

http://www.sikhchic.com/article-detail.php?id=108&cat=12 . Accessed 5 August 2014; Rashmere Bhatti and Verne A. Dusenbery, eds., A Punjabi Sikh Community in Australia : From Indian Sojourners to Australian Citizens (A Centenary of Federation Project supported by the Commonwealth and presented by Woolgoolga Neighbourhood Centre Inc., 2001). 4. A Punjabi Sikh Community in Australia : From Indian Sojourners to Australian Citizens . 5. Yong, “Genomes Link Aboriginal Australians to Indians.” 6. Australian Bureau of Statistics, “3105.0.65.001 – Australian Historical Population Statistics, 2008,” (Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008). 7. Ibid. (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2008a; Commonwealth of Australia NA) Commonwealth of Australia, “The India-Born Community,” (Canberra: Department of Social Services 2015). 8. Klaus Neumann, Across the Seas : Australia ’s Response to Refugees – A History (Collingwood, Vic: Black Inc., 2015). 9. Australian Bureau of Statistics, “3105.0.65.001 – Australian Historical Population Statistics, 2008.” 10. Purusottama Bilimoria and Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase, Indians in Victoria (Australia ), Second ed. (Geelong: School of Humanities, Deakin University and Victorian Ethnic Affairs Commission, 1988). 11. Commonwealth of Australia, “Community Information Summary: India-Born.” 12. Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Cultural Diversity in Australia.” 13. “4102.0 – Australian Social Trends, 2014,” (Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2014). 14. Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, “Population (Estimate/Assumed) of Overseas Indians: Country Wise,” Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, http://moia.gov.in/writereaddata/pdf/Population_Overseas_Indian.pdf . 15. Ishan Bakshi et al., “National Remote Payments Survey,” (New Delhi: National Council of Applied Economic Research 2014). 16. Biao Xiang, “Gender, Dowry and the Migration System of Indian Information Technology Professionals,” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 12, no. 2&3 (2005). 17. Supriya Singh, The Girls Ate Last (Eltham, VIC: Angsana Publications, 2013). 18. Bank Negara Malaysia : The First 25 Years , 1959–1984 (Kuala Lumpur: Bank Negara Malaysia, 1984). 19. Jason DeParle, “World Banker and His Cash Return Home,” The New York Times 2008, March 17. 20 S. SINGH

20. Dilip Ratha et al., “Migration and Development Brief 24,” (The World Bank, 2015). 21. I worked with Anuja Cabraal in the fi rst phase of the study. She contributed to the interviews and analysis, most particularly her interviews with the second-generation participants. 22. Peggy Levitt and Mary C. Waters, “Introduction,” in The Changing Face of Home : The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation , ed. Peggy Levitt and Mary C. Waters (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002). 23. Supriya Singh and Anuja Cabraal, “Indian Student Migrants in Australia: Issues of Community Sustainability,” People and Place 18, no. 1 (2010). 24. Ibid. 25. “Census Reveals Rise of Indians in Australia,” Indian Herald , July 23, 2012. 26. See Saksia Sassen, A Sociology of Globalization (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2007); Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller, “Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society,” International Migration Review 38, no. 3 (2004); Peggy Levitt and B. Nadya Jaworsky, “Transnational Migration Studies: Past Developments and Future Trends,” Annual Review of Sociology 33, no. 1 (2007). 27. Ghassan Hage, “A Not So Multi-Sited Ethnography of a Not So Imagined Community,” Anthropological Theory 5, no. 4 (2005); Loretta Baldassar, Cora Vellekoop Baldock, and Raelene Wilding, Families Caring across Borders : Migration , Ageing and Transnational Caregiving (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Karen Isaksen Leonard, Locating Home : India ’ s Hyderabadis Abroad (Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2007). 28. Adam Roberts and Daniel Karlin, eds., The Major Works- Robert Browning , Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible : A Novel (Deckle Edge, 2008). 29. Yaso Nadarajah, “Doing Fieldwork in Disaster Areas – Nurturing the Embodied for Analytical Insight,” in International Conference on Building Resilience : Interdisciplinary Approaches to Disaster Risk Reduction and the Development of Sustainable Communities and Cities (Kandalama, Sri Lanka 2011). Also see Zlatko Skrbiš, “Transnational Families: Theorising Migration, Emotions and Belonging,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 29, no. 3 (2008). 30. The names of the participants are pseudonyms as required in the University ethics approval for the project. See Appendix 1 for the list of participants. 31. Levitt and Schiller, “Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society.” TELLING THE STORY OF FIVE DECADES OF INDIAN MIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA 21

32. See Viviana A. Zelizer, The Purchase of Intimacy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). 33. See Jan Pahl, “Family Finances, Individualisation, Spending Patterns and Access to Credit,” The Journal of Socio-Economics 37, no. 2 (2008); “Couples and Their Money: Patterns of Accounting and Accountability in the Domestic Economy,” Accounting , Auditing & Accountability Journal 13, no. 4 (2000); Invisible Money : Family Finances in the Electronic Economy (Bristol: The Policy Press, 1999); “His Money, Her Money: Recent Research on Financial Organisation in Marriage,” Journal of Economic Psychology 16, no. 3 (1995); Money and Marriage (London: Macmillan, 1989); “The Allocation of Money and the Structuring of Inequality within Marriage,” Sociological Review 31, no. 2 (1983); C. Vogler and J. Pahl, “Social and Economic Change and the Organisation of Money within Marriage,” Work , Employment and Society 7, no. 1 (1993); Carolyn Vogler, Clare Lyonette, and Richard D. Wiggins, “Money, Power and Spending Decisions in Intimate Relationships,” The Sociological Review 56, no. 1 (2008). 34. Martin O’Flaherty, Zlatko Skrbis, and Bruce Tranter, “Home Visits: Transnationalism among Australian Migrants,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30, no. 5 (2007). 35. Manfred B. Steger, The Rise of the Global Imaginary : Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Globalization : A Very Short Introduction , Second edition ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Sassen, A Sociology of Globalization ; Robert J. Holton, Global Finance (New York Routledge, 2012); Supriya Singh, Globalizatiion and Money : A Global South Perspective (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2013); Robert J. Holton, Making Globalization (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 36. Asli Demirguc-Kunt et al., “The Global Findex Database 2014: Measuring Financial Inclusion around the World,” in Policy Research Working Paper (The World Bank, 2015). 37. See R. Wilding, “‘Virtual’ Intimacies? Families Communicating across Transnational Contexts,” Global Networks 6, no. 2 (2006). Louise Ryan, Amanda Klekowski Von Koppenfels, and J. O. N. Mulholland, “‘The Distance between Us’: A Comparative Examination of the Technical, Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of the Transnational Social Relationships of Highly Skilled Migrants,” ibid.15(2015). 38. See Loretta Baldassar and Laura Merla, eds., Transnational Families , Migration and the Circulation of Care : Understanding Mobility and Absence in Family Life (New York: Routledge, 2014). 39. Personal communication, Lyn Richards, Eltham, Vic. 22 S. SINGH

40. See Supriya Singh, Marriage Money : The Social Shaping of Money in Marriage and Banking ( St: Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin., 1997). 41. Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money trans. Tom Bottomore and David Frisby, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1990). 42. Bill Maurer, “Mobile Money: Communication, Consumption and Change in the Payments Space,” Journal of Development Studies 48, no. 5 (2012). 43. Singh, Globalizatiion and Money : A Global South Perspective . 44. Maurer, “Mobile Money: Communication, Consumption and Change in the Payments Space.” p. 592. 45. Levitt and Jaworsky, “Transnational Migration Studies: Past Developments and Future Trends.” p. 129. 46. Baldassar, Baldock, and Wilding, Families Caring across Borders : Migration , Ageing and Transnational Caregiving . 47. Deborah F. Bryceson and Ulla Vuorela, “Transnational Families in the Twenty-First Century,” in The Transnational Family : New European Frontiers and Global Networks , ed. Deborah Bryceson and Ulla Vuorela (New York: Berg, 2002). p. 3. 48. Brenda S. A. Yeoh, Shirlena Huang, and Theodora Lam, “Transnationalizing the ‘Asian’ Family: Imaginaries, Intimacies and Strategic Intents,” Global Networks 5, no. 4 (2005). See also Bryceson and Vuorela, “Transnational Families in the Twenty-First Century.” 49. Skrbiš, “Transnational Families: Theorising Migration, Emotions and Belonging.” p. 231. 50. O’Flaherty, Skrbis, and Tranter, “Home Visits: Transnationalism among Australian Migrants.” 51. Nancy Foner, “Second-Generation Transnationalism, Then and Now,” in The Changing Face of Home : The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation , ed. Peggy Levitt and Mary C. Waters (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002). p. 250. 52. Ibid. p. 250. 53. O’Flaherty, Skrbis, and Tranter, “Home Visits: Transnationalism among Australian Migrants.” See also Levitt and Waters, “Introduction.” 54. Zelizer, The Purchase of Intimacy . 55. Dilip Ratha, Gemechu Ayana Aga, and Ani Silwal, “Remittances to Developing Countries Will Surpass $400 Billion in 2012,” in Migration and Development Brief (Washington, DC: Migration and Remittances Unit, Development Prospects Group, The World Bank, 2012); Dilip Ratha, Sanket Mohapatra, and Ani Silwal, “Prospects – Migration and Remittances Factbook 2011 ” Development Prospects Group at the World Bank, http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTDE CPROSPECTS/0 ,,contentMDK:21352016~pagePK:64165401~piPK:64 165026~theSitePK:476883~isCURL:Y,00.html; Ratha, Aga, and Silwal, TELLING THE STORY OF FIVE DECADES OF INDIAN MIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA 23

“Remittances to Developing Countries Will Surpass $400 Billion in 2012.” Dilip Ratha et al., “Migration and Remittance Flows: Recent Trends and Outlook, 2013–2016,” Migration and Remittances Team, Development Prospects Group, World Bank, 2013 http://siteresources.worldbank.org/ INTPROSPECTS/Resources/334934-1288990760745/Migrationand DevelopmentBrief21.pdf (2013).; Dilip Ratha et al., “Migration and Remittances: Recent Developments and Outlook,” in Migration and Development Brief (Migration and Remittances Team, Development Prospects Group, 2014); Christiane Kuptsch and Philip Martin, “Migration and Development: Remittances and Cooperation with the Diaspora,” International Institute for Labour Studies (IILS, 2004), http://www.gtz. de/migration-and-development/download/dokumentation- plenum2. pdf . (2004). 56. See Roger Ballard, “The South Asian Presence in Britain and Its Transnational Connections,” in Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora , ed. Bhikhu Parekh, Gurharpal Singh, and Steven Vertovec, Transnationalism (London: Routledge, 2003). Kuptsch and Martin, “Migration and Development: Remittances and Cooperation with the Diaspora”; Manuel Orozco, Migrant Remittances and Development in the Global Economy (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2013); Arthur W. Helweg, “Emigrant Remittances: Their Nature and Impact on a Punjabi Village,” New Community 10, no. 3 (1983); A. S. Oberai and H. K. Manmohan Singh, “Migration, Remittances and Rural Development: Findings of a Case Study in the Indian Punjab,” International Labour Review 119, no. 2 (1980); Kuptsch and Martin, “Migration and Development: Remittances and Cooperation with the Diaspora”; Louis DeSipio, “Sending Money Home…For Now: Remittances and Immigrant Adaptation in the United States,”(The Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, 2000); M. Gabbarot and C. Clarke, “Social Capital, Migration and Development in the Valles Centrales of Oaxaca, Mexico: Non-Migrants and Communities of Origin Matter,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 29, no. 2 (2010); Bimal Ghosh, Migrants ’ Remittances and Development : Myths , Rhetoric , and Realities (Geneva: International Organization for Migration (IOM), 2006); A. Quisumbing and S. McNiven, “Moving Forward, Looking Back: The Impact of Migration and Remittances on Assets, Consumption, and Credit Constraints in the Rural Philippines,” Journal of Development Studies 46, no. 1 (2010); Luin Goldring, “Family and Collective Remittances to Mexico: A Multi- Dimensional Typology,” Development and Change 35, no. 4 (2004). 57. Natasha Iskander, Creative State : Forty Years of Migration and Development Policy in Morocco and Mexico (Ithaca and London: ILR Press an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2010); Daniel Naujoks, Migration , Citizenship , and Development : Diasporic Membership Policies and Overseas Indians in 24 S. SINGH

the United States (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013); United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “World Population Policies 2011,” (New York: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division., 2013); Orozco, Migrant Remittances and Development in the Global Economy . 58. Biao Xiang and Johan Lindquist, “Migration Infrastructure,” international Migration Review 48, no. 1 (2014). Gabi G. Afram, ed. The Remittance Market in India : Opportunities , Challenges , and Policy Options (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2012); Dilip Ratha, The Hidden Force in Global Economics : Sending Money Home , TED Talks (Rio De Janeiro: TED Talks, 2014). 59. Peter Beilharz, Trevor Hogan, and Sheila Shaver, The Martin Presence : Jean Martin and the Making of the Social Sciences in Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2015). 60. Supriya Singh, “Bankers Are About to Ensure Money Transfers Go Underground,” The Conversation , 21 November 2014. 61. Alan B. Simmons, “Economic Integration and Designer Immigrants: Canadian Policy in the 1990s,” in Free Markets , Open Societies , Closed Borders ? Trends in International Migration and Immigration , ed. Max Castro (Miami: North-South Press, University of Miami, 1999). 62. I am working on a project led by Dr Shahadat Khan of RMIT University on Migrant Family Motivation Initiative (MFMI). 63. I am working with Prof Louis de Koker of Deakin University on this project. CHAPTER 2

‘Dharma Is Dead’: A Family Loses a Son

I tried to contact Dharma in February 2014. I sent him an SMS on his Melbourne phone telling him I was in Punjab and would like his consent to interview his family in India. When I didn’t hear back the next day I thought it could be his way of refusing and let it rest. One day later I heard from a mutual friend in Melbourne that Dharma was dead. Dead at 25. His scooter collided with a truck in Patiala and he died instantly. Instead of interviewing his parents I went to their home in Patiala for a condolence call. I had had only 25 minutes of a formal interview with Dharma in Melbourne followed by dinner. This was time he had snatched from his three businesses. He had impressed me with his enterprise, symbolizing the energy and drive of some of the recent Indian migrants. I told my son that I had met this wonderful young man. At 25 this young man had three businesses. He spoke openly in fl uent English about how much his family meant to him, how much he owed them and what he wanted to do for them. He had bought land for a three to four bedroom house so that his parents and aunt could join him in Melbourne – while waiting for his permanent residence. He was sure that if they did not or could not join him, he would return. What do you say to a family who has lost their only child? Dharma’s father saw me and we joined our hands in greeting. He cried, “My son is dead. Every day he would call me. He would call whenever he had a problem and say ‘Papa Yaar (friend or mate), what do I do about this

© The Author(s) 2016 25 S. Singh, Money, Migration, and Family, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54886-3_2 26 S. SINGH problem?’” His mother hugged me tight and sat there dumb with grief and shock. The unbroken reading of the Guru Granth Sahib (the Sikh holy book) had begun, scheduled to end the next day. His father’s older sister, Bhuaji , who had brought up Dharma, said how he would always ask her before doing anything. “Every time I wanted to do anything for him, he would say, ‘No, it is my turn now.’ He was generous and had also begun working with the migrant children of the colony.” Every time I tried to leave to let them attend to their other guests, Bhuaji would talk some more about Dharma. It was as if she was talking also to herself to keep the shock and grief at bay. I later learnt she had not gone with them for the cremation or the immersion of the ashes at Kiratpur Sahib. Bhuaji said Dharma had received my message for he had his Australian phone with him. He told her she and I would get on well. He showed the message to his parents. He told them about the interview in Melbourne. Bhuaji said, “‘Why don’t you reply?’ He said, ‘It is 9.30 pm and she may be asleep. You can’t call or send a message at any time you want.’” The next day he got busy with the prayers that Bhuaji had organized for his well-being. She did not know he had not replied, for she kept checking whether anybody with an unknown number had called. The day after, he was dead. His childhood friend, Dinesh, who was also with him in Melbourne, and in whose parents’ house I was staying, said there had been a great change in Dharma in the last two years. “He always loved people. But in the last two years, he had developed a sense of responsibility. He was planning for the future and spent a lot of time investigating the possibility of setting up a migrant consultancy in Patiala.” But when he did the sums he found he would have to be in Patiala one month in every three or four. That would reduce his income in Australia by a greater amount than what he would make here. So he dropped the idea. A year before he died, he had organized a party for his parents’ 25th wedding anniversary. He had a replay of the wedding with mehndi (the henna ceremony) and sangeet (an evening of song and dance), with his mother walking under a bagh , the traditional embroidered large shawl of Punjab. His mother wailed, “He organized our wedding. But we did not get a chance to organize his.” They put a ceremonial fl ower head dress on him for a ritual wedding to a doll and then cremated him. ‘DHARMA IS DEAD’: A FAMILY LOSES A SON 27

Dharma’s mother insisted we have langgar , the communal meal that accompanies Sikh prayers. Dharma’s friend Dinesh remonstrated, but I accepted. Later he said, “It is the fi rst time I have eaten in Dharma’s house without him.”

DHARMA’S STORY ENCAPSULATES THE THEMES OF THE BOOK Why does Dharma’s story stay with me? Is it because he died that the story has gained intensity? Dharma’s death froze the story and his family relationships in an idealistic glow. No disgruntled wife shattered his dream of joint family living. Perhaps his father would not have wanted to leave a vital career to come to Melbourne in his 50s. Maybe Dharma, like a few before him, would fi nd returning to India not as fulfi lling as he thought. Living between two countries, coming and going on a regular basis, would have had its pluses but may also have proved diffi cult once children began going to school. These mundane details and even the parts that resemble Indian TV dramas did not blur the story. Dharma is dead. His story brings home to me, more than any other, the deeply emotional nature of migration for the migrants and their families. Migration is not just an economic and demographic phenomenon, one that can be charted in tables and graphs and be part of policy briefs. It is a lived experience that migrants go through as do the families they leave behind. It is a process that can lead to self-discovery and experience of other ways of being. Listening to Dharma made clear how migration in his case was a way of growing, of seeking independence. There was the separation from family, the discovery of self in a new environment, new and old friendships, great enterprise and success, communication and the continuation of care, the give and take of money and gifts. In his case, there was also loss. Dharma’s story also encapsulates the nature of the migration experience for recent migrants. Firstly, instead of migrants just sending money home, for Dharma, the money and gifts went two ways. His family paid for his studies. But as soon as he could, he gave back generously, delighted that he had reached a position where he could give. The parents accepted it, often tearfully at the time, and even now in memory. Dharma’s story also brings to the fore the morality of money in the family. The giving from his family was without strings attached. There 28 S. SINGH wasn’t an incipient contract attached to it. His family was not funding Dharma’s education to ensure he would care for them in turn. It was the son who recognized how much his family was doing for him, very much like other recent migrants of his age in Australia. He knew his fi lial duty, even a sacred duty, was to show care in return. Dharma expressed this morality of money through gifts. Dharma did it in greater style than most. The re-enactment of his parents’ wedding was a public occasion in the presence of friends and family. There was honor to both sides. The world knew the parents had succeeded in bringing up a fi lial son, a son who took pride and joy in honoring them. And he in turn became the stereotypical dutiful and loving son. Giving a car to his father was more private. He was now able to give and acknowledge the love and care his father and family had given him. Secondly, the new information and communication technologies made possible every day, immediate communication with his transnational family. This communication was supplemented with frequent visits, sometimes more than once a year. His story illustrated that migration together with open communication can make family ties stronger. It takes away the taken for granted aspect of much of family life. Dharma talked to his family in India every day. They knew his friends, his business, his plans and the way his days went. When Dharma’s father or Bhuaji talk of Dharma, sometimes they use the same words he had used. They knew of all his friends and his joy of them, his businesses and how he felt about his family. They knew of his plans in Melbourne, in Patiala. There was little I could tell them that they did not know already. There was a continuity of family interaction over distance. He knew his father’s business and said his piece if he felt his mother’s or aunt’s health was fail- ing. He instigated his family’s plans for a larger house with a garden. Thirdly, Dharma felt settled in Melbourne but was open to options of mobility. There was a tension between settlement and return. Family decisions would dictate whether Dharma would stay in Melbourne or return to India. Dharma’s life would be lived with his family, in Australia or in India. And fourthly, like other recent migrants, Dharma set the stage for living in a joint family in Melbourne. He re-imagined himself living in the kind of joint family he had left, but only this time it would be in Melbourne. It made explicit how ensuring care within a transnational family means an early and focused kind of planning for living across countries. If Dharma had remained in India, at 25 and before he was married, he would not ‘DHARMA IS DEAD’: A FAMILY LOSES A SON 29 have been thinking about how he would look after his parents who were in their 50s. Most likely he would have married and stayed in the family home. His parents no doubt would have built up or around to give Dharma and his wife their own sense of space within the jointness. I think his story stays with me also because it shows the intimacy of an interview. Because of the questions that are possible in an interview with a stranger, the revelations about family, money and migration are more articulate than they would have been in an ordinary conversation. The interview permitted Dharma to talk openly of how he felt about his family, what he wanted to give them and how he wanted to ensure he would take care of them. But then, perhaps it is just that this young man was articulate. Dharma’s story also shows how rich and revealing a continued relationship can be. My relationship with Dharma’s family has continued after his death. It has been particularly strong with Bhuaji. She visited me in Delhi two weeks after I saw her in Patiala. Then the family came to Melbourne six months after Dharma’s death to meet with his friends and sort out the business details of his life and death. I visited them in their home near Chandigarh when I went to India in January 2015. Then Bhuaji came to meet me in Amritsar in February 2015. I never did get to formally interview his family, but the connections became rich. I sought consent by showing them the story I had written.

DHARMA DISCOVERS HIMSELF AND IS GRATEFUL FOR HIS FAMILY Dharma came to Australia to study in 2008. He spoke of how his parents had always supported him. They funded his education in Australia. He felt strongly it was his time to give back. He said, “They don’t need my support but I feel it is my responsibility….I don’t think I have had to ever ask for anything. Without even asking I used to get everything.” He bought land in Melbourne to build a three to four bedroom house for his parents and Bhuaji. Dharma had no doubt he wanted a joint family way of life. That is what he had known. Bhuaji told him that living together “depends on the girl you marry.” But Dharma said that living together with his family was not negotiable. Will they come here? I asked, for his father was only 53 at the time.

Either they’ll come or I’ll have to go. Most likely they’ll come. No, they have not visited me, but I go back twice, three times a year. Last two years I 30 S. SINGH

only went back once a year because the business required more time. If I say I need help, they will help. They always say “Whatever we have is all yours.” If there is a time in my life when I need it, I will ask them.

He was certain that if his family did not want to migrate, he would return to India. The third year he returned home, he was working full time and had saved $10,000. 1 He bought his father a small hatchback, though his father already had a car. He said, “My Dad was surprised. He said ‘Are you into wrong things over there?’ I said ‘Hang on a minute.’ I had taken my pay slips. I said, ‘Have a look. I do a job and I get paid.’” His mother stood by with tears in her eyes. Dharma said, “It was the fi rst time I was able to give to my parents from what I earned.” I met Dharma with Charandeep, one of the other participants, at his grocery shop in the new shopping center in a south western suburb. We came back to Charandeep’s house nearby. While Charandeep was preparing dinner with two friends, I sat in the lounge and interviewed him. Our conversation continued over dinner of paneer (cottage cheese), another vegetable and chappatis freshly made by a woman who catered in the area. After that, we dropped him back at the shop. Dharma comes from a well-to-do family. His father is a builder who has worked all over India though the family stayed in Patiala. When Dharma fi nished his year 12 in school and was 18 years old, he approached people for jobs. They immediately said, “Oh, yes, you are so and so’s son. Of course.” Citing the Sikh scriptures, he said,

One can choose a life of pleasure now and pain later or pain now and pleasure later. Abh dukh phir sukh or Abh sukh phir dukh. I chose dukh (pain) now. I have worked hard for the last fi ve years. I wanted my life later to be easy. How long can parents support you? … There is a stage when you need to take care of your parents. I thought I need to do something by myself.

Bhuaji’s version of Dharma’s going to Melbourne had more drama. She told me over lunch at my university in Melbourne that when Dharma was in Year 10 he announced he was going abroad to study after Year 12. He said to the family, “You can give me your blessing, make a big fuss, or disown me.” His father responded by making Dharma responsible for managing the daily expenses of the household. He would deposit his salary into a joint account, as the father was often at work away from ‘DHARMA IS DEAD’: A FAMILY LOSES A SON 31

Patiala. Dharma would pay the bills. They agreed on an allowance, but if he wanted anything extra, he would ring up his father and ask for permission to withdraw it. He knew then what was possible. Dharma had a few friends already in Melbourne. They told him there was a lot of opportunity in Melbourne. He did a Diploma in Business at a private institute. Dharma said “It was a good experience. I learnt a lot of things. I met a lot of people. I love meeting people.” While he was studying he worked as a sales representative in marketing and worked up to be a team manager. That experience after his studies set him up to start a business where he marketed services ranging from telecommunications, education to home services. This business had an associated Indian call center, drawing on his partner’s networks in India. The most recent was the grocery business. His partner in all these businesses was someone with whom he worked in the marketing company. He was excited about the marketing and trade sector and said, “There is no limit to how much you can make. There is also no need for a fi xed investment. But it took us nearly two and a half years to save for this grocery venture we are doing. ..” Dharma said,

Sometimes my Mum and Bhuaji – not my Dad – they say, “You come back.” Sometimes they say “Keep going. You are doing good.” I am the only child. This is something my friends and I discuss. I always say “I’ll go back”. They say “It’s not possible you will go back.” But I know I cannot be away from my parents for life. For some time it is alright.

The interview fl owed. He said migration had strengthened his family ties and work ethic. “After coming here, I feel what I mean to my parents and what my parents mean to me.” His attitude to work had changed.

People back home used to call me a spoilt child. If I tell someone with whom I have not been in touch with for fi ve or seven years, if I tell them I am working here, they don’t want to believe that I can work.

He talked of the land he had bought in Melbourne. “What I want to make is going to cost me a lot of money. Small house, though not too small. Three to four bedrooms. It is enough for my parents and Bhuaji. It is she who raised me more than my parents.” 32 S. SINGH

What about children? I asked. We laughed and he said “Then we’ll see.” He was not thinking of marriage for at least another two years. “For me at the moment, I need to work. There is a full life ahead to do a lot of things.” He wanted his parents to come to Melbourne within fi ve six years. “I have not discussed it with my father, but I know he won’t say ‘No’ to me. … If for the whole of their life, they will stay back there, then I will move back.” You’ll have to start again, I said. “It is never too late. You can start anywhere, any time. If I can do things here I can do things there also. I have more resources.” In the meantime he had a rich network of friends and mentors, mainly from the Indian community. He was staying in a shared house with friends he had known in Patiala and Melbourne. Over dinner he said how much he valued the mentoring of the Indian business people who came before. He had grown with their help, advice and support.

DHARMA’S FAMILY VISITS MELBOURNE AND FINDS HE WAS LOVED Bhuaji came with her brother and sister-in-law to Melbourne in June 2014. A week after they arrived they came for lunch to my home in Eltham. It was an afternoon of mixed emotions. The mother’s eyes misted when she hugged me. The last time we met, the akhand path for her son was taking place in Patiala. Bhuaji was composed. The father was unable to speak when he said good bye. I said “See where the connections have brought us.” He said, “Yes, these are all Dharma’s connections,” leaving much unsaid. The conversation moved from the mundane to the profound. Dharma’s housemate, also from Patiala, had brought them from the other side of Melbourne. Another housemate’s partner came too and she is from Gujarat. So some of the tension was broken by ordinary questions: Where do you live? When did you come? Were you a student? Do you speak Punjabi? And then there was talk of building construction, for Dharma’s father is an engineer involved in the construction of residential houses. He noticed the bricks in the chimney were very old and went on to tell me how they were made. This led to a date in Fitzroy, Melbourne’s fi rst suburb. We walked in the late evening seeing old buildings and bricks and how they had been preserved. ‘DHARMA IS DEAD’: A FAMILY LOSES A SON 33

We talked of Dharma. Bhuaji said he was absolutely transparent. He used to call every day. “We knew what he was doing, feeling. Sometimes his friends wonder whether we knew this or that part of his life. We do.” The talk went to friendship. Dharma’s father said “Friends become important when there is no family.” Bhuaji said “Friends are important even if there is family.” The mother did not say anything. For Dharma, friends were everything in Melbourne. Many had fl own to India for his cremation which was delayed so they could be there. It is this network of friends and community that sustained his parents and Bhuaji when they came to Melbourne after Dharma’s death. His family is staying for a month with Dharma’s housemates. Two bedrooms were set up for their use. His friends take them wherever they want to go in Melbourne. Others come and visit, talking of Dharma and consoling each other. We met another fi ve times during the month they were in Melbourne. The family’s business part of the visit was nearly done. It involved an audit of the business and obviously a separation of funds. But we did not talk about that. Toward the end of their visit, they had Sukhmani Sahib prayers on 17 July, fi ve months after Dharma’s death. His portrait was in the living room. His mother wore a beautiful white suit, embossed with a pattern in white. “Dharma bought it for me,” she said. Friends trickled in all evening, listening to the prayers, having something to eat. The coming and going continued till the last day of their visit. Bhuaji, Dharma’s mother and his friends cooked a feast. There was gift giving marking their return. I gave Dharma’s father some seeds from my garden to plant in his. And some gifts for Dharma’s mother and Bhuaji. Dharma’s mother in turn brought out a richly embroidered suit piece for me. Bhuaji had already given me a long silk jacket. They came half way across the city to drop me back. We hugged. There was little more we could say.

NOTE 1. The amounts are expressed in Australian dollars. The amounts in US dollars will be so specifi ed. PART II

Migration Money CHAPTER 3

Remittances Are a Currency of Care

The relationship between the morality of money, migration, and family is the context for remittances becoming one of the largest international fl ows of funds. Remittances are a currency of care in the global South. This is connected with two characteristics related to money and relationships. Firstly, money is part of the morality of family relationships, for money is shared across generations. Secondly, money is personal for it is often the preferred gift at births, weddings and funerals. Money is a medium of relationship. Money can be a preferred gift without necessarily being accompanied by remittances. In Japan, for instance, cash is gifted for the New Year but it is not a migrant country. However, this correspon- dence between money as a gift and remittances is seen clearly in countries of the global South. India leads the league tables with an estimated US$70 billion in formal remittances in 2014 of the US$436 billion to developing countries. China is next with US$64 billion, followed by the Philippines, Mexico and Nigeria. The fi gures go up every year in different measures. The continuities are that international remittances are now recognized as one of the largest international fl ow of funds. They are at least three times greater than offi cial foreign aid. Except for China, remittances are greater than foreign direct investment. 1 International remittances are a large portion of the resources in developing countries when measured against Gross Domestic Product (GDP), foreign reserves, exports and imports. Remittances support the balance of payments. In South Asia remittances are larger than foreign exchange

© The Author(s) 2016 37 S. Singh, Money, Migration, and Family, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54886-3_3 38 S. SINGH reserves. 2 Even in a large emerging market like India, remittances are at least one fourth of foreign exchange reserves. 3 Remittances are more stable than private debt or portfolio equity fl ows, enabling developing countries to borrow against remittances. 4 These numbers relate only to the remittances that go through formal money transfer organizations (MTOs). It is estimated that 50 to 80 percent of the total remittances go through informal money transfers. 5 While remittances stand out because of their scale in the international fl ow of funds and development, they can comprise 70 percent of a household’s budget. 6 Much of it goes for survival, but some of it is also directed toward better health care, education and investment. However, sending money home is more than fulfi lling a fi nancial need. Remittances are also about displaying “caring about” and “taking care” of the families they left behind. I place remittances against this wider social and cultural context of the meanings, use and relational value of money in the family. I then examine the remittance experiences of the early migrants, highlighting some of the ambiguities and strains inherent in care in general and remittances in particular. This sets the stage for displaying the differences between the early and recent migrants in terms of money and care in Chap. 5 . It also connects the one-way fl ow of communication and care to the valuation of money in Chap. 6 .

THE MORALITY OF MONEY IN THE INDIAN FAMILY Remittances are suffused by the morality of money refl ecting norms of the Indian family and what it means to be a family. In the Indian patrilineal family, sending money home is the mark of being a “good” son. Money is an important way for parents to express care for their children and for children to express their fi lial piety. It is the parents’ responsibility, their dharma to look after their children. It is also the children’s duty, their farz to care for the parents. Parents and children are judged and judge themselves by how well they fulfi ll these responsibilities and duties. Receiving money from children is testimony to being a good parent with fi lial children (Singh 1997; Singh and Bhandari 2012; Singh and Cabraal 2014). 7 I became sensitive to remittances being a currency of care and the morality of money, not just because I sent money home, but because of my 1990s study of money in marriage and banking among middle-income Anglo-Celtic couples in Melbourne. 8 My participants in the study did REMITTANCES ARE A CURRENCY OF CARE 39 not give money to their parents. Money went only one way. Parents and grandparents gave money to children and grandchildren, but money did not fl ow back up the generations. Parents told me they did not expect their children in Australia or overseas to give them money. They valued their independence. There was also a welfare buffer for parents as they grew older, supporting this desire for independence. Parents and grandparents giving money to children and grandchildren has increased with the rising price of housing. A 2005 Australian study of 7000 persons over 50 years old—the majority were home owners— showed that more than one third had helped their children fi nancially to buy a home. Help more often was in the form of an informal loan with no interest than a gift. However, the parents did not expect care in return. Only 4.2 percent said they had or would move to live with their children. 9 My Anglo-Celtic participants cared for their parents. They showed care by telephoning and visiting often. They did things for their parents and grandparents, like mowing the garden, cleaning the gutters and taking them shopping, banking and to the doctor. These are some of the family practices that “display” the quality of family relationships. 10 The people I studied showed care, but not through giving money. I asked, but found it did not trouble the parents or the children if the parents were living more modestly than their children. Money was not a gift given routinely for births, weddings and funerals. Grandparents often put cash in the birthday cards, but in general, money was not an appropriate gift and signaled a lack of care. This is changing slowly with a greater number of de facto marriages and remarriages. In some of these cases, there is an explicit request for cash contributions. This happened with my Anglo-Celtic friend’s daughter’s marriage, though with a big dollop of embarrassment. My friend found that most of the guests put in less than they would have spent on a present. There was little social guidance about the calculability of these money gifts. But the gift of cash elicited a thank you note just as a packaged gift. I got a thank you card from my friend’s daughter and her husband saying the money would go toward their car port. However, soon after, they sold the house. This version of money in the family questioned my moral compass. When I sent money to my mother, she would talk of it proudly in infl ated terms, for it meant she had raised a fi lial daughter. The morality of money in my culture revolved around reciprocal care between parents and children. I had grown up with stories that a person’s place in the world was displayed by how well he or she looked after the parents. When my mother 40 S. SINGH told of how her grandfather and his brother became rich, the story was about how her grandfather’s mother no longer went out to work but could sit at home wearing heavy gold bracelets. The world knew she had sons who were doing well and were fi lial. 11 After one disturbing interview, I told my youngest son who was in school in Melbourne that if he wanted to give me money when I was older, I would gladly accept. This same theme of the morality of money comes through in some of the latest diasporic literature. Akhil Sharma writes of how one of the fi rst things the younger son in his story did when he started working was to send his mother, who also lived in the USA, monthly checks. When he did well in merchant banking, he gave his mother a check for a quarter million dollars on her 60th birthday. She did not cash it for a few days so that she could show it to her friends. His parents began to get 24-hour nursing for their brain-damaged elder son. The pay-off for the younger son was when he came home one afternoon, he saw through the window his parents sitting relaxed on lawn chairs in the backyard. 12 This morality of money and care relates to talking about and gifting money. My mother and I spoke openly about money. My uncle, my mother’s brother in later years would also ask if I was fi nancially alright. It was not an idle question for he wanted to know if he could help with money, and he did. I was part of his circle of care. This boundary of money can be wider because there is greater sharing of money with kin. But it can also be narrower, in that the woman is excluded from this information. This happens particularly in joint families in smaller towns where there is a family business. 13 This too was different for my Anglo-Celtic participants. A 72-year-old man said talking about money with your children is a bit like talking about where the babies come from. You inferred in a roundabout way whether your children were doing well fi nancially or not. Though talking about money differed across families, the general principle was that money was private to the married couple. 14 I also grew up receiving gifts of money from visiting relatives and later giving money as a gift. Money in my part of India is ritually gifted at births, marriages and deaths to symbolize relationship. MTOs connect love and money in their promotions. Remit2India advertises around the festival of Raksha Bandhan in North India to urge people to “send home a little extra love.” This is a festival where a sister ties a decorative thread around the brother’s wrist to show her love and he gives her money in return to show his love and protection of her. Remit2India promises an extra 50 paisa for every dollar, plus no fees. Of course “conditions apply.” 15 Love REMITTANCES ARE A CURRENCY OF CARE 41 and money come together in a gift. There is no confl ict between money and the personal nature of the gift. At birth, marriage, a fi rst homecom- ing and death, the gift of money—suitably wrapped—is the preferred gift. At times like these, a tea set will not do. Money, often in crisp notes, and preferably in odd numbers like ₹1001 is placed in a decorated envelope, often with a one rupee coin stuck on the top. This is the North Indian shagun that is meticulously calibrated to refl ect the quality of the relationship, recognition of previous gifts received, your capacity to give and the obligations it places on the recipient. The calculability of shagun makes it the gift that has to be accepted and demands to be returned. This is not like the potlatch that between equals must be returned with an interest of 30–100 percent a year, but the return shagun has to be larger. 16 It is diffi cult to get it right. My second sister, who lives in New York, and I gave shagun for the marriage of my aunt’s grandson. She and my mother were especially close, so we wanted to give an amount that refl ected the importance of that relationship. Seeing it had made my aunt happy, I kept using it as a guide. Later I learned that with infl ation, these rates in Delhi no longer symbolized a valued relationship. I upped the amount and gave it as shagun in Dharamshala, a small town in the foothills of the Himalayas. The temple priest told me I had given too much. In Australia, the Anglo-Celtic story of money is seen as the norm. Sending money to parents and siblings is not a cultural practice. There is thus a whiff of the illicit about sending money to family overseas. Remittances do not rate a mention in Australian economic reports. The morality of money lies in fi nancial independence and resilience, even though this is not the reality for women at some stages of their lives. Financial responsibility is interpreted as an individual planning to look after herself or himself and any dependents. Welfare payments partially buttress those for whom this has not been wholly achievable. It is this Anglo morality of money that underlies economic policy and regulation. These different pictures of the morality of money show not just differences between cultures but also intergenerational changes within a culture across life stages. In my study of Anglo-Celtic money, the same woman who insisted that she and her husband could manage also told how her mother stayed with them till she died. Another talked of how she used to give her wages to her mother before she was married. A study of grandmothers in Britain also includes stories of grandmothers moving to stay mostly with their daughters after the grandmother’s husband had died. 17 42 S. SINGH

Moralities of money can coexist. In my generation, my friends and family in India know our pattern of helping parents fi nancially will not be replicated by our children. As independent women, we also have become used to our own space, valuing the choices that come with fi nancial independence. We would fi nd it diffi cult to adjust. So we hope we will be able to live in our own homes. Though we followed the intergenerational morality of money, we have moved more to the fi nancial independence side of the spectrum. On this, there is little difference now between my friends in Delhi and Melbourne. However, when my eldest son in Kuala Lumpur gives me spending money when I visit, I accept. I like it. I tell myself I have brought up a fi lial son.

SENDING MONEY HOME IS A GLOBAL PHENOMENON Just as I began to recognize how I too believe in the morality of fi nancial independence, I was brought back to seeing the global nature of the intergenerational morality of money. My study of money from the perspective of the global South showed that the Anglo-Celtic version of money was the exception rather than a universal reference point. 18 People in most parts of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Pacifi c send money home as a medium of caring and support for transnational families and communities. The Dinka of Southern Sudan send money home. The Mexicans and people from El Salvador do it, the Kenyans, Ghanians, Nigerians and Somalians do it, the Bangladeshis and Pakistanis do it, the Lebanese and Iranians do it, the Fijians and Papua New Guineans and Tongans do it. 19 Alain Mabanckou writing of his return to Pointe-Noire in Congo after 23 years writes of the gifting of money every time he saw a relative. The quantum of money gifted was ideally calibrated to the importance of the relationship. He sent money via Western Union after he returned to Los Angeles on hearing that his classifi catory grandmother had died. He received another call from his cousin telling him he has ten men around him, including two of their uncles, so that Alain could tell everybody on the loud speaker how much he had sent. Any doubt as to the quantum would lead to troubles between kin. 20 Remittance obligations relate to different systems of kinship. They also connect with patterns of money management and control at home. Remittances differ in terms of who sends and receives, the boundaries of care, the cost of remittances and how they are sent. As seen in Chap. 4 , REMITTANCES ARE A CURRENCY OF CARE 43 if men manage and control the money at home in the patrilineal kinship system in India, then it is only the men who send money to their kin. A Dinka man from South Sudan sees himself as related and responsible for three immediate generations on his father’s side and also recognizes obligations to his wife’s kin. He is expected to contribute to bride-price and any payment for bribes or fi nes. One case study showed that in order to be seen as a “moral person,” he can be directly responsible for 24 extended kin and indirectly for another 62 persons across different locations. 21 In Ghana among the matrilineal Akan, remittances are sent primarily by women to their mothers and sisters. 22 In East Africa and the Pacifi c, women often control a small portion of the household’s resources, though the land is owned by men in patrilineal kinship systems. The system of “separate purses” are private and often secret. Though men and women’s money is unequal, the separate purses allow women to send and receive small amounts in remittances from matrikin and people related by place. In a 2012 study of persons in towns, agricultural hinterlands and villages in Western Kenya, it was found that men and women received relatively small remittances from a large network of friends and predominantly from siblings and kin related to their mother, that is, “uterine kin.” Two thirds of these remittances were in response to a request for money from kin who felt they had rights over the senders’ money. 23 In Papua New Guinea women sent money to their sisters’ families and their wider circle of wantok , that is, people related by kinship and place. 24 In Fiji and Tonga, non-migrant households also receive remittances. 25 In charting the broad brush differences between the global North and South, I am not suggesting that money is homogenous within these divi- sions. Loretta Baldassar tells of a statue built in an Italian village celebrating the post-war migrants who helped sustain the village with tea chests of goods and money. 26 When my Greek friend Eleni’s son got married in Melbourne, the public gifting of money was an important part of the celebration at the wedding reception. The Aboriginal Ngukurr community in southeast Arnhem Land in Australia distributes money within a fl uid household cluster that may vary from a couple to an extended family loosely defi ned. Gifts, mainly of money, absorbed an average of 16 percent of the income of the household cluster. 27 In New Zealand among the Maoris, there is an accepted moral obligation to share money up and down generations in the family. Money is gifted not only by grandparents and parents but also by younger people. 44 S. SINGH

The obligation to give money for the funeral meeting at the whã nau (an extended family group) takes priority over everyday household expenses. 28 In Australia which is part of the global North, these family practices of sharing money are not seen as part of the “mainstream.” There are individual examples of children helping out in case of fi nancial need or emergencies. It is in the global South that the sharing of money across generations in the extended family is a normative practice, leading to signifi cant remittances. They infl uence the size of foreign exchange reserves, securitization of loans and the alleviation of poverty. They underlie the existence or non-existence of a state welfare policy.

REMITTANCES AND CARE Remittances are now such a large global phenomenon that this inter- twining of personal and market money will shape the future of money. They are sought after by governments because they add to their foreign exchange reserves, are often a signifi cant part of their GDP and are used to securitize loans. At the same time the largest part of remittances comprise money that individual migrants send home to their family and community. As Dilip Ratha of the World Bank says, “Remittances are dollars wrapped with care.” 29 This is, however, only one aspect of remittances. Carling uses the concept of “scripts” to show how remittances vary across a spectrum, from repayments, gifts and donations all the way to investment. 30 Remittance scripts go beyond motives, for the same social transaction could make different sense to senders and recipients. Repayments for the debt incurred in order to migrate come fi rst. This happens with unskilled and semi-skilled migration to the Middle East and Southeast Asia. For some of the Indian students who migrated, repayments of the loans taken for their education are a priority once they begin earning. But for the early Indian migrants to Australia, migration did not incur the costs of migration agents or education. As they belonged to middle-income families, and migrated with their nuclear families, their money was not essential for the budget of their natal families. They sent money to show they cared for their family and continued to belong. Sending money home addresses the duties and obligations of being family in India. Parents have a duty to look after their children. Similarly children, particularly sons in the patrilineal family, are obliged to look after their parents. Hence most remittances are framed in the context of REMITTANCES ARE A CURRENCY OF CARE 45

fulfi lling one’s obligations to parents, rather than responding to demands from numerous kin, as detailed in a Kenyan study of mobile remittances. 31 A recurring refrain from parents is that they don’t need the money. Children speak of sending money for it is their need to give, as seen in Dharma’s story in the previous chapter. This does not preclude discussion of medium and long-term strategies to ensure the family’s well-being, which may well require a contribution from all family members. The desire to show care can be accompanied by ambiguity, for the meanings of the money sent and received can differ. Some of the ambiguity is the result of poor communication as I discuss in Chap. 6 . But some of the tensions are inherent in the different dimensions of caring. Fischer and Tronto distinguish between “caring about,” “taking care,” “caregiving” and “care-receiving.” They say,

Caring about involves paying attention to our world in such a way that we focus on continuity, maintenance, and repair. Taking care of involves responding to these aspects – taking responsibility for activities that keep our world going. 32

“Caregiving” and “care-receiving” involve “the concrete tasks, the hands-on work of maintenance and repair” and responses by the person who receives care. 33 Though these four dimensions of caring are connected, they do not always constitute an orderly process. In the transnational family, as Zechner points out “caring about” and “taking care” dominate as they can happen over distance. Caregiving and receiving require “physical contact or simultaneous presence with the caree.” 34 These distinctions become important because they are differently valued by migrants and their families in the home country. Remittances are part of what Loretta Baldassar and Laura Merla have termed the “circulation of care.” This refers to a “generalised reciprocity” that articulates itself through communication and visits that are often uneven. The circulation of care is broader than the care chains described by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Hochschild 35 where doing carework in the country of destination means that somebody else, usually kin, replaces the care you would give to your children and other members of the family in the source country. 36 Remittances are more than a material fi nancial exchange. They are social and fi nancial, material and immaterial. As Peggy Levitt points out, we also need to examine “social remittances,” that is, the two-way fl ow of 46 S. SINGH normative structures, practices and social capital that comes from moving away from one’s place of birth. 37 This becomes particularly important for the way the joint family has been reimagined in Australia. I discuss this in Chap. 9 .

REMITTANCES GO ONE WAY AMONG THE EARLY MIGRANTS As discussed in Chap. 1 , money and communication fl owed one way among the early Indian migrants to their families in India. The 1970s to the mid-1990s was the period of foreign exchange restrictions and expensive travel and communication. When Hema, 54, migrated to Australia in 1986 with her husband and two sons, they came with US$80 between them. There was thus no possibility of the family sending money to their children, even if they had the means. Five of the 19 participants who were early migrants between the 1960s and mid-1990s sent money home regularly as a currency of care. The money went mainly to their parents, as all the married participants had their nuclear families with them. The main bulk of remittances stopped after the parents died or when they moved to stay with their migrant children. In four cases, one or both parents came to live with the migrant. Refl ecting Carling’s description of the different scripts of remittances, 38 in one case, money was sent specifi cally for the repayment of debt in Malaysia. Another two multiple migrants sent money for the purchase of land in India. One sent money when it was needed such as for weddings or the building of a home. Three of the 19 participants—all women—sent money gifts to brothers and sisters, nieces and cousins. Remittances are accompanied by gifts when a migrant visits the family in the home country. Gifts are important also for the outer circle of kin, neighbors and friends to show they have remained important in your life. It is expected that gifts to the outer circle will be reciprocated to some extent. At times gifts are substantial depending on the closeness of relationship and specifi c times in your life. It is common, for instance, that the parents be given a present from the fi rst pay. When parents do not need money, as in Dharma’s case, it becomes important to show you care through substantial gifts. This allows for a public “display” of care. In Chap. 6 , I write of children buying a new fridge for their parents’ house, a washing machine and a diamond ring for REMITTANCES ARE A CURRENCY OF CARE 47 a special birthday. These gifts are important to the parents. Time and again in India when I met migrants’ families, they would bring out the mobile phone or the watch that their son had brought. Or maybe it was bottles of wine he had travelled 200 km to get for them. These gifts from children to parents are part of the intergenerational morality of family life. Money and what Daniel Miller calls “stuff” fulfi ll the same function of displaying care. 39 Transfers in kind also show care. Gurmeet in his mid-50s, early-60s, and Gurjeet, 55, migrated to Australia in 1995. They do not need to send money home regularly but participate in the “give and take” of shagun . Gurmeet’s brother’s daughter spent three years with them when she was studying in Australia. Gurmeet says, “They gave the fees, but she stayed with us. I don’t think she spent a cent even on groceries.” Similarly Rodney and Rita do not feel they have to send money home as their parents have enough. But Rita’s brother stayed with them when he migrated to Australia. Rita and her sisters also transferred their share of their father’s inheritance to their mother who continued to stay with her son in Kerala. Among the participants were three sets of parents who receive money from their children. Banta and Bhagwan’s story below shows the money is given in a number of ways. One son takes care of the bills, housing and part of their travel, plus regular and occasional gifts of money. Another son takes care of some of the grocery shopping plus money when Banta and Bhagwan visit Singapore. And their son in Canada looks after them when they visit him. The daughter in Singapore is not in this picture. She comes into the story in Chap. 4 , in relation to the gender of migrant money.

Banta and Bhagwan Receive Money in Different Ways from Their Children Banta, 65, got married to Bhagwan 68, 40 when she was 16 and he was 19. Banta was born in Malaysia and moved to Singapore at marriage. They migrated to Australia in 1998. She talked of their life over four hours. We started with a delicious lunch of spinach, chicken masala and curds with fried lentil patties. This was May 2006. Over Indian chai, she talked of the children recognizing how hard she and her husband worked in Singapore to educate their three sons and a daughter and make ends meet. They moved to Australia in 1998. They stayed with their son in Melbourne for a while, and then thought if they 48 S. SINGH moved to their own home, he may get married. They also wanted their own place. He took out a mortgage on his home and bought them a house in his name. He pays the utility bills, gives them money every week and also buys them one ticket to travel overseas every year. Bhagwan has a job during the school year which brings them $500 a month. Their medical needs are met through Medicare. Their pension is yet to begin. When they learnt that Bhagwan’s three operations would have cost them $12,000 in Singapore, they reconciled to staying in Melbourne despite having more family and friends in Singapore. Banta makes the money stretch to include the give and take of community life in Melbourne and also is able to put $100 aside a month for the second ticket. She says. “I have never asked for money in my life.” She sews, embroiders, and knits things for the family. She calls her family in Singapore and Canada every week. She gives her grandson money. The children fi nd ways of giving them money. Banta had earlier sent her son food. When Bhagwan went to pick up the empty green bag, there was $50 in the container. When they go to Canada, both her son and daughter-in-law tell them they should not spend any money. In Singapore, their son picks them up at the airport and gives them money. He has a Chinese wife. Banta says “Whenever my son gives us money, she never says anything. When she is in the supermarket, she will call and ask if we want anything.” Banta will say no but her daughter-in- law will bring oil, fl our and margarine. “It is she who reminds her husband to give the money, and he says, ‘Yes. Yes.’ He remembers.” Banta and Bhagwan receive money and gifts from their children as a display of care. In return they cook food for the son who lives nearby, make them gifts and ensure that the communication remains reciprocal. So care circulates between parents and children in Australia, Singapore and Canada.

DIASPORA PHILANTHROPY IS LOCAL AND TRANSNATIONAL Diaspora philanthropy, as with family remittances, has its roots in belonging and a desire to give back. This giving is shaped by gender, history of migration and life stage. It becomes more important once the costs of family maintenance and support have been addressed. The giving happens to transnational communities in the home country as well as communities in the source country. REMITTANCES ARE A CURRENCY OF CARE 49

Diaspora philanthropy covers donations that vary from large projects managed by a family to money given through intermediary organizations or individuals. Large individual projects involve migrants after middle age, or those near retirement who can initiate and sustain such projects. Donations are more widespread and often go to charities for disaster relief, religious organizations, for the building of a school or helping get clean water. They are donations for a project that somebody else will execute. At times diaspora philanthropy merges with business and investment as happened with two of the participants in the transnational study. Giresh, 50, moved to Australia via the USA in 1994. He changed his work, life- style and investment patterns to open a social business venture in India and build a home there for he had “a passion to make a difference.” Faraj, 34, hopes his future global education business in India will serve as a conduit for subsidizing the education of the poor. He says it is not so much as being a bridge between Australia and India as “giving back” to his country. There are no data on the global scale of diaspora philanthropy 41 or for India. We know from individual case studies that family remittances are the major bulk of money sent home. Some of these family remittances also go toward community welfare in the form of donations to religious organizations and the needy. 42 The mix of formal and informal remittance channels makes it diffi cult to estimate the total funds. It is also because the governance of community remittances is opaque and at times unaccount- able at both the giving and receiving ends. 43 Making reliable information more widely available about recipient organizations and the impact of the donation is an important step to increase and democratize diaspora philanthropy. The World Bank estimates that if just half of 1 percent of the diasporas’ income is donated, it would come to more than US$12 billion a year. 44 Diaspora philanthropy in India is not as organized as it is for Latin American and Caribbean migrants to the USA, where Home Town Associations (HTAs) together with local institutions and governments at all levels play a major role. 45 This is partly because the early Indian migrants in Australia come from metropolitan cities rather than a single village or village clusters. Local institutions in India are also not involved with their diaspora to facilitate collective giving. In India for the most part, community projects aim to reduce government involvement in a bid to increase effectiveness and transparency. 46 This also makes Indian diaspora philanthropy different from the way migrants give in China, where 50 S. SINGH there is a greater involvement by government bodies in organizing the giving and use of community remittances. 47 In India, much of the giving has a religious basis. In Hinduism, the concepts of daana (giving) and dakshina (alms) correspond with bhiksha (alms) in Buddhism. Islam has prescribed offerings in the form of zakaat and voluntary offerings as sadaqaat . 48 In Sikhism, the concepts of nishkam sewa (selfl ess service) and daan (donations) are central to a moral life. In Punjab, and particularly associated with the Jats, the landowning caste of Punjab, giving is also directed by the desire to gain honor (izzat ) and status (sardari ). In these cases, much of the money goes to the village from where the person comes. 49 For the main part, the giving is not continuous, as there is little follow-up of the projects. 50 Successful projects of diaspora philanthropy in the Punjab have had people from the philanthropist’s family stationed there for the project to succeed. Among the early migrants, much of the giving to community is informal and individual, when the migrant is visiting India. It often takes the form of donations to a temple, feeding the poor or distributing clothes. Formal giving is often done via organizations in Australia. Transnational communities unlike transnational families are not splintered across borders. In transnational cities like Melbourne, everyday living offers “a dynamic crossroads of local, national, and transnational place-making practices.” 51 At the same time the transnational aspect of Hinduism and Sikhism takes a global form through Internet sites such as http://www.hindunet.org and http://www.sikhnet.com . Many of the early migrants I interviewed talked of actively seeking community to replace family and old friendship networks. They turned to people who spoke the same language and/or belonged to their religious group, as one way of reproducing the closeness of family ties. In some cases they themselves set up community organizations. Rodney’s story shows how religion becomes more important as a form of community after migration. This happened for 7 of the 19 early migrants. His story also shows how giving is local, but the aim is to ensure that the religious presence in his life in India is replicated in Australia.

Rodney Buys a Church in Melbourne Rodney and his wife Rita, both over 65 years of age, and professionals, fi rst migrated from Kerala to Melbourne in 1971. As Rita is Catholic, in the REMITTANCES ARE A CURRENCY OF CARE 51 early years they went to the Catholic Church. Rodney is a Syrian Christian. Not fi nding an appropriate Syrian Orthodox church in Melbourne, he and a group of friends bought a church. This has given him a local community. It connects him to the church in India. It is also part of the global hierarchy of the Syrian Orthodox Church. Rodney talks of how he and a few friends bought a church in Melbourne in 1977. This became the fi rst Syrian Orthodox church in Melbourne that concentrated on the Syrian Orthodox Christians from Kerala. Over time there were 300 families in the congregation. The numbers grew and dispersed and the church split. It also became necessary to buy another church. Rita says, “I didn’t think he was … such a religious person.” Rodney says, “It’s just that for some reason as you get older you become a bit more (religious).” He adds, “I’ve got a … feeling that … you get it back somehow, somewhere else. … The blessings come in different ways.”

THE AMBIGUITY AND TENSIONS OF CARE AND REMITTANCES Complex emotions around money and care arise when the household income is insuffi cient to look after both the transnational and the nuclear families. It is also easy to see the clash between the morality of family money in India and independent fi nancial responsibility in Australia when relationship with the transnational family sours. This ambiguity also is part of the nature of early migrant family money. Interpretation and approximation play a greater part in the valuation of migrant money than calculation. This is despite the fact that calculability has traditionally been seen to be a central characteristic of money. Money changes characteristics and value when it moves between local, national, and global approximations of value. As seen in the stories below, in the context of patchy conversation, a dollar of global money often translates to less than a dollar’s worth of local money. Global money has to deal with different currency regimes and MTOs which carve away an average 8 percent of the value of the transfer. But part of the difference in valuation is that the dollar is earned in a different environment compared to the context in which it is spent. It is part of the “money tree” syndrome, where people in the home country think that money is earned easily in a foreign country. 52 52 S. SINGH

The same social transaction makes different sense to senders and recipients. 53 Migrants see family remittances in terms of “caring about” and “taking care” of their parents. Siblings at home see money as pitted against the day-to-day physical “caregiving” provided by other family members for aged parents in the home country. If sending money home takes away from the immediate needs of the family in Australia, questions are asked. Some of the early migrants felt that the family in the home country did not suffi ciently value the kinds of negotiations that have to take place in balancing the interests of the nuclear family in Australia and the family in India. They felt that when money is sent, it gets translated to mean less. 54 Ishan in his mid-20s to mid-30s, who migrated to Australia from Kenya with his parents when he was six months old, relates how his father sent money home regularly to support his parents and help educate his siblings and support them to set up a business. Ishan’s father saw himself as having fi nancial opportunities that the rest of his family did not have, but sometimes he had to go into debt to honor these obligations. Finances were so tight that everyone in the family could not visit India at the same time. At times, his father would try to keep secret how much money he sent home but his mother would fi nd out because it was taken out of her housekeep- ing budget. Ishan thinks his mother found it especially frustrating because she felt their contribution was not “widely recognized or appreciated.” It is interesting that it was the man’s contribution that was at the center of discussion. The “good son” was the moral ideal. His wife’s sacrifi ce was not discussed, for as seen in Chap. 4 , money was seen to belong to the man and his patrilineal extended family.

Inheritance, Remittances and Care Transnational family relationships sour when it comes to inheritance. The migrant family begins to count the remittances and gifts that were sent against the care they received or did not receive. This difference between the migrants’ value of the money sent, the sacrifi ce it represents for the senders and the valuation of the money received is often at the center of tension. This sense of not being valued is heightened if there is uneven reciprocity in terms of communication and gift relationships, which signals a lack of “caring about” the migrant offshoot of the transnational family. In some cases these tensions over care and money fl ow into issues of inheritance, one of the most signifi cant expressions of belonging in the REMITTANCES ARE A CURRENCY OF CARE 53 family. 55 The confl ict is not only “over who gets what but also over structure and meaning.” 56 It goes to the heart of inclusion in the transnational family and its consequent rights and responsibilities. A seamless and confl ict-free inheritance is something to be talked about. This confl ict is avoided if there is nothing to inherit. Murali (45–54), who migrated from Malaysia to Singapore to Australia, inherited only debts. The other strategy is to gift the property to the children while you are living. Niranjan, 91, who stays with his son in Melbourne had already gifted the family home in India to his eldest son. Other ways of avoiding confl ict is to willingly cede it to a parent or sibling. Charan, over 65, and a multiple migrant, says her husband and his siblings agreed that the family home would go to the unmarried sister who had looked after the parents. The sons already had homes of their own. She, in turn, has willed it to her brothers and sister and their children. Rita, over 65, says her father died intestate. As described earlier, the daughters gifted their share to their mother. There are also cases where the migrant receives the inheritance. In the sample, Rodney said he inherited property in India that they sold. He did not say whether it was an equal inheritance. The other women in the sample ceded their inheritance in favor of their brothers. I discuss this in greater detail in Chap. 4 . But it is important to them that they were mentioned in the inheritance. Where this is not clear, there are silences around inheritance. Among the early migrants, Hema, 54, who had migrated in 1986, laughed off the issue of inheritance, saying, “I am not even in the picture.” Her son, Hemat, said, “It defi nitely is a touchy issue,” and has led to a family rift. It is often diffi cult for a person to talk about inheritance when the issue is still raw. Daya who migrated from India in the early 1980s was silent when asked about her husband’s inheritance, although she spoke openly of her decision to renounce her claim in favor of her brother. I too did not talk of inheritance issues in my family. I heard of inheritance more often in conversations with the children than from the parents involved. A daughter said how her father had been left out of the division of property, even though he paid for any untoward event, including his mother’s illnesses. Her mother too did not know whether she had been left anything and did not want to ruffl e relationships. Ishan’s father also did not inherit anything. It is not clear whether a share was offered or whether he himself renounced all claims because he was fi nancially better off than his siblings. Ishan says, “I think my Dad was largely ambivalent to an inheritance.” One reason was that his father was 54 S. SINGH not able to attend the funeral of his father in time, but Ishan also thinks “that he always felt, from a fi nancial point of view, that he was not really expecting anything because he was the strongest at the time.” The issues of inheritance get particularly protracted and troubled, when agricultural land is involved and has passed on to the second generation of migrants, as Ambika’s husband’s story shows. Stories pour out from Malaysians and Singaporeans who entrusted land to a brother-in-law or the father-in-law of one of their sons, and nearly lost the land. People from Malaysia and Singapore say they are afraid to have tea in their ancestral village. “We are also afraid,” says Bhagwan. Banta says she has heard, “They put the pesticide used for wheat in the tea.” For Banta and Bhagwan, this is an immediate issue, for they know they will have to sell their land in India. Banta and Bhagwan can no longer afford to live in India and their sons and Bhagwan’s brother are not interested in looking after it. There is now increasing pressure from Bhagwan’s cousins to sell the land to them at a discounted price. Bhagwan realizes he has to sell the land, but he feels he is selling his family history. He says, “On the deeds, there is my great grandfather’s name, my grandfather’s name, my father’s name.” For Banta the immediate problem is to ensure her sons are safe. Bhagwan thinks he still knows India and enough people that he can organize a sale. Banta tells him he is not to take their sons with him. These issues came to a head in Ambika’s family. Being at a distance from the land together with negligible communication and reciprocity in relationships has meant they have had to sell their land to their cousins. This has marked the end of the relationship.

Ambika’s Husband’s Story: Land, Poison and Broken Relationships Ambika, 68, was born near Lahore in undivided India, stayed in India with her maternal grandparents till she was 12, moved to Malaysia, and married Anil in Singapore when she was 16. They migrated to Australia with their daughter in 1989 to meet up with Ambika’s and Anil’s brothers. For Anil it was his fi rst migration, for he was born in Singapore. Anil and his father used to send money from Singapore to India to Anil’s father. After Anil’s father died, Anil continued to send money and gifts to his uncle, that is, his father’s brother. After this uncle died, Ambika and Anil went to visit the family in India. They took a shirt and suits for REMITTANCES ARE A CURRENCY OF CARE 55 the three cousins, suits for the females and for many other relations. They each took 100 kilos of luggage. In India they found everybody was well off, but there was little return of the gifts. There was also no talk of giving them the proceeds of Anil’s father’s share of the land. Ambika says, “They were very nice to us. But at the same time they were worried that we would try to claim the land.” Anil wanted to transfer his father’s share of the land to his name and that of his three brothers. He wasn’t planning on selling the land but wanted it registered in their names. “They tried to block it.” At fi rst his family said the papers were not there, the patwari (village registrar) was not there, but other relatives helped him complete the transfer. Anil sent money for Dipavali for one or two years but did not hear back. All this time no money was sent from the proceeds of the crops on the land. Ambika said when one of Anil’s cousins went to Canada, they were not informed. Only when this cousin wanted money in Canada, he got in touch. Anil sent $2000 to help him in 1975, but told him it was a loan. But after two or three years when Anil asked for the money back there was “no letter, no money, no connection.” Anil became sick and planned to sell the land. The cousins came to know. Every day there would be a call from the cousins in Canada. They now offered condolences for a death in the family, ten years after it had happened. Finally they said they had heard Anil wanted to sell the land, that it was for his land that “they had broken their backs and kept hun- gry.” Anil said “When we sent you the money, we also broke our backs to send you the money.” Finally they agreed on a price—perhaps half as much as in the open market. Anil told them to go to Singapore and sign the documents and hand over the money. Anil’s brother did not put them up in his house, “fearing they may put something in the food or water. It is not unheard of.” So that chapter closed and there is no relationship left.

THE MORALITY OF MONEY CLASHES WITH REGULATORY POLICY In April 2015, Westpac Bank became the last large bank in Australia to announce it was closing the accounts of some remitting organizations. Banks are complying with regulations that see remittances as weak nodes 56 S. SINGH in the fi ght against funding terrorism and money laundering. Banks are also engaging in de-risking strategies to avoid getting fi ned in the USA as correspondent banks for non-compliance. There also appears to be an element of self-interest for in closing down some MTOs, banks are getting rid of competitors who remit money to many countries at a fraction of the fees they charge. Indian migrants were not affected by these changes. Formal remittances to and from India go via bank accounts and large MTOs such as Western Union and MoneyGram. These large MTOs are competitive in terms of fees because of the scale of remittances. Moreover, Indian migrants have relatively few issues of access because we are dealing with a middle-class migration from metropolitan and regional cities and urban villages. The clash between the morality of money and regulation comes to the fore for remittances in the Horn of Africa. Some countries like Somalia and South Sudan have an undeveloped fi nancial system. There are expensive issues of access as bank and MTO branches if they exist are mainly in the capital cities, though many of the transnational families live in rural and remote areas. The established MTOs charge higher fees than the licensed community remittance organizations. The latter are preferred by many migrants as they know the community and have agents across the receiving countries who can facilitate access because they themselves are part of the community and kin networks. In an ongoing qualitative study, Louis de Koker from Deakin University and I are studying the impact of the bank account closures on some African communities in Victoria, Australia. By the end of August 2015, interviews and consultations with 29 community members, remittance providers and community leaders from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and South Sudan confi rmed that the morality of money is so important that migrants are not going to stop sending money home. This is particularly true for Somalia and South Sudan where remittances can be 100 percent of a parent’s household budget. There are few alternatives to the community remittance organizations because of the lack of a sustainable fi nancial system in those countries. For other countries, the money would have to be sent after deducting higher fees. Even then, there is uncertainty whether the money would be accessible in the remoter parts of a country. The fear is that without the facilitation of the community remittance organization, the money will go through traditional informal systems which offer little transparency. REMITTANCES ARE A CURRENCY OF CARE 57

The closure of bank accounts is not complete, for the smaller remittance organizations are still able to get accounts at small banks and credit unions. However, the fear of closure has led to great unease. They dread losing connection with their families, that their families in their home countries would suffer and more young people will be attracted to join terrorist groups. People from these African communities fi nd it diffi cult to comprehend that banks would close the accounts without consultation. The fear is that it will lead to further marginalization of African communities in Australia. Dara’s (a pseudonym) remittance shop is a franchise of a larger remittance business. One part is a general store. Water bottles are stored to the side. There is a map of the world on the wall and a certifi cate of appreciation. To another side there is a passport photograph business. Dara is from Somalia and migrated to Australia in 1998 when he was 24. He says, his customers are registered and his business is compliant. They lost their account with the major banks and now have an account with a small bank. He says, “When the post comes … we go through it to see if there is a letter telling us our account is closed.” He is right to feel fearful for one of his neighbors received such a notice, saying the business’ account would be closed in 14 days. Badra, 31, was in a remittance shop when I met her. She came from Somalia to Australia when she was 11. She is now a mother of one child, and is a graduate student. She has family in Somalia and Kenya. Badra says, “For me personally, and for a lot of people, it doesn’t make sense. … My connection to my country of birth, my parents’ and grandparents’ country of birth, has been cut off.” She adds, “I am just outraged … that it was put in place without consultation.” This chasm between regulatory policy and practices on the one hand and the intergenerational morality of money on the other is because of two reasons. The fi rst is that the regulators mainly talk to each other, fi nancial organizations and remittance organization. Regulators do not see these remittances as equating to food on the table, health and education for the children. They do not see the women receiving the remittances as they try to stretch them to last the distance. Regulators deal with remittances as belonging to the market, rather than money being a currency of care in the transnational family. It is an example of “hostile worlds” where the language and conceptual frameworks do not connect. This gap between regulatory practice and the morality of money also reveals a North South divide. The regulators come from the North where 58 S. SINGH money is not a medium of gifts, where the morality of money centers round independence and fi nancial resilience. It is in the global South that remittances are important as a medium of care for families and communities. This is where a man is judged to be moral only when he supports his parents, and extended family. The morality of money is one where family members share their resources across generations. Regulatory practice also appears to be going against the agreed G20 aim of reducing the cost of remittances. Each recipient country is interested in increasing the proportion of remittances that goes through formal channels for it is this money that can be available for development. So the talk goes in one direction while the regulation goes in another. Sociological and anthropological studies can help provide data from migrants and their families about the impact of the closures of bank accounts of some remittance organizations. The hope is this may be a trigger for some organizations on both sides to work together to achieve their aims. For the migrants it is low-cost and trustworthy remittances that reach their families who may or may not have accessible bank accounts. For the regulators it is to put checks and balances in place to make it diffi cult for remittance organizations to act as possible conduits for money laundering or funding for terrorism. The best hope may lie with technology. In West Africa, coalitions of telecommunication network operators and banks are already making regional remittances possible. 57 Vodafone and MTN signed an agreement in April 2015 so that M-Pesa users can send money to seven African countries. Sending mobile money overseas was made possible when the Central Bank of Kenya allowed M-Pesa to offer outward cash transfer services. 58 Bitcoin as a payments platform holds out hope to avoid the banks altogether in their foreign exchange conversions. 59 But this lies in the future, more possible in Africa than across the whole Global South. In this chapter I have shown how remittances are a currency of care for transnational families of the global South. Among the early migrants in this study, the remittances went one way, from the migrant to the transnational family. Remittances went regularly or occasionally, supplemented with gifts for life-stage events like births, marriages and deaths, plus gifts for festivals like Dipavali. The support was also in kind like taking care of some of the everyday expenditure of parents, or ensuring that the groceries are bought. There is a similar need for belonging and care behind diaspora philanthropy which takes place locally and transnationally. Poor communication and different perspectives of money sent and received also make REMITTANCES ARE A CURRENCY OF CARE 59 for ambiguity and tension. When this confl ict boils over in unequal inheritance, the migrant’s belonging to the transnational family is questioned. In the next chapter I look closely at the gender of money, at women’s role with remittances, gifts and inheritance.

NOTES 1. Ratha et al., “Migration and Development Brief 24.” 2. Ratha et al., “Migration and Remittance Flows: Recent Trends and Outlook, 2013–2016”. 3. Ratha et al., “Migration and Development Brief 24.” 4. Dilip Ratha et al., “Migration and Remittances: Recent Developments and Outlook,” in Migration and Development Brief (Washington, DC: The World Bank Migration and Remittances Team, Development Prospects Group, 2014); Kuptsch and Martin, “Migration and Development: Remittances and Cooperation with the Diaspora”. 5. Development Prospects Group, “Migration and Development Brief 2,” Migration and Remittances Team World Bank, http://web.worldbank. org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,, contentMDK:21124587~pageP K:64257043~piPK:437376~theSitePK:4607,00.html. 6. Orozco, Migrant Remittances and Development in the Global Economy . 7. Supriya Singh and Mala Bhandari, “Money Management and Control in the Indian Joint Family across Generations,” The Sociological Review 60, no. 1 (2012 ); Supriya Singh and Anuja Cabraal, “ ‘Boomerang Remittances’ and the Circulation of Care: A Study of Indian Transnational Families in Australia ” in Transnational Families , Migration and the Circulation of Care : Understanding Mobility and Absence in Family Life , ed. Loretta Baldassar and Laura Merla (New York: Routledge, 2014). (p. 41). 8. Singh, Marriage Money : The Social Shaping of Money in Marriage and Banking. 9. Diana Olsberg and Mark Winters, “Ageing in Place: Intergenerational and Intrafamilial Housing Transfers and Shifts in Later Life,” in AHURI Final Report No. 88 (2005). 10. Janet Finch, “Displaying Families,” Sociology 41, no. 1 (2007). 11. Singh, The Girls Ate Last . 12. Akhil Sharma, Family Life (New Delhi: Penguin Group, 2014). 13. Later, when I studied money in urban middle-income joint families in India, I found my experience was shaped by my mother being a single parent. In families where the man was the main earner, money and information about money was often controlled by the man. Talk of money was then between the father and son and between brothers. Some of my 60 S. SINGH

women participants said they would not ask about money for money was private to the man. One woman said, “If I ask, he would feel that I am trying to know his inner most secrets ( dil ki baat ).” This happened particularly when the father and son were part of a family business. In upper middle-income families, information about money was often shared between the husband and wife. But there were no regularities about this, for there were cases where the wife chose not to ask. 14. For differences relating to talking about money between American and Filipina university students, see Jerome Rabow et al., “Women and Money: Cultural Contrasts,” in Sociological Studies of Child Development , ed. Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler (Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press Inc., 1992). 15. Advertisement in The Indian Sun, 29 August 2015. 16. See Marcel Mauss, The Gift : The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies , trans. W. D. Halls, 1990 ed.(London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1950); Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” in The Social Life of Things : Commodities in Cultural Perspective , ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 17. Geoff Dench, ed. Grandmothers of the Revolution (London: Hera Trust and Institute of Community Studies, 2000). 18. Singh, Globalization and Money : A Global South Perspective . 19. See the World Bank Migration and Remittances Factbook for a compre- hensive listing. Some individual studies are: Stephanie Riak Akuei, “Remittances as Unforeseen Burdens: The Livelihoods and Social Obligations of Sudanese Refugees,” in Global Migration Perspectives (Geneva: Global Commission on International Migration, 2005); Anna Lindley, “The Early-Morning Phonecall: Remittances from a Refugee Diaspora Perspective,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 35, no. 8 (2009); Lisa Cliggett, “Remitting the Gift: Zambian Mobility and Anthropological Insights for Migration Studies,” Population , Space and Place 11(2005). Heather A. Horst, “The Blessings and Burdens of Communication: Cell Phones in Jamaican Transnational Social Fields,” Global Networks 6, no. 2 (2006); Peggy Levitt, “Transnational Migration: Taking Stock and Future Directions,” ibid.1, no. 3 (2001); Sarah J. Mahler and Patricia R. Pessar, “Gender Matters: Ethnographers Bring Gender from the Periphery toward the Core of Migration Studies,” International Migration Review 40, no. 1 (2006); Sarah J. Mahler, “Transnational Migration Comes of Age,” in Sociology of Diaspora , ed. Ajaya Kumar Sahoo and Brij Maharaj (Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2007); “Transnational Relationships: The Struggle to Communicate across Borders,” Identities 7, no. 4 (2001); Edna A. Viruell-Fuentes, REMITTANCES ARE A CURRENCY OF CARE 61

“‘My Heart Is Always There’: The Transnational Practices of First- Generation Mexican Immigrant and Second-Generation Mexican American Women ” Identities : Global Studies in Culture and Power 13, no. 3 (2006); Sean McKenzie and Cecilia Menjívar, “The Meanings of Migration, Remittances and Gifts: Views of Honduran Women Who Stay,” Global Networks 11, no. 1 (2010); Tevita O Ka’ili, “Tauhi Va: Nurturing Tongan Sociospatial Ties in Maui and Beyond,” Contemporary Pacifi c 17, no. 1 (2005). 20. Alain Mabanckou, The Lights of Pointe-Noire , trans. Helen Stevenson (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2015). 21. Akuei, “Remittances as Unforeseen Burdens: The Livelihoods and Social Obligations of Sudanese Refugees.” 22. Madeleine Wong, “The Gendered Politics of Remittances in Ghanaian Transnational Families,” Economic Geography 82, no. 4 (2006). 23. Sibel Kusimba et al., “Social Networks of Mobile Money in Kenya,” Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion (IMTFI, 2013), http://www.imtfi .uci.edu/fi les/2013-1_kusimba_1.pdf . 24. Supriya Singh and Yaso Nadarajah, (2011) “School Fees, Beer and “Meri”: Gender, Cash and the Mobile in the Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea,” Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion http:// www.imtfi.uci.edu/files/imtfi/blog_working_papers/working_paper_ singh.pdf . 25. The World Bank, At Home and Away : Expanding Job Opportunities for Pacifi c Islanders through Labor Mobility (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2006). 26. Loretta Baldassar, Visits Home : Migration Experiences between Italy and Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001). 27. Kate Senior, David Perkins, and John Bern, “Variation in Material Wellbeing in a Welfare Based Economy,” (Wollongong: South East Arnhem Land Collaborative Research Project, University of Wollongong, 2002). 28. Julia TeUrikore Turupa Taiapa, “‘Ta Te Whãnau Ohanga’: The Economics of the Whãnau – the Maori Component of the Intra Family Income Study,” (Palmerston North: Department of Maori Studies, Massey University, 1994). 29. Ratha, The Hidden Force in Global Economics : Sending Money Home . 6.24 30. Jørgen Carling, “Scripting Remittances: Making Sense of Money Transfers in Transnational Relationships,” International Migration Review 48 (2014). 31. Kusimba, Sibel B., Yang Yang, and Nitesh V. Chawla. 2015. Family networks of mobile money in Kenya. Information Technologies & International Development 11(3): 1–21. 62 S. SINGH

32. Berenice Fisher and Joan Tronto, “Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring,” in Circles of Care , ed. K. Abel E and M. Nelson (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York, 1990). (p. 40) 33. Ibid. p. 40 34. Minna Zechner, “Care of Older Persons in Transnational Settings,” Journal of Aging Studies 22(2008). 35. Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, “Introduction,” in Global Woman : Nannies , Maids , and Sex Workers in the New Economy , ed. Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002). 36. Loretta Baldassar and Laura Merla, “Introduction: Transnational Family Caregiving through the Lens of Circulation,” in Transnational Families , Migration and the Circulation of Care : Understanding Mobility and Absence in Family Life , ed. Loretta Baldassar and Laura Merla (New York: Routledge, 2014). 37. Peggy Levitt, “Social Remittances: Migration Driven Local-Level Forms of Cultural Diffusion,” International Migration Review 32, no. 4 (1998). 38. Carling, “Scripting Remittances: Making Sense of Money Transfers in Transnational Relationships.” 39. Daniel Miller, Stuff , Kindle ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2010). 40. All ages are at the time of the interview. 41. Ratha et al., “Migration and Development Brief 24.” 42. Prema A. Kurien, Kaleidoscopic Ethnicity : International Migration and the Reconstruction of Community Identities in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002). 43. Devesh Kapur, Ajay S. Mehta, and R. Moon Dutt, “Indian Diaspora Philanthropy,” in Diaspora Philanthropy and Equitable Development in China and India , ed. Peter F. Geithner, Paula D. Johnson, and Lincon C. Chen (Cambridge, Mass. : Global Equity Initiative, Asia Center, Harvard University, 2004); Mark Sidel, “Diaspora Philanthropy to India: A Perspective from the United States,” ibid. 44. Alexander Dixon and Benjamin Stephan to People Move, 14 April 2015, http://blogs.worldbank.org/peoplemove/; ibid. 45. See Goldring, “Family and Collective Remittances to Mexico: A Multi- Dimensional Typology.”; Gabbarot and Clarke, “Social Capital, Migration and Development in the Valles Centrales of Oaxaca, Mexico: Non-Migrants and Communities of Origin Matter.”; Manuel Orozco, “Transnationalism and Development: Trends and Opportunities In :Latin America,” in Remittances : Development Impact and Future Prospects , ed. S.M. Maimbo and Dilip Ratha (Washington D C: World Bank, 2005); Iskander, Creative State : Forty Years of Migration and Development Policy in Morocco and Mexico . REMITTANCES ARE A CURRENCY OF CARE 63

46. Verne A. Dusenbery and Darshan S. Tatla, eds., Sikh Diaspora Philanthropy in Punjab : Global Giving for Local Good (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009). 47. Xiao-huang Yin and Zhiyong Lan, “Why Do They Give? Chinese American Transnational Philanthropy since the 1970s,” in Diaspora Philanthropy and Equitable Development in China and India , ed. Peter F. Geithner, Paula D. Johnson, and Lincon C. Chen (Cambridge, Mass. : Global Equity Initiative, Asia Center, Harvard University, 2004). 48. Priya Viswanath and Noshir Dadrawala, “Philanthropy and Equity: The Case of India,” (Global Equity Initiative, Harvard University, 2004). P. 185. 49. Verne A. Dusenbery, “Conclusion: Whither Diaspora Philanthropy?,” in Sikh Diaspora Philanthropy in Punjab : Global Giving for Local Good , ed. Verne A. Dusenbery and Darshan S. Tatla (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009). 50. Dusenbery and Tatla, Sikh Diaspora Philanthropy in Punjab : Global Giving for Local Good . 51. Michael Peter Smith, Transnational Urbanism : Locating Globalization (Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001). 52. Personal communication from Dulari, a migrant from Trinidad to the USA (New York, 22 July 2008). A comparative study of migrants and refugees in Australia also found that Afghani refugees were inundated with requests, sometimes for luxuries that they themselves could not afford. See Baldassar, Baldock and Wilding, Families Caring across Borders. Akuei, writing about Dinka migrants to the USA, details the stress caused by demands from the extended family at home, the moral imperative to help and the fi nancial needs of settlement. See Akuei, Remittances as Unforeseen Burdens. The experiences of Somali migrants in London are equally stressful. See Lindley, ‘The Early-Morning Phonecall’. 53. Carling, “Scripting Remittances: Making Sense of Money Transfers in Transnational Relationships.” 54. S. Singh and A. Cabraal, “Remittances as a Currency of Care: Contested Representations of Money and the Idea of Family,” South Asia : Journal of South Asian Studies , 36, no. 1 (2013). 55. See also Karen Fog Olwig, “A Wedding in the Family: Home Making in a Global Kin Network ” Global Networks 2, no. 3 (2002); Baldassar, Baldock, and Wilding, Families Caring across Borders : Migration , Ageing and Transnational Caregiving ; Zelizer, The Purchase of Intimacy . 56. The Purchase of Intimacy . p. 225. 57. “Orange Strikes Deal with Ecobank M-Banking,” This Day , February 23, 2015. 64 S. SINGH

58. Okuttah Mark, “M-Pesa Customers Get Access to Seven African Countries,” The East African , 23 April 2015. 59. Tom Jackson, “Could Bitcoin Ease the Pain of Africa’s Migrant Workforce?” BBC Business, http://www.bbc.com/news/business-31735976?ocid=socialfl ow_ twitter; “Caribbean Startup Bitt Secures Seed Round Usd$1.5 Million in Capital Led by Avatar Capital, to Bring Digital Currency Financial Services to Emerging Markets,” GLOBE NEWSWIRE, http://globenewswire. com/news-release/2015/03/30/720132/10126774/en/Caribbean- Startup-Bitt-Secures-Seed-Round-USD-1-5-Million-in-Capital-Led-by- Avatar-Capital-to-Bring-Digital-Currency-Financial-Services-to- Emerging-Markets.html . CHAPTER 4

The Gender of Migrant Money

Indian migrant money in Australia has been and is predominantly male. This reproduces the male ownership of money in traditional Indian patrilineal families. Women in patrilineal India do not always inherit property, even though legally women have equal rights of inheritance in ancestral property. Women among the early Indian migrants to Australia followed the gendered norms relating to money and property in India. We do not know enough about the management of money in the households of recent Indian migrants. But the incidence of fi nancial abuse among recent migrants shows that money remains male. I deal with this in greater detail later in the chapter. Daya’s story illustrates the way migration, gendered responsibilities and the maleness of money intersected to reduce the fi nancial independence of the early women migrants. Women slid in fi nancial status. They continued to see money as male with the sons sending remittances to their families and brothers inheriting natal property.

Parts of this section are based on Singh, S. (2015). Transnational community and money in the Indian diaspora in Melbourne. In S. Singh, Y. Nadarajah, M. Mulligan and C. Chamberlain (Eds.), Searching for Community: Melbourne to Delhi . (59–76). Delhi: Manohar Publishers. Used with permission.

DAYA’S STORY: “I SUPPOSE AN INDIAN WIFE HAS TO GIVE IN” Daya, in her 50s, is a high achieving woman from a conservative family. In the end she fell in with what was expected of women in India in the 1980s. Living in a beautiful old home in the south eastern suburbs of Melbourne, but with an untended garden, she excuses herself to make a parantha for her husband’s late lunch at 3 pm. There is a family photo of her and her three boys at a graduation above the mantelpiece. Trophies and plaques note the community contribution of her husband. On one side of the room, near the mantelpiece is a set of Britannica in its own bookcase. Books on the Bhagwad Gita sit close by. She was a reluctant migrant to Australia in 1983. For ten years in India, she had a prestigious government job. Her husband’s position did not match his wife’s and he decided to migrate to Australia in 1982. One year later she followed with their children. “I suppose an Indian wife has to give in,” she said. “I was in shock leaving my job. Having such a prestigious job and when you come here, you are nothing. An ordinary housewife. … I didn’t like anything here. Nothing at all. I used to cry. Nothing really lured me,” she said. She was offered three full-time government jobs, but she did not want to place her children in child care. When she worked before, she had had a full-time maid who looked after their two children. She says, of course if they had had family support “all things would have been different.” Travel was expensive. It was six years before she went back to India. But her parents also did not come to help because they were “…conservative. When they were alive, they would never eat or drink at my place.” This relates to the traditional notion that a daughter is somebody else’s wealth. She is only loaned to the parents till she goes to her husband’s family where she belongs. Daya’s parents were more conservative than most in keeping to the patrilineal traditions. As detailed later in this chapter, among the early migrants in some instances, parents lived with their daughters. But I remember my mother saying that her grandmother would drink water from the tap in the lane outside the house, so that she could keep with the tradition of not eating or drinking in her granddaughter’s house. In the end Daya took a job as a part-time bank teller. This move from a high-status job in India left her feeling “… as if you were nothing. It affects your self-esteem, your inner person.” There was no question of her sending money home. She said, “When I worked before marriage, my parents would not take any of my salary. It THE GENDER OF MIGRANT MONEY 67 is our custom, parents don’t take from girls. Never. They never expected it from me.” Her husband sent money home to his parents. “He was the son,” she said.

Till my mother-in-law was alive, he would send. It was his wish, not because of need. The frequency would depend. … She never said anything about it. Maybe she felt good … I used to give it to her myself when I went. I used to have my brother help her. I used to tell him to give it.

When her parents died she was part of the inheritance. This was important. If she had been left out of the count, she says, “That would have been different. I feel fully part of my parents’ family. My brothers and sisters still respect me. They wait for me for their celebrations. I go to nearly all the celebrations.” The narrowing of family boundaries has had to do more with migration than inheritance. She was given her share, but as was the custom, she said,

We daughters did not claim our inheritance. We would rather have our relationship strong. Even the girls in India refused. There was no pressure from the brothers’ side. I don’t know about my sister’s husband. My husband said no for me to claim my inheritance.

At the same time, she says she is the eldest sibling and a support for the family. “I was like a son to my father.” Nearly 20 years after she arrived in Australia, she started an organization to support Indian women. She had known loneliness and uprooting. She wanted other women to be able to talk of their feelings and issues and be heard. Through this organization, she herself came to be recognized and regained an identity.

WOMEN SLIDE IN FINANCIAL STATUS WITH MIGRATION The slide for the women participants was not always as dramatic as with Daya. But it happened for all but one of the women who were in paid work in India before migrating. In all the cases, the decision to migrate was to advance the husband’s career. Women’s need to care for the home and family, without the support of the extended family or hired help, put a brake on their careers. With migration, fi ve of the seven women who had previously been employed had to accept lesser outcomes for their own career. 68 S. SINGH

Rita and Rodney migrated as professionals from Kerala in 1971. Rodney was attracted to Australia, because the opportunities to go ahead with his specialty were unavailable in India at the time. He also had a brother in Australia. But it also meant that Rita had periods of no paid work. She could not train for four years for her specialty as there was no family support for the care of their children. However, she was one of the three women who still remained in professional paid work. Anand and Anita in their 60s, professionals from South India, migrated in 1973. Anand was offered a job in his fi eld. His wife too obtained work in her area. She stopped working when she had to be in India for long stretches to look after her sick mother. Later, her father moved to live with them. For Charan in her late 60s, her husband’s jobs shaped their multiple migration from India to Europe and then to Australia. This meant that after a few years of working full time and then part time, she stopped paid work altogether. In Gurjeet’s case, migration meant the end of paid work. As with Daya, it was Gurjeet’s husband who was keen to migrate. Gurjeet, 55, had a senior job she liked. Her mother was 80 years old. Her father had died that year. Despite this, she went to Australia with her husband. Her husband said, “She respected my feelings or my decision.” Gurjeet had to go back to India to look after her mother, who died a year after they migrated. Then she went back to India for three years to fulfi ll the minimum period of work to qualify for retirement. When she returned to Australia, she tried to get back to her fi eld, but family responsibilities prevented it. “You know in an Indian house, the food has to be cooked three times a day,” she said. She lost her professional identity and her fi nancial independence. But she said, now with the plastic cards and the ATMs you don’t have to ask for money. Hearing their stories made me realize I too had migrated to Australia because my husband judged Australia would further his professional career. I agreed thinking my children would have a more global education in Australia than Malaysia. But I was unusual in that I moved as a journal- ist from Malaysia in 1986 to a journalism position in Australia. The initial contact had already been made in Malaysia. It was not initially at the same level, but I soon moved up. Unlike Daya and Rita, I had a 15-year-old son when I moved, so I did not have child care responsibilities. And much like Hema whose story I tell below, I found greater opportunities in Australia in being able to change tack by going back to academia. THE GENDER OF MIGRANT MONEY 69

THE MALENESS OF MONEY Indian migration to Australia in the early years did not challenge norms around gender, money and the patrilineal Hindu and Sikh family in India. Money and masculinity remained intertwined. Money belonged to the husband and his family. Migration did not give women a more assertive stance on the ownership of resources. In all cases, the women ceded their inheritance in property as with Daya. Money continued to be seen as belonging to the husband and his family. This replicated the patterns in the urban Indian joint family, where men often controlled money in the household. 1 Most of the early women migrants I studied subscribed to the notion that money in the family is male. Two spoke of independent money management but the default was the norm of the maleness of money. The male control of money in the patrilineal household and society lies at the core of the gender of remittances and diaspora philanthropy for the early Indian migrants to Australia. When women do not control money they cannot send it or give it away.

The Gendered Nature of Inheritance All but one of the women participants among the early migrants, whose parents had both died, ceded their rights to ancestral property in favor of their brothers. Rita, a Christian from Kerala, was the exception in that she and her sisters gave their share of the inheritance after their father died to their mother. This pattern is consistent with claims that women in the Indian diaspora remain conservative in matters relating to the family. 2 The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 mandates that joint family property will be equally divided between sons and daughters. These rights are often not enforced, women fearing the loss of relationship with the brother(s). When women do own and control property—most often as widows—this ownership gives them some power. 3 The female early migrants interviewed accept, seemingly without question, the maleness of money and property. All of them accept they will not inherit a part of the family property in India, to pass on to their children in turn. Gurjeet, 55, migrated with her husband and daughters in 1995. She says, 70 S. SINGH

We sisters did not take our share. It depends on you if you want it or don’t. In Punjab now the land is very limited. Even the brothers get a little. So what is the need for the sisters to get it? They will get it through their in- laws. It is better to take it from one side.

Hema, 54, a professional, rationalizes it by saying that after her mother dies, her younger brother has a greater right to her parents’ property, than she and her sisters. Her brother has lived with the parents. He has also fi nancially contributed to the building of the house, so in a sense it is jointly owned by him and the parents. She says, when the brothers and sisters have moved away, and everyone has their own house it becomes less of an issue. In the end, it will be his house. Banta and Bhagwan, multiple migrants from Singapore are in their 60s. Their story was told in Chap. 3 . Banta says they will not be giving any part of their land in India to their daughter. “Land goes to the sons,” Bhagwan says, drawing on the long male history of his land. Even in his generation only the brothers inherited. One sister in India and another in Singapore attested they were ceding the land in favor of their brothers. “They did not mind,” he says. Banta agrees forcefully. “Other properties we will divide into four. … But the land goes to the (three) boys.” Bhagwan says, “Yes the law has changed [in India], but this is our thinking. My father’s land, my father never gave to the daughters. Only to the sons. We follow the same.” This may be a theoretical discussion, for they also realize that they may soon have to sell the land. The gender of property among the second generation and the student migrants is nascent, as few are at the point where they are inheriting property. It came to a head in one case with Ina, a second-generation participant. Ina, in her late 20s, came with her parents to Australia when she was 12. She is married with one child. Ina’s parents are returning from Melbourne to India. She learnt her parents had given their house in Melbourne to their son, though they knew that Ina and her husband were struggling with their mortgage for a double-storey house in a southeastern suburb in Melbourne. She rationalizes that her father had guaranteed her mortgage. Moreover, her parents will most likely come and go. When they are in Melbourne, they plan to stay with the son and his wife. But then, her brother already has an investment property. She remonstrated and said it is not fair. It THE GENDER OF MIGRANT MONEY 71 seems to go against the gendered equality of education and choice to which she had become accustomed.

Women Send Gifts, Not Remittances The women participants among the early migrants, like Daya, subscribed to the notion that sending money home was about being a “good son.” The regular remittances fl owed to the man’s family. Their parents also did not want to receive money from their daughters. This reinforced the male ownership of money and land. Karan, in his late 40s, an Anglo-Indian and a Christian from Calcutta, who migrated in 1988 was an exception. He and his wife used to send money to Karan’s parents when they were still in India and they also sent money to his wife’s mother. In order to save bank fees, Karan would ask his brother-in-law (wife’s sister’s husband) to give money to both sets of parents in India. Karan would deposit the same amount in his brother-in-law’s account in Melbourne, for him to use when he and his family visited. Karan and his wife also sent money to his aunts and uncles for Christmas. Other than Karan’s wife no other early women migrants sent money home. If money was sent, it was sent to the husband’s family. When women talked of money and relationships, they talked of gifts of money and gifts in kind. Men sent remittances as well as gifts for Dipavali and Christmas. Rita was an exception in that she did not give money gifts. She said that as a Christian, the shagun was not part of the everyday display of relationship as happens in North India. Karan from Calcutta and also a Christian, however, did send money as a gift to his aunts and uncles at Christmas. Ambika, 68, a multiple migrant from Singapore in 1989 says “Only the very poor families would accept money from a daughter.” Her story and that of her husband Anil was described in Chap. 3 . Ambika’s grandparents in India were like Daya’s parents. They would not accept money from daughters. Ambika’s mother sent her father suit cloth, her mother and sisters dupattas (long scarves). Ambika would send her grandfather a bottle of coffee. He would send her rewaris (a sweet gifted in mid-January for the Lohri festival) and clothes. It was often her husband, Anil, who would want to heap gifts on her side of the family. “He wanted to buy everyone a suit.” She would remind him they had children who were still studying. Charan’s husband sent money to his parents in India regularly. Charan says, 72 S. SINGH

Out of Indian tradition, to show respect, we all sent them money. The younger brothers also did. We sent the money regularly, for we paid for the full time servant. We felt we can’t look after them, so this is the least we can do.

Charan sent gifts and shagun to her nieces and nephews. “I never for- got anniversaries or birthdays,” she said. She did not put money in the cards. But she sent gift money with people coming and going. Her family would also send them clothing as gifts when someone came from India. Two of the six women participants who have married daughters, baulked at receiving money from their daughters. Banta says she does not accept money from her daughter. Her daughter gives her gifts, waiting for a suitable occasion. She says,

“It was your birthday, I did not give you anything. It was Mother’s Day, I did not give you anything.” Then my son-in-law says, “No, Man ji (Mother). You are treating your sons very well. You are not treating your daughter well.” He is a very good boy.

Anita, a professional in her 60s, migrated with her husband Anand in 1973. She was looking after her father in Melbourne, but was incensed when I asked whether their daughter in the USA sent them money. Three women remain more in a position to give than receive. Only Charan is happy to receive occasional gifts of money, as seen in her story later in this chapter. Hema’s story confi rms that even when a woman feels free to send money and/or gifts to her parents, the norm remains that parents’ property goes to the son and money and gifts should primarily go to the husband’s family. Hema, 54, is the only woman participant in the early migrant sample who did better in Australia than in India. In a professional job, she says, “I achieved 10 times more than what I could have ever done” in India. Her husband worked in his profession, but did not reach the position of control and leadership he had in India. They take token gifts when they visit, and receive token gifts in return. Both send money home when it is needed. She says, “Fortunately in our families, it is not needed that much.” They send money when there is a wedding, or when a house is being bought or mortgage has to be paid. “Obviously we can do that, and we do, do that.” THE GENDER OF MIGRANT MONEY 73

Hema says sending money home is more of a problem in her husband’s brother’s house. This is because the brother’s wife needs to help her own brother and mother more than he has to do. The friction is greater because his family sees that

A lot of money goes from here to my sister-in-law’s family….When my mother-in-law was alive, she used to feel very angry and upset about it, that it was her son’s money which was being squandered. … Traditionally the husband is supposed, or sons are expected to help their parents and their families. So it is almost taken for granted. … That is the tradition. Even if you get angry you can’t do much about it.

The second generation did not send money to India for their transnational family on a regular basis. They also did not give money to their parents. It is interesting the question did not come up. For those who were still staying with parents, children giving even symbolic tokens of money to their parents for board and lodging goes against the Indian ethos of parental duty and responsibility. One married couple said they had offered the husband’s parents money but the parents had refused to accept. Students were focused on surviving in Melbourne. If there was any money left over, they paid back the student loans. Students sent money home when their parents were in need. This was true of single men and women who sent money to their parents. Tirath, 29, a student-migrant who came to Australia in 2005, is an exception for he sends money to his wife’s stepmother. He knows this is exceptional. But his parents are dead and his relationship with his sister is acrimonious because of disputes over property in India. He says his wife’s family is the only family he has now. He sends $800–$900 every two months so that his wife’s family can survive. She is the only child and was supporting her family before marriage. Tirath accepted that when they got married. The father drinks up his pension. So Tirath sends the money to his wife’s stepmother to ensure she has some money in hand.

Diaspora Philanthropy Is Getting Less Male Among the early migrants, the giving is male, though women contribute much of the on-ground work. Young male and female second-generation participants talk equally of giving. Most are single. The issue at the center 74 S. SINGH was whether giving to India had a special signifi cance. In terms of philanthropy, student migrants give mostly of their time and whatever giving there is, is informal. Traditionally, even when women are the inspiration behind the diaspora philanthropy, the project carries a male name. At times this is only a male façade for a shared family social enterprise. The defi ning case is that of Kapoor Singh Siddhu, an Indian migrant to Canada who fulfi lled his wife Basant Kaur’s dream of setting up a hospital in her village in Punjab. The hospital is called “Kapoor Singh, Canadian, Hospital.” However, the hospital was viable only because of the work of Basant Kaur and her daughters in the village. 4 In Australia, only the early Indian migrants are at a life stage when sustained diaspora philanthropic projects become possible and important. However, none of the participants among the early migrants spoke of large projects they were undertaking in India. Instead, there is a meshing of the local and the transnational. The commitment most often was to transnational organizations in Melbourne, or at least the money was chan- neled through trusted parties in Melbourne. Diaspora philanthropy came up in the conversation, more in the context of the importance of religion in their lives in Australia. It was two men in the sample who spoke of their involvement. Their wives were supportive of their husbands’ involvement. Ashok, 44, like Rodney described in Chap. 3 , gives to his religion. He gives in Australia and to Gujarat in India. He is a twice migrant from India and came to Australia after 23 years in the UK. He gives through a trusted religious leader in Gujarat. It is interesting that the community remittances are directed to the country of his birth, even though only his mother’s sisters continue to live there. His wife grew up in India but she too has no family left there. However, she sends money for the puja , a special prayer to be conducted in India. When I visited Ashok and his wife in their home in Australia, professional cleaners were making the house ready for their religious leader and his entourage from Gujarat. As they have a long-standing relationship, Ashok prefers to channel the money from Australia to Gujarat through him via formal bank transfer, so there is accountability. He says that in 2010, $100,000 would have gone from his temple in Sydney to the temples in India for their schools. Often the people who come to collect the money have no references—only fancy pictures. Ashok tells of a group who collected $25,000 for a school in Gujarat. “People gave $50, $100, $500. But there were no receipts, no accountability.” THE GENDER OF MIGRANT MONEY 75

Ashok also contributed to the new Swaminarayan temple complex that opened in May 2010 in Bhuj, in the Kutch region of Gujarat. It is a temple built of marble and gold on fi ve acres of land to replace the original temple that was destroyed in the 2001 earthquake. He was there for all seven days of the opening. “Every day six hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand people were being fed,” he says. Much of the estimated ₹1.5 billion ($25.3 million) came from the UK, Africa, and Australia. Of this, ₹60–80 million ($1 million to $1.35 million) came from Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth in Australia. At a personal level also, he donated the inheritance he received from his father and mother’s side toward building a physics room and a computer lab named after his father. He did it again through the same trusted religious leader and his organization. Women like Daya and Charan have created and supported organizations that help members of their communities. None of the women participants spoke of donating money, though going to the temple is accompanied by an offering. Though the second generation do not routinely send remittances to extended family in India, they give to organizations in India. It is a continuation of their parents’ relationship with India, or the result of their own need to know India. Chitra in her late 20s was born in Singapore and moved with her parents to Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and then to Melbourne when she was about six years old. It was her participation in an Indian religious organization in Melbourne that connected her deeply to India. She sends money to India for community work through Oxfam and this religious organization in Melbourne with links to India and across the world. She says,

I think that stems from the fact that you want to know your origins. … That’s where your family or your lineage comes from. … When you’re young, you follow … your parents … and that was the right thing to do. But when you grow up you tend to question these things a bit more…

When the tsunami struck India, Etash, in his late 20s, contributed directly to an organization in India. He says, “The one state that was affected was the state I was from. So I wanted to get something there.” Etash migrated with his parents from India to the USA, back to India and then to Australia when he was 11 years old. Except for his fi rst few years in Australia, he has had continuous involvement in India through his 76 S. SINGH extended family and his interest in music and dance. In Melbourne he has been involved with community service in the Hindu temple. When he was in a university in Melbourne, he led an Indian club. Two of the second generation participants said that India does not fi g- ure in their giving. Harsh, an accountant, says she assesses the need when she donates. She says,

I wouldn’t think so much about whether this is an Indian cause or an Australian cause. If it was a religious cause maybe I would question it and think, why are we discriminating based on religion? I’m not comfortable with that … I think I’d be more likely to consider what cause the money is going to, rather than what culture it is going to support.

Dahlia, 29, a Muslim and a multiple migrant from Kenya, says she gives to Muslim countries that are most troubled at the moment. She says

I’ll tick those boxes … usually Palestine and Indonesia … and Sri Lanka. Again, these aren’t countries which are devoutly Muslim or necessarily Indian. But I think the … deciding factor was how dire the need was and you know if there were a lot of people suffering. That would be my issue.

International Indian students give in terms of service, most often to religious organizations in Melbourne. Amar, 27, an international student from Punjab, says,

Indian students do community service in India. They go to the gurdwara (Sikh temple) and are involved in serving langgar (the ritual meal at the temple). … Once they come here they feel that they should do the same thing. They can’t just sit home and do nothing. So they just go to the gurdwara.

Charandeep, in his 30s, came as an international student to Melbourne in 2005 and now has Australian citizenship and a desirable job. As his ties with India loosen, particularly with his parents now in Australia, he has committed himself to community work through his Gurdwara and Australian government and non-government organizations. When in India, he chooses to give informally to his extended family in the village, or help the community around his family home. He says he does not trust formal giving through religious institutions. THE GENDER OF MIGRANT MONEY 77

CHANGES IN THE GENDER OF MONEY Has the gender of money changed over fi ve decades of migration to Australia? The verdict is mixed. Exposure to different gendered ways of accepting care and ensuring inheritance makes for some changes in attitude toward gender, care and gifts. It is a partial change in one aspect of the gender of money, though patrilineal values relating to money remain potent elsewhere. I give the stories of Anita and Charan to show how each has moved in some ways from the gendered attitude of care which stipulated that parents stay only with the sons. But this is a partial shift. A change in care for Anita has not meant that she will accept money as care from her daughter. In Charan’s case, she is clear that the inheritance will not be gendered in the next generation. She thinks she would want her daughter to look after her, but baulks at the judgment her son may receive from the community.

Anita Looks After Her Father as Care Arrangements Change There is a greater variety in arrangements of the care of parents among the early migrants, both at the giving and receiving end. Unlike Daya’s parents who would not stay in the daughter’s house, fathers did stay with their daughters in two cases when other family support disintegrated. Ambika, whose story I told in the previous chapter, illustrates how patterns of care have changed. She had her father stay with them in Australia. This was her father’s choice, for he had sons in Australia at the time. It was Ambika’s husband, Anil, who would tell everyone he would like Ambika’s father to live with them. He would also tell the others, they “had to come and visit and take him out during the weekend.” She says her father was comfortable with them.

He would pay half the utility bills, and pay her $200 every month. He was very proud. He bought presents for the grandchildren. He gave $20 on everybody’s birthdays. He gave to the daughters-in-law. His brain was like a computer. Whenever I would go out, he would tell my daughter, “Let her go. Let’s eat a hamburger.”

This change in patterns of care was not universal. Among my participants, Niranjan, 91, continued to stay with his son. His grandson was also woo- 78 S. SINGH ing him to come and stay. Two couples including Banta and Bhagwan were staying independently in houses provided by their son or sons. Anita and Anand’s story below shows how family events have meant it is the daughter who looks after the father. Traditional patterns of care continue. In another three cases among the early migrants, the sons continue to play the traditional role of looking after their parent/s. Among the recent migrants also, in three cases, it is the man’s parents who have been invited to stay permanently with the children. These cases are detailed in a later chapter. However, only in one case did the parents have a daughter who was married in India. Anita and her husband Anand were in their 60s when I spoke with them in 2006. Religion colored much of their world and social circle. Their closest friends were South Indian Brahmans. A lot of their activities revolved around the temple and their family spread across the USA and India. Coming back from an evening with them, I saw a couple steeped in tradition, but coping elegantly with change. Their story is interesting because family events reversed the pattern of patrilineal care. Both Anita and Anand’s fathers are being looked after by their daughters. Anita’s parents lived in a patrilineal joint family with their only son and his wife and children in India. But in 1993, Anita’s mother died after a long period of sickness. Anita’s brother died in an accident in 1994. Soon after, her sister-in-law and children moved away. It was a troubled relationship even before, Anita says. Her two sisters were in and out of India as their children had moved overseas. Anita had stopped working with the government in Australia because she went so often to look after her mother. So Anita brought her father to stay with them in 1995. He was 82 then and in indifferent health. This reversal of care sits easy with them. Anita says he just needed someone to help him. Anita’s day is dominated by the care of her father who was 93 when I met her. The local Council helps with the showering. A podiatrist, a general practitioner and pathology services come home. “No, it is not stressful,” she says. “I used to look after my daughters before.” His deafness has worsened over the years and now he is totally deaf. He enjoys Hindi fi lms even without subtitles. That was my main point of contact with them for I lent Anand some Hindi fi lms for his father-in-law. It meant a lot of happiness for him, Anand said. Anita’s social circle has shrunk to the temple and the friends who would drop in to see her father. But, having her father living with them has also meant close relationships have developed with their Australian neighbors THE GENDER OF MIGRANT MONEY 79 on both sides. They keep an eye on her father if Anita needs to go out for a while. And Greek neighbors seeing Anita’s father on a walk many years ago have been dropping in to sit with him and even visit him when he is in respite care. They talk “just with a hand movement. And writing, all the time writing. They became very good friends. In fact that lady remembers my father’s birthday and our Tamil New Year. She used to send a big bas- ket of fruits.” Anand has had a similar change in the pattern of care for his parents in India. He comes from a traditional joint family in South India where his father’s parents stayed with them. But after his mother’s death in 1978, his sister and brother-in-law moved to live in the family home. They looked after not only the father but also the grandparents. That was diffi cult for their grandmother was in a coma for fi ve years. Anand invited his father to come and stay. He stayed for three months. He found it boring and never came back. Anand admires his sister and brother-in-law who were willing to take on the responsibility. He goes once a year to see his father in Chennai. He takes him for a short trip to relieve his sister and buys some dhotis, vests and shirts and daily items for his father. Anita and Anand only have daughters. They are also fl ying grandparents, helping their daughter in the USA with the care of her child. Anita brought over her grandson for three to four months when he was six months old so that her daughter could focus on her specialist examina- tions. She goes every year for two months. During this period, her father goes for respite care. Anand and their younger daughter visit him every day and take him for a vegetarian meal at a restaurant on weekends. Then Anand goes to the USA for two months. Their daughter and grandson come to Melbourne for a month and see Hindi fi lms with the grandfather. The rest of the time, the daughter-in-law’s mother-in-law comes and looks after the grandson. So the circle of care for Anita and Anand stretches across generations and continents to their parents, siblings and younger daughter on one side and their eldest daughter and grandson on the other. They have not sent money home, because the families on both side had enough and more. When I asked Anita whether her eldest daughter sends her money she visually bristled at the idea they would accept money from a daughter. They are also not planning to go and stay with her in the USA. She has asked them to come and live with her. But Anand says he hopes “to die in harness.” 80 S. SINGH

“I Am Not Going to Do the ‘Gender’ Thing”: Changing the Maleness of Property Charan is in her late 60s. Her life is threaded through with male norms of money and family together with a desire to live life on her own terms. Her experience as a multiple migrant in Europe has made her refl ect that patterns of care and inheritance can be different from what she has traditionally known. Yet a part of her does not totally want to deny the power of tradition . So changes in the gender of money have to counter the resilience of tradition. Charan migrated from India to Europe and then to Australia in the late 1980s. For most of her life she followed the male norms of money in an Indian family. But after more than half her life away from India, and different life stages , she is questioning these norms. When Charan’s parents died, like her sisters, she ceded her inheritance in favor of her brother. She says, “He is our pakai (natal kin). When my mother was alive, he looked after her. When we go to India, he looks after all our expenses. Why does he do it? He is our brother. He feels that he is in our father’s place.” But she says even her brother in India is changing his views on inheritance. When he sold his house, he bought two fl ats for the girls and also bought a house for the son. As described in Chap. 3 , Charan’s husband and his brothers told their father to give the family home to their unmarried sister who had looked after the parents. She in turn has willed it equally to her brothers and sisters. Charan says, “In the end it will come.” Though Charan does not revisit her decision to cede her inheritance, she says,

I have told my children that my property will go to the two of them. I am not going to do the “gender” thing. … I know my daughter wants her equal right. … If I don’t leave her anything, she’s not going to like it … I didn’t get it but I am leaving for my daughter.

Accompanying this change, Charan says her years in Europe led her to observe that most parents lived with their daughters rather than their sons. Yet she says,

Deep down I feel that if I live with my daughter, my son is going to have an inner feeling that “This is something that I should have been doing” And if he doesn’t, then somebody in the Indian community is going to point it out THE GENDER OF MIGRANT MONEY 81

to him. They will say, “Why does your mother live with her daughter when you are there?” … That is very important to me.

The norms of the patrilineal family remain strong. When her son got married, they lived with Charan. She was devastated when her son and daughter-in-law left the family home after a few years to set up home themselves 20 minutes away. It shattered her, perhaps even more than her separation from her husband. She had imagined a joint family household with grandchildren growing up around her. “It was a little bit of a shock for me in the beginning when my son moved out, because I always thought he would look after me. … Six months I struggled … I would wonder ‘Why did they leave?’ We never had a fi ght.” When her son and daughter-in-law moved out, the sharing of bills also stopped. Her life insurance matured when she was 60. So there was some money. Now she lives on her savings and the pension. Her children often present her with money either at a celebration or Mother’s day or if she is taking a trip overseas.

Like when I was going to India, the daughter brings $500, the son brings $500, saying your expenses will rise. You will have to give laina daina (money gifts for family relationships). … I have not asked them. This is voluntary help out of respect. Like what I used to do with my in-laws. They will bring presents or leave some money in an envelope. My birthday – they both give me a dinner. Presents or cash on my birthday.

At present, she has her own space, and a house of her own where she can invite people to stay. She hopes decisions of care lie in the future. Anita and Charan’s stories show that the gender of money is changing in terms of care and inheritance. Their stories also show the strength and resilience of tradition. Anita still would not accept money from her daughter, and she only has daughters. Charan is still wedded to some extent to this idealized picture of a patrilineal joint family, even though she would like to live with her daughter. Charan is in a good position having caring children around her and the respect of the community. But the maleness of money hits hard and deep in cases of fi nancial abuse , in Australia in general, and the Indian community in particular. 82 S. SINGH

MALE MONEY AND FINANCIAL ABUSE Male control and ownership of money is a key contributing factor to fi nancial abuse, a recognized part of domestic violence. Financial abuse, like physical abuse, is the use of power to keep a person isolated and dependent.

Family Violence in Australia 5 In Australia in 2015, two women died every week because of domestic violence. 6 Economic abuse is diffi cult to identify and measure, partly because legal systems focus on physical and emotional violence. It is partly because the secrecy of money is overlaid by the secrecy and shame of family violence. Research literature shows that 80–90 percent of women seeking support from domestic violence services have experienced fi nancial abuse. 7 Control over money is one of the most overt uses of power in any household. Women more often than men are the victims of family violence. Many of the initiatives in Australia concentrate on making women aware of services, to support women who suffer family violence, and increase the effectiveness of intervention and support services. Recently there has been a call to intervene early and shift our gaze to trying to change the violent behavior of the perpetrators. 8 Talk about addressing family violence is slowly being matched by action. However overall in Australia, the situation remains critical. Financial abuse among the Indian community is part of the growing incidence of family violence in Australia. Refugee and migrant women, often on temporary visas, are more vulnerable because of the lack of family and support networks plus an unfamiliar environment. Demands for dowry by the husband and/or his family also add to the fi nancial abuse in recent Indian migrant households . 9 This is part of a broader pattern of patriarchal values where young men feel a sense of entitlement and a lack of respect for women . In Chap. 8 , I write of this in greater detail as it leads to a rift between Indian student migrants and the second-generation Indian Australian women. We do not know the extent of family violence in the Indian community. Like family violence in Australia, it crosses age, class and educational lines. 10 In March 2015, it was reported there were at least 15 family violence-related deaths in two years in Victoria’s Indian community. 11 THE GENDER OF MIGRANT MONEY 83

Magistrates and fi nancial counselors in the South West of Melbourne, where a large number of recent Indian migrants live, conversationally report they see a disproportionately large number of South Asians in general and Indians in particular in family violence cases. Court fi gures do not identify ethnicity, nor do police records. Their concern is obvious but they are fearful of igniting a racial debate. We do know that Indian women in Australia fi nd it more diffi cult to seek help. This is because of the isolation of the woman in a patrilineal marriage, dowry demands, patriarchal male norms, community and family pressures to “adjust,” plus not knowing where to go for redress and help. This is true if the woman has had an arranged marriage or a love marriage. They fear that revealing the fi nancial abuse will lead to them being sent back to India in shame. If they are new to Australia, they have not yet become familiar with community services that could offer even limited help. There is increasing coverage in the Indian media in Australia and the mainstream media about family violence. 12 Fragmented initiatives to address family violence have multiplied in the Indian community. Some legal bodies are also now tailoring their information to Indian women. 13 The settled Indian community is not keen to talk about family violence, seeing it as a loss of face and reputation. For many, their money management has implicitly accommodated itself to the male control of money and assets. 14 So the early migrants are not always a reliable source of effective help. However, there is a growing realization that there needs to be a greater degree of cultural awareness in dealing with family violence and access to redress and help. 15 Financial abuse comes to the fore in discussions of family violence among the Indian community, with particular reference to dowry demands. Dowry remains a trigger point for violence leading to death in India and Australia. However, the challenges of policy relating to gender, money and migration among the Indian community in Australia need to be broader. They have to address the ideology of patriarchy, the sense of male entitlement and closer to home, the management and control of money in the household. The main social issue for recent Indian migrants is to help manage the clash of values and family practices when Indian patriarchy meets the Australian ideology of marriage as a joint partnership. This confl ict is strong when the woman is the main earner and also when she is not in paid work and does not have access to money. Couples need to be able 84 S. SINGH to negotiate traditional male norms of money with the more normative joint management and control of money in middle-income Anglo-Celtic households. In the Australian context it is this combination of factors that is refl ected in the sending of remittances . The early Indian migrants accepted that money is sent usually to the man’s family . But when women come as migrants in their own right, are employed and achieve permanent residence, they see themselves as part of their natal family’s search for economic well-being. This approach then clashes with the traditional notions that the husband and his family control and own the wife’s earnings.

Negotiating the Management and Control of Money in the Home There is still much to learn about how Indian migrants negotiate Anglo- Celtic and Indian ways of dealing with money in the family. The focus of this study was on sending money home, the experience of migration, and being a transnational family. The data on the gendered management of money in the home emerged in this context, rather than the usual framework of marriage. The early migrants’ management and control of money ranged across a broad spectrum. Among the early migrants who spoke of this, Hema and her husband manage their money independently, but discuss it closely. Both Hema and her husband manage their own resources. “I don’t have to ask him. He doesn’t have to ask me. … You know it is an occasional need.” Hema says,

I don’t interfere with what he wants to spend with his family and he doesn’t interfere with what I want to spend with my family. But we do tell each other and … we are comfortable with that. For example, he says that he wants to send $1,000 to his brother’s family or bring somebody here and I say that I am not comfortable with that because we have all these other expenses … then he won’t. But traditionally I would think it would be easier for men to be able to negotiate that especially if the wife is not working.

Later, her son Hemat says, these negotiations were not always as smooth as Hema presents. Karan says he and his wife used to discuss the sending of money to his parents and to her mother. It was something they would negotiate. Ishan, a second-generation participant, introduced in Chap. 3 , remembers THE GENDER OF MIGRANT MONEY 85 it being different with his parents. Generally, his father made the major decisions about money including how much would be sent to his family in India. Then Ishan’s mother had to budget and manage the money that was left. At the furthest end is Charan who for a while found herself without a separate bank account and no money of her own. Her salary went into their joint account . Her husband was a good provider. She says, “I could withdraw money from the joint account, though most of the things he managed himself. But I had money in hand and I was provided for very well.” The maleness of money remains in the background in a continuing marriage. She knew he had a separate account , but she did not. She recounts, “I didn’t think there was any need to. I didn’t have one cent of my own.” But then her marriage faltered. Her husband left for a while leaving her with no money of her own. Her husband continued to support her and the children. A common friend advised her to open a separate account. But because this created confl ict in her marriage, she kept her money in her friend’s account. She said “When the girls were 14–15, I opened their accounts. All their birthday money went there.” Charan says if she had her time over again, she would have had a separate account during her marriage. The second-generation participants spoke mostly of identity and their experience of growing up in Australia. All the married women in the sample were in professional work. None of them were giving money to their parents or their parents in law. Their negotiation of money was most clearly expressed in their decisions to donate. Both men and women, single and married, spoke of donating. Meera, 39, said she and her husband (he is Anglo) are in the fortunate position of being able to donate substantially. They discuss it and much of it goes directly to an ashram in India. Single and married women talked of their giving to causes, often Indian, through organizations in Australia or directly to India. The change for married students is they have to manage the money as a couple rather than as part of the joint family. This is discussed in greater detail in Chap. 8 . The most direct evidence that money continues to be controlled and owned by the husband comes from Ekta’s story below. It shows when the maleness of money is threatened, it can lead to violent results. Further conversations with another recent migrant who suffered domestic abuse, revealed the same pattern of fi nancial abuse. This is a 86 S. SINGH topic that needs further study. From the fragmentary evidence we have, the maleness of money may be the norm among the earlier as well as the recent migrants.

Ekta’s Story: Her Money Belongs to Her Husband and His Family Ekta, 27, was the main earner but her husband controlled the money. Her story of fi nancial abuse is one where the husband saw her money as belonging to him and his family. He used her money for all the household expenses, sent his money and her money to his parents. Her marriage was over within three years. Ekta says she got little support from the Indian community in battling the fi nancial abuse. People who knew her husband kept telling her to go back to him. Her support came from kin, old friends from India and her Australian workmates, bosses and neighbors. She recounted the kindness and respect she received for her courage and ability to look after herself and her daughter, rather than the curses she would have received as a divorced woman in Punjab. Ekta says what broke her marriage was the lack of care rather than her husband’s control of money. She says, “Money was not an issue in my married life. … I would have been happy if he had looked after me and my daughter. … But when nothing was working out, then money also became an issue.” She also says he was not so bad, it was his family who had big expectations. Ekta had graduate degrees in Accounting and Finance and had worked for three years at a fi nancial center in India. Her ambition was to do a PhD from a good university abroad. She applied for permanent residence (PR) from India. Her immediate family was her mother and a younger sister. Her father who was in the Defence Forces had died when she was 12. She is also close to a much older cousin—her mother’s sister’s daughter who came to Sydney in 1973 and cousins in Canada. When she applied for PR, people in Australia and Punjab told her mother she should get Ekta married before she left. This is a usual reaction leading to hurried marriages. They found a boy who was already in Australia. He was from the same caste and from a landed family. Ekta agreed to it, but wanted to go only when she had PR. But she bowed to pressure particularly from her fi ancé’s side that she should go initially on a student visa. She got married in 2005 and enrolled in 2006 in a university course. Within two months, she found out via a letter from Immigration to her husband that he had outstayed his visa and had to return. The same day she found she was pregnant. THE GENDER OF MIGRANT MONEY 87

Ekta received her PR in 2007. She went to India with her infant daughter, but felt a lack of care from her husband. Ekta’s mother told her not to send him the sponsorship papers, but Ekta still hoped the marriage would work. In December 2007 he came back to Australia. By this time, Ekta was working at a bank during the week and at a supermarket on weekends. Her husband controlled the money. They would use her salary to live off and pay the expenses, and all his salary and some of hers was sent to his parents. He questioned her about the money she spent. They fought because his parents wanted dowry, though she had made it clear before the engagement there would be no dowry. In 2008, her 19-year-old sister came to study. He insisted her sister pay one-fourth of the expenses, which the mother sent. Ekta says she was devastated by that request and felt like a maid in her own home. The marriage was visibly disintegrating. Ekta’s Greek neighbor told her to come to her for help and if needed she would call the police. Ekta’s sister told her the marriage was dysfunctional. She informed their mother. But Ekta said “No, no, everything will be okay.” The crunch came when her sister overheard Ekta’s husband’s family telling him to hold on till he got his PR and then they would decide what needs to be done. He was on a spouse visa and it would take roughly two years for his PR. Ekta was suicidal and there were calls from India, Sydney and Canada for her to hold on. She left with her baby and sister toward the end of 2008. By this time her husband had moved all the money from the joint account to his separate account. He did not contact her or their daughter. It still took a while for her to withdraw her sponsorship papers and fi le for a divorce. She became a citizen and got her divorce in 2009. When I interviewed her in 2010, she was tearful as she spoke of the kindness she received from old friends and Australian workmates and an Australian Greek neighbor. Her mother had visited her three times since she left her husband. Her sister was with her. And an old childhood friend gave her the money to survive the fi rst month and a place to stay for a year as she rebuilt her life. She was teary most of the time, but particularly when she was recounting their kindness to her. The bank gave her fl exible hours so she could pick up her daughter from childcare before 6 pm. Her workmates would do her shopping for her during their lunch break, because Ekta did not have a car. She is now teaching, earning less money than before, but with fewer work hours. She is in a better situation than many other migrant women who have had the same problems. She has a right to stay in Australia, has a 88 S. SINGH job and has found a supportive environment. Her husband got his aunt to sponsor his temporary visa to the USA before the divorce. Ekta heard his family was looking for another bride, and this time with dowry. In this chapter I have described the continuing tussle between the traditional maleness of money in Indian households and the nascent changes in perspective. There has been a slight shift to greater comfort in living with the daughter and more equitable patterns of inheritance. Yet traditional values have a strong resilience even among those experiencing the shifts. Anita who cares for her father baulks at receiving money from her daughter. Charan who plans to leave her property equally to her son and daughter is still mindful of her son being able to play a patriarchal role. So when a recent woman migrant wants to control her money and maybe send it to her parents, confl ict erupts. The situation is only going to become more complicated. As seen in the next chapter, the narrative of remittances has shifted from just the sending of remittances to a two-way sharing of money between the migrant and non-migrant parts of the transnational family.

NOTES 1. Singh and Bhandari, “Money Management and Control in the Indian Joint Family across Generations.” 2. William Safran, Ajaya Kumar Sahoo, and Brij V. Lal, “Indian Diaspora in Transnational Contexts: Introduction,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 29, no. 1 (2008). 3. Srimati Basu, “Haklenewali : Indian Women’s Negotiations of Discourses of Inheritance,” in Dowry & Inheritance , ed. Srimati Basu, Issues in Contemporary Indian Feminism (New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2005); “The Politics of Giving: Dowry and Inheritance as Feminist Issues,” in Dowry & Inheritance , ed. Srimati Basu, Issues in Contemporary Indian Feminism (New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2005); Rajni Palriwala, “Reaffi rming the Anti-Dowry Struggle,” ibid.; Madhu Kishwar, “Dowry and Inheritance Rights,” ibid.; Bina Agarwal, A Field of One ’ s Own : Gender and Land Rights in South Asia , 1996 Second ed.(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Rajni Palriwala and Patricia Uberoi, “Exploring the Links: Gender Issues in Marriage and Migration,” in Gender , Confl ict and Migration , ed. Rajni Palriwala and Patricia Uberoi, Women and Migration in Asia (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2008); Pradeep Panda and Bina Agarwal, “Marital Violence, Human Development and Women’s Property Status in India,” World Development 33, no. 5 (2005); Seema THE GENDER OF MIGRANT MONEY 89

Misra and Enakshi Ganguly Thukral, “A Study of Two Villages in Bihar,” in Dowry & Inheritance , ed. Srimati Basu, Issues in Contemporary Indian Feminism (New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2005). 4. H. Johnston, The Sikhs of British Columbia and their philanthropy in Punjab. In : V. A. Dusenbery and D. S. Tatla (eds.), Sikh Diaspora Philanthropy in Punjab : Global Giving for Local Good. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 169–183. 5. See State of Victoria Royal Commission into Family Violence. “Summary and Recommendations.” edited by Marcia Neave, Patricia Faulkner and Tony Nicholson. Melbourne: State of Victoria Royal Commission into Family Violence, 2016. This is a six volume report that is having immediate impact on the planning, delivery and change in services in Victoria, Australia. 6. Fiona Richardson Victorian Minister for Women and Minister for Family Violence, 27 April 2015. 7. Prue Cameron, “Relationship Problems and Money: Women Talk About Financial Abuse,” (Melbourne: WIRE Women’s Information, 2014). 8. Centre for Innovative Justice, “Opportunities for Early Intervention: Bringing Perpetrators of Family Violence into View,” (Melbourne: Centre for Innovative Justice, 2015). 9. Owen Camilleri, Tanya Corrie, and Shorna Moore, “Restoring Financial Safety: Legal Responses to Economic Abuse” (Melbourne: Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand and Wyndham Legal Service Inc., 2015). 10. Erminia Colucci et al., “Nature of Domestic/Family Violence and Barriers to Using Services among Indian Immigrant Women,” Alterstice 3, no. 2 (2013). 11. Rachel Kleinman, “Rights Advocate Steps up Fight over Dowry,” The Age , 7 March 2015. 12. Jessica Longbottom, “Melbourne’s Indian Community Fights Back against Domestic Violence,” (ABC 730 Report, 2015). 13. “Violence is unacceptable in any culture,” (2014) http://whwest.org.au/ wp-content/uploads/2013/11/A6_OCOR_FINALweb.pdf. Accessed 10 August 2015. 14. Manpreet K Singh and Sacha Payne, (2015) “Special Report: The Enemy Within,” SBS Radio, http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/ 08/31/special-report-enemy-within . 15. The Australia India Society of Victoria, “Achieving Family Harmony: Addressing Family Violence, Australian Indian Community,” http:// www.aisv.org.au/domestic-violence- project.php; Colucci et al., “Nature of Domestic/Family Violence and Barriers to Using Services among Indian Immigrant Women.” CHAPTER 5

Recent Migrants Transform the Narrative of Remittances

The popular meaning of remittances has changed from “sending money home” to the more contemporary one of money transfers between households. Money has begun to fl ow two ways between the source and destination countries, particularly for migrants from middle-income countries such as India and China. This is redefi ning the traditional concept of remittances. It is an important development for Australia, as Asian migrants comprised one third (33 percent) of the overseas-born population in 2011. Money transfers across transnational families are potentially captured in the new and broader International Monetary Fund (IMF) defi nition of migrant remittances. Migrant remittances now have three components— migrant workers’ remittances, compensation of employees and migrant transfers. The last category was introduced only in 2009. The IMF broad- ened the defi nition to include “current and capital transfers in cash or in kind between resident households and nonresident households.” 1 Though many countries have begun to use this broader defi nition, data are diffi cult to obtain. 2 The World Bank reports on bilateral remittances and migration , showing how much money is sent from a country and how much money comes into a country. Theoretically, it should include all two-way fl ows at a country level. However much of the data on migrant

Parts of this chapter draw on Supriya Singh & Liliya Gatina (2015) Money fl ows two ways between transnational families in Australia and India, South Asian Diaspora , 7:1, 33–47 http://www.tandfonline.com . With permission.

© The Author(s) 2016 91 S. Singh, Money, Migration, and Family, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54886-3_5 92 S. SINGH transfers are missing. Hence, almost all countries, including Australia, report it as missing.

MONEY FLOWS TWO WAYS FOR RECENT MIGRANTS AND THEIR TRANSNATIONAL FAMILIES The historical context of the migration from India to Australia is necessary to recognize the transformation from a one-way fl ow of “sending money home” to this two-way fl ow of money between transnational families in India and Australia. In Chap. 1 , I detailed the demographic changes among Indian migrants to Australia over the last fi ve decades. The different socio-economic characteristics of migrants are partly a response to changes in Australian migration policy. Early migrants came with a Permanent Visa and a job in hand. They sent money home, especially if their parents were alive. Migrants often moved to countries because they could earn multiples of what they earned in their source countries. But the foreign exchange restrictions in India meant that Hema, who migrated from India in 1986 with her husband and two sons, was only allowed to bring US$20 per person. But Hema’s husband was able to get a job in his fi eld within three weeks. And in the third week, they received social security payments. Recent migrants are the fi rst large group of Indian migrants in Australia who have had to pay to migrate. Student migrants are a new kind of migrant group, created by a policy linking international education and migration in 2001. In 2014 till the end of December, there were 63,096 Indian students enrolled. The number was down from 99,490 in December 2010 but up from 48,822 in 2013. 3 Indian families remitted an estimated $1.8 billion to the Australian economy at the end of 2013. 4 Some students also send money home as seen in Akash’s story later in the chapter. This is particularly true if the family in India depends on the remittances to survive. Skilled migrants, the other dominant group among the recent Indian migrants, also bring or receive more money from India in the fi rst few years of arrival, than they send. The scant data we have about money brought by skilled migrants is from the Second Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia (LSIA2) managed by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, (DIMIA). The main fi nding from LSIA2 is that the Indian-born migrants who arrived between 1999 and 2000—69.1 percent were on skilled visas—brought and received 18 times as much as they sent to India in the fi rst two years of settlement. 5 RECENT MIGRANTS TRANSFORM THE NARRATIVE OF REMITTANCES 93

The human face of this fl ow of funds from India is Chetan. He is in his late 40s to early 50s, and migrated from Punjab in 2005 as a skilled migrant with his wife and two children. He had gone into his own business in Punjab, after graduating from university. He moved to Melbourne, for he wanted to join his brother who was already settled there. With the death of their sister, they were the only remaining siblings. Chetan and his family stayed with his brother for three years. His wife began to work as a teacher. In 2006, a year after migration, an opportunity came up to buy a business. So he invested the money he had brought with him from his business in India. “It was not from family,” he says. Six months after he began his business, his parents joined their two sons in Melbourne. The fl ow of money from India to Australia has become possible because the recent wave of migrants from India come from an economically resur- gent India with an expanding middle class, rising discretionary income, increasing asset prices and a progressively liberal foreign exchange regime. Even then, as Akash’s story later in this chapter shows, not every family is in a position to send money to the children. My interviews with transnational families show that money fl ows in different directions in the transnational family according to life stage. Money is sent from India to Australia at four trigger points—for education, when the migrant gains permanent residence and buys a house, settlement costs of skilled migrants, and family reunion. Money and care fl ow from the children to the parents depending on each other’s fi nancial situation and family context. Where possible and desired, one of the options is for the parents to join the migrant, most often the son. Parents of recent migrants talk of their duty to help their children when they need it. Chand’s parents, whose story is told later in this chapter, dipped heavily in their retirement funds. Fateh, whose story is told below, sold land and equities to buy a home for his son in Melbourne. What about your old age? I ask, thinking of King Lear and Père Goriot, refl ecting my desire for fi nancial independence in my later years. In all cases, the parents said, we have enough and we don’t need much. You need to give the money when it is needed, they said. Unspoken was also their faith that once the sons are settled, they will look after the parents. It was a reminder that the morality of money in Indian families norma- tively runs both ways. Parents give what they have to their children when it is needed. And they trust that the children will be there for them when their time comes. The children give via routine remittances, gifts, and cash when they visit. 94 S. SINGH

It doesn’t always work out that way as Indian fi lms and literature depict. But as money shapes and is shaped by social relationships and cultural values, this two-way fl ow of money also translates to social remittances, that is, norms, practices and social capital following the money circuit. I elaborate this further in Chap. 9 .

CONTINUITIES OF SENDING MONEY HOME Student migrants for the most part concentrate on subsisting in Australia without drawing further funds from their parents. When they start earning, they try to repay loans taken for their study in Australia. However where the family is in need, four of the students who were still studying also sent money to their parents. This is triggered by the family’s need or illness. Jay in his late 20s routinely sent about $300 to his parents. He is studying commercial cookery in a private institute. He is able to send this money because he also works at an international hotel in Melbourne. He says “It is my responsibility. … I used to send money home from Calcutta too – at least 30–40 percent of my earnings….” His parents don’t ask him for money, but he says they are older and he knows they need it.

Akash Pays for His Sister’s Wedding and Builds a New House for His Parents Akash comes from a small town in Punjab. He is 29, single, and came to study in Australia in 2006. His father has a small shop which brings in ₹5000 a month. The parents gave Akash nearly all the money they had for his fi rst semester in Australia. Akash knew it was up to him to support his parents and pay for his sister’s wedding. His story shows the continuity of sending money home, particularly when the family’s welfare depends on the remittances. Akash was 22 when he left for Australia in 2006. He had fi nished his BA in India and had no plans for the future. The family business, a shop in town, was not doing well. Changes in technology had left the business beached. The monthly income had dropped from ₹15,000 a month to ₹5000. Migration to Australia offered a possibility for Akash to secure his family’s fi nancial future as well as his own. When I met his father in his small town in Punjab on a national highway, he said, “Every parent in India wants his son settled. Here it is diffi cult to get a job. There is too much corruption.” The father’s brother added, “Ninety percent of the youth are addicted to drugs.” RECENT MIGRANTS TRANSFORM THE NARRATIVE OF REMITTANCES 95

The family collected all the money they had, about ₹270,000 (US$4252 in July 2015). Akash’s father’s brother in the USA showed he had money in his account. The fi rst semester was paid up. Somebody then asked whether Akash would be taking money with him. The family had not thought about it because he would be living with family in Melbourne. There was ₹10,000 in the house and it equated to $300 at the time. “Whatever my father saved in life, he spent it all on me. … Maybe he had ₹50,000 (US$787) left. And my younger sister was still to be married.” Seven years later, coming straight from work, he recalls the shock of leaving home, though he was living with cousins and their families in Melbourne. He says, “I had always lived at home so the fi rst four months was one of the worst experiences of my life.” He found no work for four months in Melbourne. His course was also a shock. An agent related to the family had told him to do hospitality management, “for it is easy to get an offer….” Akash thought he would be doing a management course, but it was a commercial cookery course. He was asked to bring a box with knives. He had to cut and cook meat, though he was a vegetarian at the time. His cousin called from Sydney, saying there was a job. Akash transferred to Sydney and started working the next day at Pizza Hut in Sydney. He stayed in Sydney for four years. He fi nished his course in one and a half years, and also worked as a courier, at a petrol station, door-to-door sales (mainly because they paid you to train for six weeks) and also for installing home insulation. The work was intermittent and the money was not reliable. In the lean months of door-to-door sales, he used his credit card. His cousins also paid one semester’s fees on their credit card, and he paid them back with the interest they had to pay. He thinks it was really courageous of them to do this, for they themselves had no extra money. But working seven days a week on marketing jobs, door-to-door sales, delivering pizzas, three years after he arrived in Australia to study, he sent ₹500,000 (US$7873) home for his sister’s wedding in 2009. This was in addition to sending one or two lakhs (US$1575 to US $3149) to his parents every four months so that they could survive. He did this by putting away half the money he earned every week. He says he would ask his parents if they needed anything. “They have never asked for anything, not for any support. They say ‘Whatever is there in India is all yours. We have a house….’” Now he is not thinking of his family’s survival, but their respect in the community. He is working on 96 S. SINGH getting his father a car and thinking of remodeling the shop. He says though he is able to send money, he feels torn that he is the only son and he is not there to support his father in his business and upgrade the technology. “One person cannot run the business,” he says. In a family business, “the support comes from the son.” In Akash’s home town, his parents speak of him with pride and grate- fulness. His father takes me from his small, faded shop through the narrow lanes of their small town. My taxi barely goes through. We pass by their old home which is now being renovated. It will be modest but new. As Akash’s mother serves me lunch in their temporary home, the atmosphere is one of celebration. They are good parents and are blessed with a good son. Akash’s cousins and neighbors gather. An aunt drops in to see who has come from Akash’s city in Australia. His parents show me the wedding albums with Akash standing proudly by his sister as she gets married. It seems just like a Western Union advertisement. They point out their renovated house has a double-storey foundation. But for the present, they will have two rooms built on the fi rst fl oor. Akash has sent ₹500,000 ($7873) for that. I ask the mother how Akash has changed. “He was a bit innocent before,” she says. His father says, “He still respects all of us. But … we also listen to him. If the younger generation says something correct, it is good to listen.” In Melbourne, Akash is still sharing a house with a cousin. He says in the fi rst three to four years he felt very home sick. “I was always saying ‘I will go back to India. I will go back to India. I will not settle down in Australia.’” But after four years in Australia, he decided to stay. For the last year he has had a regular job in sales in a company. He is hoping his permanent residence will come through in the next one and a half years. He will then call his parents for a visit. They are in their 50s, and his mother is unwell. He says, “I feel bad they are alone.” He is thinking of buying a house in Australia. Last year he bought a car, though he had hoped to buy his father a car before his own. He knows his parents are looking for a suitable girl. “Now I have dreams,” Akash says.

PARENTS SEND MONEY FOR EDUCATION The decision to study in Australia is most often made together with the parents. Going overseas and the possibility of migration are weighed against options for further study in India and the diffi culty of getting a RECENT MIGRANTS TRANSFORM THE NARRATIVE OF REMITTANCES 97 job that enables a middle-income wage. At times it is the choice between working far away from home within India and going overseas. At one extreme, as Akash’s uncle said, it is parents’ desire to seclude their sons from a perceived spread of violence and drugs in Punjab. At the other it is the student like Dharma in Chap. 2 , who wants to test himself in a new and adventurous environment. Most students received help from their parents for their education, even if this had to be supplemented by bank loans. As Lalit, an established businessman said, “Education is the parents’ responsibility.” Only one Indian International student interviewed funded his study in Australia using his savings from a job in Europe. Education in Australia is an expensive investment decision for families, as the expenses ranged from $20,000 to $30,000 a year per person. For one family that migrated from Gujarat—the woman who was studying, her husband and their one and a half year old daughter—the expenses came to about $80,000 over two years. In this case it was the husband’s parents, elder brother, together with the couple’s savings that made up the sum. In addition, the grandparents take turns to come and help look after the grandchild. Dharma’s family, like other upper middle-class families, was also able to raise the resources without taking a loan. The recent migrants come nearly evenly from the upper middle and middle classes. Many students from middle-class families are aware that their families have to struggle to meet the costs. Most often the families dip into their retirement savings and supplement these with loans. Or as with Akash, the whole extended family group lends money or at least shows the money as available for the purpose of obtaining a visa. At times, land and property are also sold and mortgaged. Most of the student participants tried hard not to draw on their loans to prevent the 12–14 percent interest from accruing. When they did draw on the loans for living expenses, particularly at the beginning of their stay, they tried to send money home to pay for the interest as soon as they could. Five of the 35 students, at different stages of their studies were already repaying loans. This was not always easy, particularly for those with little English and no prior work experience. Chandar and Chitra, one a retired academic and the other a continuing one, talk of their decision to send their son, Chand, in his early 20s, to Australia in 2007. They see themselves as a middle-income family. Chand’s father, Chandar says, 98 S. SINGH

We could afford to give him the money for his studies. After all, what will we do with the money? If it is not used at the proper time, what is the use of that money? … If he is settled and has a good life, that will be our satisfaction.

In the fi rst year they took out a loan, but Chandar said the 14 percent interest was excessive. So they paid it out from Chandar’s retirement lump sum. The investment was larger than anticipated as the 18-month graduate course expanded to three years when Chand changed halfway from a Masters in Computer Science to a Diploma of Hospitality. He wanted to stay in Australia, and he thought hospitality would maximize his chances of getting permanent residence. Chand at the time of the interview was working long hours in a hotel, while waiting for his visa application to be processed. Chand wants to send money home, but his mother says he should keep the money, as she is still earning. Chandar says, the last year his son “has not demanded any money from us. It’s as good as sending money to us.” He speaks fondly of the mobile phone Chand brought for him and his wife. Chand also brought them wine he had specially bought 200 km from Melbourne. Charandeep’s father also used his provident fund to pay for part of the Australian education. Charandeep, 34, is the only living son of a retired policeman in India. It is a middle-income family. They have a home in the city and agricultural land. He says his father spent $15,000 from his provident fund and borrowed $35,000 from the bank when Charandeep came to study in Australia in 2005. That was the last bit of his provident fund for he had spent some of it sending the eldest son to Canada. Charandeep arrived with $4000 in hand. He knew his father was willing to send him money if he needed it. But he says, “Exactly after 40 days, I found a job.” He worked as a kitchen hand in a chocolate factory. His shifts sometimes fi nished after 1 am. He then had to stay overnight with friends. When his mother heard that on those nights he would go to sleep without dinner and just a glass of milk, she asked her husband to send him money for a car. Charandeep’s father sent him $4000. His father told him he was

…even willing to pay me whatever was the living and lodging expenses. He told me it would be $24,000 over two years. I asked him “Where would you get the money from?” He said, “You don’t need to worry. I’ll arrange it”. I understood he would sell some part of the property to do that. RECENT MIGRANTS TRANSFORM THE NARRATIVE OF REMITTANCES 99

Charandeep says, unlike his friends, he would tell his parents when he needed money.

Sometimes I would call and tell him I cannot work next month because my exams are coming. So he would send me $1,000 or $800. … I knew there was a trade-off. If I don’t study … I would not get suffi cient skills and education.

Charandeep began paying off the loan when he started working four years ago. He is hoping to pay the last Rs 350,000 (roughly $5512) in one go. He bought a car for his father—a Suzuki Alto—on installments. He remembered his mother wore no jewelry, for she had sold it 40 years ago to buy the house in which they live in India. He asked his mother, “Do you want to buy any jewelry now? She said, ‘No.’ But she is very fond of buying suits and shawls, so now whenever I go back, I buy her fi ve, six shawls.” He also gives her $1000, separately from his father. When he goes to visit, he gives money and gifts to the old and needy women in his village. It is about $200 worth, and that is his donation, rather than giving it to the Gurdwara, the Sikh temple. He takes gifts for his extended kin. He also takes $4000 in cash or sends money through friends who are going to India.

PARENTS HELP SONS BUY A HOME AND SET UP BUSINESS Relatively well-off families help their children buy homes and set up businesses once they get permanent residence. Faraj, 34, who had come to Australia as a graduate student in 2002 said his family who is in business helped him set up a business in fi nancial services. He says a “substantial investment” came from his parents. They gave it as a way of helping their child. He says, “They think everything I do is good.” He, on the other hand, treated it as a business debt and repaid it with interest. In Melbourne support for housing is hinted at, rather than elaborated. Chandra, 23, and Champesh, in his mid to late 20s, bought homes fi ve years after arriving in Australia in 2005 to study. In India, families were more forthcoming about the help they gave. As in Fateh’s story below, money for housing was at the center of a father’s responsibility for the care and well-being of his son. At the same time, it was an example of a father 100 S. SINGH displaying his son had primacy in the family. His giving intersected with the gender of money and the politics of inheritance. Among my participants, only the male students owned houses. In the examples where parents had helped, they had helped the sons. But over dinner in an India-related seminar group, I heard an Indian student migrant from South India tell how her parents had bought her a home near the city. She was getting married in Melbourne, and her parents told her to think of it as a pre-inheritance. Parents’ giving even after the child has completed his or her education is seen as a continuation of parental care. Sometimes it is so much a taken- for-granted aspect of family money and caring that it is remarked about when the son does not depend on the father. Lalit, a well-established businessman in his mid to late 50s, has a son, Lakshman, who went to Australia to study in 2005. The son is now in the banking industry. He got married in 2009 and bought his house in 2011. Lalit says,

He saved up for it. The bank interest rate was also good. We supported him but it was nothing special. Of course we do not say “No” to any demand but there is no need. He has a lot of savings. In 2013, he also bought an investment property.

In another business family interviewed, the father was thinking of buying a home for his only son in Australia. In this case, the son had a substantial inheritance in India from his grandfather, so it was the father’s need to give that was foremost. Interestingly in this case as with Fateh’s story below, the father and son do not have an easy relationship. I do not know what the young men thought of their fathers’ generosity. Both sons in Australia did not respond to a request for an interview. One couple who intended to migrate to Australia to be with their son and daughter in mid-2014 were clear they would help their son set up a patisserie business. Their son went to study in 2006 and is working in a patisserie shop. The father, Chandan, 62, says “When he gains citizenship we will invest in a house and business. We are talking millions of dollars.” He has already opened an account in Australia where he has deposited money. RECENT MIGRANTS TRANSFORM THE NARRATIVE OF REMITTANCES 101

Fateh Buys His Son a House We sit in Fateh’s top fl oor apartment in a city in South India, looking over trees. Loud bird song comes through the windows. The interview lasts seven hours over two days, fi rst in his house and then by the beach and in a coffee shop. Fateh, 61, is round. He has cut down from ten cups of bed tea to two. He shows me the three-bedroom house. His wife is out of town, though his son-in-law is present for part of the interview. Midway through the fi rst day, Fateh speaks of buying a house for his son, 30, who went to Australia in 2003 as a student. After Fateh’s son completed his studies, he worked for a large corporation. He bought a Mercedes, a Rolex watch. Fateh said his son then went into business and got into debt. Fateh knew something was wrong. He visited him in Australia and paid off some $40,000 in debts. In 2009, his son and wife were staying in a rented house. Fateh did not like that. He saw a model house and the plans for a developing suburb. He says, “I saw there was a highway running by, a mall close by, a railway station and a view of the lake and it was two kilometers from the sea.” He scrounged up $1000 on the spot to book the quarter acre block that was selling for $450,000. This was after he checked with his son and daughter-in-law whether they wanted to continue staying in Australia. In the end, he decided to also pay for the construction of the house, a gift of $650,000. Fateh sold some shares and a parcel of land in India to pay for the house via bank transfer. He kept aside what he thinks he and his wife will need for the next ten years for their expenses rather than extravagances. “I am glad I liquidated some shares three years ago. I would have lost 70 percent of their value anyway.” And in December 2011 he says, “Two years ago it was ₹30 to an Australian dollar, compared to ₹53 today.” His wife and son-in-law told him not to pay for the whole house. “My wife told me ‘ Na bap bara , na bahai , Sab se bara rupiah ’ (Neither father nor the brother is big. The biggest is the rupee.).” In the end there was no family discussion about the gift. That too was part of a pattern for when his son called him for money, Fateh would send it without discussing it with the others. Fateh says more than once his philosophy is to give when it is useful. He asks, “What is the point of giving after you are dead? As they say, ‘In plenty you can feel empty. In empty you can feel plenty’. I want to see how you can fi nd a sense of plenty (in giving).” 102 S. SINGH

When the daughter saw the family wealth going to Australia, her husband tells she took her parents out for dinner and asked “What are you giving me? You have always said you are going to give equal. But now you have spent all the money on your son.” Two weeks later, Fateh said he plans to leave his house in India worth approximately $1.5 million to his daughter. He says there will be some adjustment so that both the son and daughter receive equal amounts. At the same time he mentions the large wedding he gave his daughter with 5000 guests and the money he loaned to his daughter’s father-in-law for business. When I ask about giving in a timely fashion to his daughter who is staying in a rented house, he retorts, “I hope my daughter is not waiting for me to die.”

PARENTS BRING MONEY WHEN THEY MOVE TO AUSTRALIA Family reunion can lead to the movement of money from India to Australia, when parents liquidate part of their property in India. When parents like Chandan and Charu plan to migrate to be with their two children in Australia, they plan to liquidate a large part of their property in India. They intend to keep a base in India, but something that can be managed at a distance. Charandeep’s parents, who joined their only child in Australia in 2013, plan to sell much of their property in India and invest in property in Australia. Charandeep says they will probably sell half their property in India, keeping their house in the city. With this $500,000 or so, the family will buy one house outright in an outer suburb and perhaps an investment property in Australia. In four to fi ve years, they might sell their city house in India as an unoccupied house invites squatters. Then they will buy a fl at in that city, so the option of coming and going remains. Charandeep says his choice is to invest in the fl at, rather than shares. He needs a sense of belonging, he says. His family networks in India have diluted with the death of his grandmother and his mother’s sister in India. He also feels rooted in Australia with his work and his community activities. When his parents move here, it will strengthen his comfort with Australia. But he still would like the fl at to have a feeling of continuity with his city of birth. When parents have only one house, often the family chooses to keep the home so that they continue to have a family base. That is what Chetan’s father, 73, has decided. They rented out half their six-bedroom house in RECENT MIGRANTS TRANSFORM THE NARRATIVE OF REMITTANCES 103

Punjab. A friend looks after the other half so that it is available to the family when they visit India. Chetan’s parents had just returned from a visit and both sons and their families also go to stay. Binod’s family (he came as a student in 1999), whose story will be told in Chap. 9 , is also keeping the family home in Gujarat.

TRANSFORMING THE NARRATIVE OF REMITTANCES Studies of the economics of migration assume that money and care go from the migrant in the country of destination to the source country. 6 Despite the two-way fl ow of money between India and Australia, the narrative of remittances is still characteristically represented as “sending money home.” In Australia the economic worth of the migrant has always been central to migration policy. In the post-war period even when Australia took in refugees, the decisive factor was ensuring a supply of young labor, rather than refuge and sanctuary. 7 In recent years young skilled migrants have been the focus of policy so that they can contribute to the economy and safeguard it from an ageing population. A recent report on the economic impact of migration to Australia concluded “migration is central to Australia’s future prosperity.” 8 Economic modeling led to the fi nding that migrants will contribute $1624 billion to the GDP by 2050. It says,

The economic impact of migration fl ows through into every aspect of the economy. It has a profound positive impact not just on population growth, but also on labour participation and employment, on wages and incomes, on our national skills base and on net productivity. 9

Economic modeling only partially captures the total economic benefi t that Australia gains from its migrants. Some aspects like the export of education services are well documented. But the migrant component of trade and foreign direct investment is not. Moreover, there is little quantitative data in Australia other than the LSIA2 going back to 1999–2000 that documents the money and assets brought in by migrants. The money sent by migrants’ transnational families to help with the purchase of property, the setting up of business or preparing for family reunion is not recognized. As William Lacy Swing, the Director General of the International Organization for Migration, says in a different context, “A new narrative 104 S. SINGH is needed – one based on factual accounts of migrant contributions to society and the global economy.” 10 Part of the problem is that transnational fl ows of money are diffi cult to capture in data collection systems designed by nation-states. Different questions need to be asked across borders. 11 A Population and Housing Census is not designed to capture these fl ows. Capturing the two-way fl ow of money across borders has to go beyond “methodological nationalism.” Instead of the nation-state being the unit, it is migrants’ social fi elds across different activities that bound the spaces. 12 Measuring the two-way fl ow of remittances faces some of the same problems as one-way remittances. Informal remittances could be a substantial part of the money that fl ows two ways. Moreover, money coming in can be characterized in multiple ways. It is diffi cult to match the fl ow of money by comparing fi gures from the sending and receiving countries. The bilateral matrix of the World Bank Remittance Factbook is of little help at present because of its incomplete data. The two-way fl ow of remittances requires the kind of forensic accounting that fi rst revealed remittances were one of the largest international fl ows of funds. This would need to be matched by special surveys complemented with qualitative research. Having a dollar fi gure to the economic contribution of migration that includes remittances will make transparent the intersection of the fl ow of people, labor and money. This cannot but contribute to more effective policy-making in the areas of migration, trade and investment. 13 This is particularly important for countries that are attracting migrants from middle-income countries such as India and China. Focusing on the two-way fl ows will make transparent the economic value of migrants to both the source country and the country of destination. In the next chapter, I move to consider changes in family communication that have changed the experience of migration, family and money.

NOTES 1. International Monetary Fund, “Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual—Sixth Edition (Bpm6),” (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 2009). (p. 274). 2. Ratha et al., “Migration and Remittance Flows: Recent Trends and Outlook, 2013–2016”. RECENT MIGRANTS TRANSFORM THE NARRATIVE OF REMITTANCES 105

3. Australian Education International (AEI), “End of Year Summary of International Student Enrolment Data1—Australia—2013,” (Australian Education International, 2014); Australian Education International (AEI), “International Student Data 2013,” Australian Education International (AEI), https://aei.gov.au/research/International-Student-Data/Pages/ InternationalStudentData2013.aspx#Pivot_Table . Department of Education and Training, “End of Year Summary of International Student Enrolment Data—Australia—2014,” https://www.austrade.gov.au/…/ ISD_MonthlySummary_December2014 …. 4. “Export Income to Australia from International Education Activity in 2014,” https://internationaleducation.gov.au/research/research-snapshots/ pages/default.aspx . 5. Supriya Singh and Liliya Gatina, “Money Flows Two-Ways between Transnational Families in Australia and India,” South Asian Diaspora 7, no. 1 (2015). 6. Loretta Baldassar, “Transnational Families and Aged Care: The Mobility of Care and the Migrancy of Ageing,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33, no. 2 (2007). 7. Neumann, Across the Seas : Australia’s Response to Refugees—A History . 8. Migration Council Australia and Independent Economics, “The Economic Impact of Migration,” (Migration Council Australia, 2015). p. 2. 9. Ibid. p. 2. 10. William Lacy Swing, “The Director General’s Report to the Council,” (Geneva: International Organization for Migration 2010). p. 3. 11. Levitt and Jaworsky, “Transnational Migration Studies: Past Developments and Future Trends.” 12. Levitt and Schiller, “Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society.” Levitt and Jaworsky, “Transnational Migration Studies: Past Developments and Future Trends.” 13. See Singh and Gatina, “Money Flows Two-Ways between Transnational Families in Australia and India.” PART III

Communication, Money and Family CHAPTER 6

Communication, Money and the Transnational Family

In this chapter I examine the major changes in personal communication in the transnational family because of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs). Building on the fl ow of remittances among the early and recent migrants, as described in Chaps. 3 , 4 and 5 , I now focus on the relationship between personal communication and the meanings of money in the transnational family. Placing the experiences of the early and recent migrants side by side makes clear that the perceived value of money is infl uenced by the quality and fl ow of communication. I explore what this means for the nature of money in middle-income families, where a free fl ow of communication and money is possible. A family relationship can survive poor and infrequent communication. However, when family members live apart, communication becomes essential to “display” 1 and maintain relationship, as everyday acts of love and care are missing. The starting point of my discussion is that there can be good and bad communication in transnational families with or without the new ICTs. If family relationships are close, then even air letters or aerograms will suffi ce. 2 The mobile phone cannot create family communication. If there is no meaningful communication between family members, then the mobile phone, email, Skype and the Internet does not produce this communication. 3 Sometimes the communication stops for there is nothing more to say. A few second-generation participants said that after visits to India, they communicated with their cousins for a while via email or Facebook. But their worlds were too far apart and the

© The Author(s) 2016 109 S. Singh, Money, Migration, and Family, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54886-3_6 110 S. SINGH messages stopped. Or as seen in Hema’s story below, the parent dies and siblings are left without a habit of communicating. In this chapter, I emphasize communication within the family, rather than the way the mobile phone, email, Skype or social media are used. 4 But given the desire to communicate, the most important change has been that international calls have become cheaper, 5 and in some cases as with Skype and WhatsApp, they are free. New ICTs have made possible syn- chronous and instantaneous communication via the mobile phone. Skype has enabled conversation with the family group across distance while seeing them. The rituals of family life to some extent can be replicated across borders. Email and social media have enabled asynchronous communication one on one or with a group. Communication is always mediated, but the new ICTs mediate it in different ways. 6 The caveat here is that there remain parts of the world where access to new ICTs is limited because of poor infrastructure, high costs and lack of media literacy. This inordinately affects refugees, though their need to communicate is greater. 7 The possibility of easy communication does not mean everything is said. Just as in the era of air letters, important things can remain unsaid even when the migrant and his or her family speak every week. One reason for the silence is to avoid worrying members of the family. Sometimes the silences mask an “open secret” as both sides know what is happening but want to avoid bringing up contentious issues. 8 Frequent communication and travel may make it more diffi cult to sustain silences, but in the end it is communication patterns in the family that dictate what is said and not said. In Chap. 8 , I tell the story of Gita and Govind who come from a middle-income professional family in a regional city and migrated in 2008. Govind works in a factory but for close to two years, he has not told his parents. He thinks they will worry he has come down in the world. That does not mean his parents have not fi gured it out. It could be an “open secret.” They are expected to visit and he says once they see the context of work in Australia, they will understand. On the other hand, Lakshman whose story I tell below, told his father the day after he got a job as a security offi cer. As he most likely anticipated, his father erupted. Lakshman quit the next day. For Lakshman, the history of open communication in the family means that not telling his father would have been a greater breach of trust. COMMUNICATION, MONEY AND THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY 111

EARLY MIGRANTS: AIR LETTERS AND OCCASIONAL VISITS Early migrants who came to Australia between the late 1960s and mid 1990s wrote letters and received letters in return. It was the sound of the voice and sitting together in the same space that was missing. Letters can be treasured as a personal and material reminder of intimacy. 9 Letters sent home like those of Karen Blixen to her mother between 1914 and 1931 can be regular and detailed, a record of life in far off lands. 10 Letters were much awaited, but I found that letters could paper over the silences. Often you do not know what has not been said, in ways more obscure than with voice. This is particularly the case when you do not share the same level of fl uency in one language, and there is a public dimension to the letters received and written. When I wrote to my mother in the later years somebody read them out to her due to her fail- ing eyesight. Somebody wrote down what she said in English, though her preferred language was Punjabi. It was only when I went back to India, sometimes after fi ve years, sometimes longer, that I learnt of the silences between us. This communication gap is poignantly expressed in Jhumpa Lahiri’s books. In The Namesake (2003) the ringing of the phone in the middle of the night gives the wife the news that her father has died. 11 In The Lowland : A Novel (2013), Lahiri describes a family where the elder son, Subhash, goes to the USA to study in the late 1960s. The younger son gets involved with the Naxalbari movement. Lahiri writes about Subhash, saying,

For a year and a half he had not seen his family, not sat down with them, at the end of the day, to share a meal. In Tollygunge [a suburb in Kolkata] his family did not have a phone line. He’d sent a telegram to let them know he’d arrived. He was learning to live without hearing their voices, to receive news of them only in writing. 12

His brother would write giving him news of the neighborhood, the foot- ball scores and the latest fi lm by Mrinal Sen. It was only when Subhash went back to India after his brother died that he learnt of his brother’s deep involvement in the Naxalbari movement. The early migrants lived with infrequent communication. Visits to parents and siblings were often fi ve years apart. Telephone calls were expensive. In 1975 a three-minute operator-connected call from Australia to 112 S. SINGH

India cost $7.50 and then $2.50 for each minute after that. 13 Anita in her 60s, who migrated with her husband and child in 1973—she was introduced in Chap. 4 —remembers it as being $25 for three minutes. It must have felt like that, for in today’s dollars $7.50 would have been more like $30–35. 14 Telegrams were still sent and often reached the other side of the world and a different time zone before the event took place. Even when long- distance calls became more affordable, I was particularly aware of the issues of access as my mother got her own phone, a landline, in the small Indian town of Dharamshala in 1995, a year before she died. The diffi culties of communication when the family in the home country does not have a phone have their parallels in Latin America. Sarah Mahler writes evocatively of Maria, a woman in rural El Salvador in the 1990s who has to travel far to make a collect call to her husband in the USA. In this communication gap, there are the imaginings of the possibility that he would be unfaithful and that the remittances would stop. It was only in 2000 that Maria’s husband sent her a mobile phone, though her village still did not have electricity. 15

Early Migrants: A One-Way Flow of Communication The early migrants most often initiated the communication even when telephone calls became more possible. They were also the ones who visited. Some of the early migrants, as seen in Chap. 3 , felt that communication and the circulation of care were not suffi ciently reciprocal. At the same time, the fl ow of money was also one way, from the migrants to the transnational family. Affordability accounted for much of this one-way fl ow of communication and money. Travel and telephone calls continued to be expensive till the mid-1990s. India was a closed economy till the early 1990s with foreign exchange restrictions. Moreover, migrants earned more than their families did in India. The early migrants also initiated the communication for they were the ones who had left. All the early migrant participants had migrated to further their own careers and opportunities, rather than enhance family well-being. The migrants were well settled in India. The decision to migrate was an individual decision, one often made by the husband as seen in Chap. 4 . The husband’s and wife’s families did not stand in the way of the migrant even though they sometimes could not see the upside COMMUNICATION, MONEY AND THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY 113 to migration. So the early migrants, unlike the recent ones, did not have the “licence to leave.” 16 Gurjeet, 55, who came with her husband and two daughters in 1996 says she calls more than her family does. She says, “The reason is that we came here, we miss them. They do not miss us so much. The family is there. Maybe they miss us, but not with the same degree of intensity.” Relationships in the transnational family did survive this slow communication mediated mainly through writing, and the one-way fl ow of visits and telephone calls. Daya, who was featured in Chap. 4 , feels a valued part of the family. She is the eldest. Her advice is sought and she is part of important family events. This is despite the fact that she was only able to visit her family in India six years after she migrated in 1983. Niranjan, 91, migrated to Australia in 1985 to join his son. He remains the patriarch of his extended family and is at the center of an extensive family network across India, USA, UK and Canada. He says,

In 1985, I used to write to all my children once a week. Then we used to have time. We were new and we did not have many contacts. There were few telephones here. It was much more expensive. In India, it was even more expensive. They depended on us ringing them.

This slow and patchy communication with infrequent visits becomes a problem when relationships are not close with different members of the transnational family. Then the one-way communication can worsen the fractures. As Hema’s story below shows, the death of a parent who is the main communication link leaves the other family members without a habit of connecting. As she said her father did not write at length, but he was the link between her and her mother and siblings. The possibility of frequent and instantaneous communication only shows up the reality of infrequent and unsatisfactory communication.

The Unraveling of a Transnational Family: Hema’s Story Hema, 54, had migrated with her family in 1986, leaving behind careers, a home and a sound economic base. She was unusual among the participants as she was keener on migrating than her husband. Hema’s son said his father had not reconciled to the absence from his family, particularly at times of illness and death. 114 S. SINGH

For Hema, communication between her and her family in India was fraught. These diffi culties of communication fl owed into Hema feeling she was not part of discussions of family money and inheritance. She did not publicly question that the family home was going to her brother. But she was hurt that in the discussions of inheritance, she was “not even in the picture.” Some of the miscommunication was because of distance and infrequent letters and calls. It was also because her father was the central communication point and he was ill. She says, “You telephone them, write letters and they say ‘Everything is OK’ and suddenly my father’s health was going downhill.” When she decided to go, her father was very ill. He died before she reached. “Everything was over. The funeral was over. I just saw his photo. I haven’t gotten over it.” She says her family could not understand why she was so upset. “My brothers and sisters were there and they saw my father going from good health to ill health … they knew that he would die very soon. … For me it was a complete shock.” They told her “We have lost our father too. Why are you carrying on about it? What’s the big fuss?” A couple of people there said “You weren’t really coming to see him. You were only on a trip.” Part of the lack of communication was that she was the one who had migrated. She had left and she was expected to call. She says,

When you move away … there also is a barrier created on that side as well. You are only a foreigner now … a guest now. … All the family who are living there, they become one group because they see each other on a day-to-day basis. … Although we are still very close, culturally it creates a gap … they are seven or eight of them, together, whereas I am the one who is outside. … So if you don’t call, you can just drift apart and … very often you don’t know what’s going on.

Her father used to write regularly, even though he wrote only fi ve or six lines. “He gave news of everyone, like ‘Your sister is there, your elder brother is there, and their family is OK.’ ” My youngest brother is not very good at letter writing, though his email has improved. She is making a greater effort to keep up with the communication and ensures she visits her mother every year. Her feeling that the communication goes one way was heightened when nobody from her family came to her son’s wedding. Hema recounts with a COMMUNICATION, MONEY AND THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY 115 sense of hurt that she sent her family three tickets to come to Melbourne for the wedding but no one came. She wanted at least one person from her family to come. Though they wanted to come, the paper work did not come through in time. So in the end they could not come. She says, “I got very annoyed with them, that they did not make a hard enough effort, that they did not do it in a timely manner.” She suspects her relationship with her family in India is coming apart. She says

It hurts emotionally in some ways when I am not taken into consideration, when things are happening there and I am completely outside. I only know a lot of things after the event. Like my niece got married recently … I only knew a week or so before.

PERSONAL COMMUNICATION IN A “CONNECTED” TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY New ICTs have transformed personal communication in the transnational family in the same way as they have driven and changed globalization. Five decades of migration from India to Australia show that both the early and recent migrants see families left behind as important reference points for their sense of identity and belonging. At the same time the simultaneity of transnational family life from the late-1990s makes it different from transnational family relations that went before. The “connected transnational family” results from the convergence of “migrant transnationalism and the explosion of communicative opportunities afforded by new media.” 17 The simultaneity of communication in a transnational family is not always welcome. Though mobile phones bridge some of the distance between migrant mothers and their children at home, research from the Philippines shows that this communication can also lead to rupture and confl ict. 18 In a different migration and economic context such as migration from Africa and the Caribbean, the mobile phone can be an instru- ment of harassment. It makes possible repeated calls for help from a wide range of kin, even though the migrant’s resources are inadequate. 19 This did happen with some of the early and recent migrants. As Ambika relates in Chap. 3 , when her husband’s cousins came to know he was thinking of selling his land in India, his cousins began calling after a long silence. Isher whose story is told below, says his younger brother also 116 S. SINGH called when he wanted money. However, the relative lack of drama in the case of the Indian migrants is because Indian migration to Australia has been a middle-class phenomenon. Moreover, the Indian migrants’ primary responsibility is restricted to the husband’s parents and at times siblings, rather than a range of bilateral kin.

Recent Migrants Choose Media for Personal Communication Recent migrants use a mix of communication media depending on its fi t with the relationship and kind of communication. As Poster writes, it is not just a matter of communicational effi ciency but also the confi guration of information, in the way the message is wrapped. Poster states “Changes in the confi guration or wrapping of language alters the way the subject processes signs into meanings.” 20 The communication between the recent migrants and the transnational family is initiated from both ends, particularly with the mobile phone. Often the children organize an Internet phone in the parents’ house, so that the calls go without the expense of international calls. One student- migrant talks of getting a one-dollar deal for a call to India, irrespective of the length of the call. Even when it is communication via the mobile or phone cards, it can be many times a day. Anita for instance speaks with her grandchildren in the USA four times a day. Indra—she is Ila’s mother in the story below—lives in the Delhi region with two grandchildren in Melbourne. She says “I do not feel the children and grandchildren are abroad. They call fi ve to seven times a day.” She shows me the photograph of her youngest grandchild on her mobile phone, explaining “You can only have one photograph there.” Cheaper travel is also making it possible for recent migrants to go home more frequently and for the parents to visit and see Australia for themselves. It fulfi lls the need for physical presence, of being in the same space. The mobile phone and Skype are good but not suffi cient. Visits are cherished as the glue that holds the family close. Despite the frequent use of a range of ICTs for personal communication within the transnational family, visits home remain precious. The sense of being in the same place at the same time, getting the feeling of what is said and what is not said, can make up for all the time apart. Intense periods of copresence can make virtual proximity meaningful. This is why travel remains central to mobility. 21 India was Australia’s tenth-largest market for inbound arrivals and total expenditure in 2012. 22 Care circulates more actively within the recent COMMUNICATION, MONEY AND THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY 117 transnational families, as grandparents help with the children either in India or in Australia. Two couples left their children with the grandparents at least temporarily. More often, as seen in Chap. 9 , it is the grandparents who fl y down to look after their grandchildren. It has become such an everyday happening that it is diffi cult to remember it did not happen in the 1970s and 1980s. Chand, 24, came as a student to Australia in 2007. I met Chand’s parents in the National Capital Region when Chand’s mother was preparing to go in a while to Melbourne with her niece. I met with Chand in Melbourne in early 2012, just after his mother’s visit. He says, “Seeing things in photographs is different. Hearing of things on the phone is different. … But unless and until you come here you don’t know. You come here, see for yourself, then you experience things.” When Chand’s mother saw he returned home from his hotel job at 1 am, she could understand the rhythm of his work. Chand says, “She saw that it was pretty OK.” She could see that hospitality was a valued career. She saw the patterns of a long-term casual job and recognized he has developed an independence he would not have had in India. He also wanted her to see for herself why he has decided to stay in Australia if his application for PR is approved. This is important for he is planning on asking his parents to stay with him once his mother retires in a couple of years. Recent migrants who came after the mid-1990s do not speak of writing letters on an everyday basis. Communication remains mediated. The mobile phone enables recent migrants to be part of the small talk of everyday family life across borders particularly with parents. Myriad acts of communication in families living together go unnoticed. But at a distance, and perhaps more particularly across national borders, the frequent mobile phone calls approximate the casualness and detail of family conversation. It is as if the frequency and length of the calls compensate for the lack of face-to-face communication. Chand’s father says the mother and son talk for hours. She remonstrates at that. But the father says there is more conversation now that the son is far away. He is their only son, their only child. Dade calls the simultaneity and frequency afforded by mobile communication a new type of “‘hyperconnectivity’ between migrants and their home communities.” 23 Skype is used for group family conversations, as seen in Lakshman’s story below. Participants mention Facebook and Orkut as channels for keeping in touch with a wider range of cousins and friends. But my data 118 S. SINGH differ from other studies that show international students using social media with family and friends. 24 In my sample, student participants used the mobile phone and Skype with parents. There was a need for synchro- nous conversation. The choice of ICTs also refl ected parents’ easier access to the mobile phone, a lack of media literacy relating to email and social media and perhaps the preference for the mother tongue to English on both sides. In the study, only Niranjan, 91, spoke of using email to communicate with family. This was in addition to the phone. Indian students are perhaps different from the more varied sample of international students, as many of them have come with insuffi cient English. They are also from regional cities or urban villages as well as metropolitan cities. A majority in 2010 were enrolled in private institutes for vocational education rather than in universities for graduate studies. So access and media literacy continue to frame the choices of media, particularly when speaking with parents. Among the student participants, the mobile phone coupled with email and social media are used to communicate with siblings. Social media is used more to communicate with distant family members like cousins and with friends. This is when communication is occasional rather than routine and regular.

Early Migrants Also Use the New ICTs After the 1990s, the mobile phone, cheaper long-distance call rates, telephone cards and the Internet changed the frequency and quality of communication with the transnational family for both the early and recent migrants. Niranjan, 91, says now he telephones his children and grandchildren at least once a week, or at least 4–5 times a month. He says, “All the discussion is on the telephone. Telephone is the major source of communication and comfort here and in India, Canada, England and US.” As he is comfortable with email, that is an additional channel of communication. He continues to visit India, and his children in India also visit Australia. Niranjan talks also of visiting his grandchildren overseas. Anita like many other grandparents has become adept at using the webcam. 25 This is because her eldest daughter is married and lives in the USA. Her grandchildren are also there. Anita and Anand take turns to help their daughter with child care, with each of them taking turns to go COMMUNICATION, MONEY AND THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY 119 to the USA for two months. Once a year their daughter and her children visit Australia. Anita talks to her daughter and grandson three times a day. “We know exactly what she had, what she did from morning to evening.” Sometimes her grandson rings her at 1.30 am and says “Amma , I am having ice cream for breakfast.” She laughs and says she sees him every day on the webcam. Two or three times a month, she talks to her sisters in the USA. “Hours we talk together…” she says.

THE USE OF THE NEW ICTS REPLICATES COMMUNICATION PATTERNS IN THE FAMILY New communication technologies continue established patterns of face- to-face communication. The gender patterns remain the same; Chand, 24, a student who came to Australia in 2007, phones his family every two or three days. When I met his father in India, he said “If he does not phone for two or three days, his mother will get disturbed. So I will just send him an SMS ‘Call your mother, if possible.’” As detailed in Chap. 5 , Chand’s parents have supported his education in Australia. Lakshman and Jasbir’s stories below show that the mobile phone and Skype reaffi rm established communication practices and rituals. The Skype call on Sundays for Lakshman and his family recreates the family meeting together in the living room, with perhaps the younger brother sitting on the swing. The brothers continue to talk at night. And as before, the family decides most things through discussion. In Jasbir and Jasmine’s story, the mobile phone reinforces the communication between the mother and sons. Jasmine’s daughter-in-law also uses the morning mobile call to ritually greet her mother-in-law, as she would have if they were living together in a joint family. In both cases, the families in India have supported their children’s education in Australia. Lakshman and Jasbir know their parents also stand ready to help with housing and settlement expenses, though as yet, their parents’ help has not been needed. Jasbir is actively preparing for his parents to stay with him. And Lakshman knows that if needed he will be there for his family in India. Their parents designed their new houses ensuring their sons in Melbourne have a space and place in their family’s home in India. 120 S. SINGH

Lakshman and the Family Skype Every Sunday It is after 9 pm when I meet with Lakshman’s family in their large home with cavernous spaces in a major city in Punjab. Lakshman, 30, went to study in a university in Australia in 2005 and is now married and lives in Melbourne. This is the fi rst of my two visits in 2014. The house is so new that they are still fi xing the name of Lakshman’s grandfather on the signboard outside. His grandfather laid its foundation stone before he died 15 years ago. He remains a potent presence in our conversation and in the house. Lakshman’s mother, Lalita, takes me to the prayer room toward the front of the house where she worships and bathes the gods fi rst thing in the morning. In the prayer room is a photograph of her father-in-law who remains a revered elder. Lalita serves a snack of pasta as her husband Lalit speaks. He is at the center of the household and the family business that goes back 120 years to his great-great-grandfather. Lalit in his mid to late 50s says more than once that the essence of family harmony is mutual support and understanding, decision by consensus and intense interaction. In 2011 when Lakshman and his wife bought their house in Melbourne, they discussed the plans together with the family over Skype. They did the same thing when his parents were building the family home. Lakh, the younger brother who is also in the family business, says, “We Skype a lot on Sunday. … We interact as a family. Lakshman tells—‘Today we made chicken.’ From childhood, at night we talked together. It is still the same. The difference is that he is far away.” They talk daily, but the long conversation is on Sunday with the whole family gathered in the living room where I am sitting. The speaker is on, as is the laptop. The mike is open so that everybody knows what is being said. “Hundred percent input,” Lalit says. The family in India and Melbourne are involved together in family decisions. Lalit says,

We trace out every problem. Lakshman’s wife got a job and my son used to drop her on the way to his work. I told him, “Get a car for your wife.” … My children are obedient. They listen to me, or I agree. It is mutual. Lakshman will telephone me asking, What shall we do with this problem? We will discuss the problem, even with the daughter-in-law. It is mutual understanding. COMMUNICATION, MONEY AND THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY 121

Lalit says the conversation with his son in Melbourne covers work, dinner, what he has made, what vegetables, the guest list for the party.

If he goes out of Melbourne for two days we know. We know if he is away three days in Perth, what time his fl ight is. We call our daughter-in-law four times during that time. This is family attachment and interaction. She knows she has our moral support. She likes it that she is part of the discussion. If parents want support, then they have to support the children.

I meet them the second time when Lakshman and his wife come back to India for a visit. The family again gathers in the main living area. The mother sits on a sofa with her third son who is the youngest. The second son, Lakh, and his wife are on an upholstered swing. I am on a sofa on the other side and Lalit moves there to see what I am typing into the laptop. Lakshman and his wife sit on the sofa to the left of me. On the fi rst fl oor along the rim of the living room are sets of rooms, one for each son. Lakshman and his wife are to decorate their own set. It is a repeat of the scene of the fi rst interview, except that this time the family is complete. Lakh’s baby is asleep in the downstairs bedroom. Again it is this nearly unbelievable story of a harmonious family, communicative, understanding. The sons talk admiringly of their father. The father speaks more than once about what makes for this harmony. The interview nearly comes unstuck as Lakshman and I move from Hindi to English. It is mainly when he is speaking of his experience in Melbourne and how much his family values have guided him, giving a bow in his father’s direction. At this I laugh and say “You are talking to your father.” Lalit asks why we are all laughing for he and Lalita have not been able to follow us as we speak in rapid English. We move back to Hindi. Lalit talks of how the communication is intense and inclusive between him and Lakshman. “Every decision he takes involves me.” Lakshman says they saw most of the display homes together on Skype. “It looked as if we were sitting together.” His mother says Lakshman wanted to know everything when they were building this new house, even if a new screw had been put in. He wanted to be part of the house. Lalit adds, “The house, the décor, all involved him and my daughter-in-law.” Lakshman and his wife were intimately involved in the pre-wedding ceremonies for Lakh. Lalit says, 122 S. SINGH

When Lakh’s shagan (the ritual betrothal) was to take place, I asked my daughter-in-law, “What kind of dress is suitable for the bride?” She suggested a Barbie doll dress. “What color?” “Orange is the latest fashion, Papa.” And so it was.

At the engagement held two or three days after the shagan ceremony where the families exchange gifts, Lakshman and his wife could not be present. So the family put the whole ceremony on air. The Internet failed for a while inside the room, and they waited for the Internet to come on. Lakshman and his wife said, “Papa, we will not show ourselves, for we will be in bed.” But they could see the ceremony, the guests. They kept giving suggestions as to whether the shoulder needs adjusting, which fl ower needs to be removed, so that the photograph is better. Lalit says

When we were going to my daughter-in-law’s parents’ side, we asked what we should wear. “What sari? Suit?” “Send a photo,” she said. So before we went, we sent her a photo.

Lakshman leans back, looks at the family gathered together and says, “It is different when you come back. You can feel, touch. With Skype you aren’t in the midst of things. You like it when you come. I always cherish it. It is defi nitely a holiday to look forward to.”

“Shall I Put in a Teaspoon of Turmeric in the Dal?” Jasmine, in her late 50s, has both her children in Melbourne. Sitting in her home in a large city in Punjab, she revels in their continued closeness. They talk every day of the minutiae of their lives. She calls her son to tell him about the study and that I am in the family home. When her son Jasbir in Melbourne calls back, Jasmine asks, “Have you eaten?” Jasbir, 31, is her eldest son. He went to Australia and began his graduate degree in business at a university in 2003. He migrated because he could not get into a good university in India. One of his friends was already in Melbourne and suggested he come over. Jasbir began working at a petrol station ten days after he arrived. After his degree, he got a job in fi nance. In two years he had his PR. There was independence, but there was also fi nancial responsibility and a respect for money. He was able to pay most of the second semester’s fees and expenses. COMMUNICATION, MONEY AND THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY 123

The younger brother followed in 2007, but on the advice of his brother, came as a skilled migrant. He worked in a fi nance company soon after he arrived and now works for himself. The sons talk to their mother mainly on the Internet phone. She says,

Daily, daily, they call. Every day, my daughter-in-law calls me in the morning at 8.30 my time, to wish me good morning. My eldest son calls me at night. And my younger son calls me in between. So I speak to my family at least three times a day. And I see them once every three or four months. My youngest son is coming this March. Then my husband and I will go to Melbourne in May – June when it can get up to 49 degrees Celsius in Punjab. We will be there for the housewarming. My husband will stay for a month, a month and a half. I will stay on for three months. Then my eldest son and daughter-in-law will come next year.

We are sitting in the new house she and her husband built before she took voluntary retirement as a government offi cer, so that she could visit her children whenever she wanted. This is in a metropolitan city in Punjab. It is afternoon and the winter sun is shining on the small balcony in the front with pots spilling all over it. There is a carpet with a modern abstract design in the living room, brown and beige curtains, a mural on the wall, an embossed lounge set and statues placed in different parts of the room. There are three bedrooms with attached bathrooms. Though the sons are in Melbourne, their rooms remain waiting for them to come. They talk of the everyday things. Once, she says, her daughter-in-law rang up to ask “Mama, shall I put in a teaspoon of turmeric in the dal?” Both keep talking while the daughter-in-law is cooking.

If my son calls and says he has hay fever, I tell him “Have tea with brown cardamom.” If he has a cold, I tell him “Make a gruel with pea fl our and sugar and have that.” They too ask “Have you had your six monthly check- up? Do you go for your regular walk? It is good you are going to the gym, but you must have a proper diet, you must eat healthy food.” Then they say, “Don’t give Papa paranthas . Eat fruit. Travel. Keep yourself entertained.”

They talk of their common love of gardens. Jasmine says,

[Even in their rented home] my son has planted a vegetable garden. He will call and say, “There are fl owers on the chillie plants.” He has planted 124 S. SINGH

tomatoes and brinjal. I tell him “Plant some coriander and mint. The more you cut, the more they will grow.”

There appears to be a copresence to their communication, even though they live across borders. When I ask how she copes with the separation, she says, “There is no difference.” Then, she says, “Sometimes I remember the children a lot. I want to reach out and go there immediately. It is part of being a mother. But then my children say, ‘We see you every two to three months.’” Jasbir in Melbourne also says phone conversations are not enough. They have been able to be together at all the important moments in their lives. They plan to attend their father’s retirement party. It is a caring relationship with his parents, and they talk every day. “But to be able to be close to someone, I need to see them, I need to stay with them. I need to be with them personally and physically.” The phone rings. Jasbir says, “I will take this call, I think this is Mom calling.”

COMMUNICATION SHAPES THE VALUE OF TRANSNATIONAL MONEY 26 This study of Indian migration to Australia over fi ve decades shows that the meanings and perceived value of transnational money are shaped by the quality, frequency and intensity of communication in the transnational family. This is because both money and communication are media of relationship and care. They are relational media within transnational family “circuits” as the transnational family in actively defi ned by the people who are part of it. 27 Moreover, money’s persuasive power lies in its ability to synthesize the content of communication and how it is communicated. Money is a “memory bank” storing individual and collective memory. 28 The distinction between the medium of communication and money becomes particularly fuzzy with mobile money, that is, money sent and received via the mobile phone without a bank in the middle. Money becomes communication. I write of this in greater detail in the last section. Placing the data relating to the early migrants (late 1960s to 1995) and recent migrants (1996 to the present) side by side reveals that money without satisfactory communication with members of the transnational family reduces the perceived value of money received. On the other hand, COMMUNICATION, MONEY AND THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY 125 money with caring communication infl ates the perceived quantum of money received. And money without communication negates the value of money. With mobile money, as seen in the last section, there is no money without communication as mobile communication precedes and succeeds the sending of money. The relationship between communication and the value of money blurs the distinction of the quantity and the quality approaches to money. It also makes the systems of calculation a matter of investigation, rather than deriving from number alone. Moreover it shows that often the value of money is a matter of approximation and interpretation rather than calculation. 29 The intersections between money, communication and care have been little theorized. There is increasing literature on how the new ICTs and money shape each other through the greater use of digital networks. But there is little work on how the quality and intensity of communication changes the valuation of money. Most of the literature deals with the increased use of the digital medium, the role of mobile money in fi nancial inclusion and the emergence of new kinds of alternate digital monies. Mobile money like M-Pesa has become a new kind of money mediating relationships because it is instantaneous and interpersonal. 30 There is also important work on how the new ICTs are changing personal communication in the transnational family. Much of it argues that we need to study the use of the new ICTs within the routines of the transnational family, and see how it has changed family practices. 31 ICTs shape and are shaped by social life. The literature on the domestication of ICTs is the context for many of our approaches to studying their use in family life. We also now accept that people use multiple old and new media for communicating with different audiences. 32 The literature that is closest to the interconnections between money, communication and care deals with the quality of the quantity of money, pricing, money as a social payment and the ambiguity of number. Simmel belonged to the school that saw money as homogeneous. Quantity was its distinguishing feature. However “money that exceeds a certain quantity changes its qualitative characteristics.” 33 Viviana Zelizer, however, found that sometimes no amount of money could compensate for the loss of a child. Only a token sum of money, the “franc symbolique” could be acceptable. 34 The sociological literature on pricing deals with the way prices are infl uenced by social and political forces operating in market 126 S. SINGH fi elds. 35 Wherry turns the focus on how individuals are socially characterized with reference to the prices they pay. 36 The discussion of pricing is set within the context of money as a medium of exchange. But following Maurer, if we shift emphasis from market exchange to payments, then the approximation and interpretation of number becomes more important than calculation. 37 A focus on the “rails” of payment, that is how we pay, shows how payments other than cash and check (and in Australia direct bank transfers) attract a toll. 38 That is we have to pay in order to use forms of payment such as credit and debit cards, PayPal and M-Pesa. They extract a toll we do not pay for cash, checks and bank transfers. These providers of the new payments are “money shippers” 39 extracting a fee like money transfer organizations (MTOs) like Western Union and MoneyGram. I build on these literatures to analyze stories of fi ve decades of Indian migration to Australia to show how personal communication using the new ICTs changes the valuation of transnational money.

Early Migrants: Patchy Communication Means Money Sent Counts for Less The transnational family was important for early migrants, even though as shown above, communication was one way and slow and visits were infrequent. On visits back to India I remember feeling as if the relationships were frozen. Family members often related to me as I used to be before I migrated and set up home overseas. I too had diffi culty seeing how their lives had changed. It was as if we kept going along old grooves. The image that came to me was of a bullock going round and round pulling the stone grinder as the wheat was being ground. When family began visiting me in my new setting they could see for themselves the framework of my life and relationships. I did not have to explain myself. The questions we asked changed, as did the stories we told. As described in Chap. 3 , it was diffi cult for the transnational family to understand the diffi culties and expenditure of settlement and the sacrifi ces entailed in sending money home. Family members in the home country often felt money was easy to earn. The Australian dollar was worth multiples of the Indian rupee. Migrants also did not fully understand or share the diffi culties of physical care-giving. The circulation of care thus was stymied both by the one-way fl ow of communication and money. COMMUNICATION, MONEY AND THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY 127

As discussed in Chap. 3 , there were resulting ambiguities and tensions in the sending and receiving of money. The dollar received was worth less than the dollar sent. Money sent home counted for less when it was weighed against physical care-giving. That was the standard of interpretation and approximation. This valuation of money sent home extended to the symbolic sphere of belonging to the family. It was not unusual for migrants to be excluded when it came to inheritance. Some migrant men who had sent money home were not considered when family property was divided up as seen in Chap. 3 . Women often gave up their inheritance in favor of their brothers. This was described in Chap. 4 .

Recent Migrants: Money Infl ates in Value with Frequent and Caring Communication Money and communication differ signifi cantly among the recent migrants. As seen above, communication is frequent, instantaneous and routine. Visits go both ways. Money also goes two ways as seen in Chap. 5 . The two-way fl ow of communication by itself does not correspond with the two-way fl ow of money. Money fl ows are also a result of the parents’ greater capacity and ability to send money and the students’ need for money. But the perception of the value of the money sent and received changes with the two-way communication of care. Among the recent migrants, money as a medium of care was celebrated on both sides as seen in Chap. 5 . The instantaneous and frequent communication supplemented by visits meant children realized that parents were divesting themselves of savings and retirement security in order to fund the children’s education. Parents also saw that money sent home was coming through their children’s hard work and sacrifi ce. It is this hard work and sacrifi ce on both sides that becomes the measure for the approximation of value. Then a dollar received on both sides is infl ated with care to mean more than the dollar sent. Everyday communication reveals needs that had remained unspoken. Charandeep’s story in Chap. 5 shows how his mother gauged his need for a car when he told her he had to stay with friends as his factory shift fi n- ished after the last train. He mentioned he had slept after drinking a glass of milk. His mother told her husband they needed to send him money for a second-hand car. When parents do not need money, as with Dharma, Lakshman and Jasbir, the children give sizeable presents. Sometimes, as with Akash and 128 S. SINGH

Charandeep, 34, the children give both money and presents. Akash was having a new house built for his parents, as well as sending them money. Charandeep sent money and bought his father a car. Lakshman bought a new fridge for his parents’ new home. His mother showed it to me saying Lakshman wanted to be part of the home. Jasbir and his brother gave their parents a new washing machine and their mother a diamond ring for a special birthday. In Indian middle-income families of the migrants, there is grace in giving without being asked, particularly when the giving is across generations. With Akash’s parents there is a patent “need” for money. But as detailed in Chap. 5 , his parents did not ask for support. They say “Whatever is there in India is all yours. We have a house....” The children judge what is needed and enjoyed. After they give the fridge or the washing machine, it is accepted as the fulfi llment of need. This is different from the remittance on demand by people of the same generation, seen in Kenya, Somalia and the Dinkas of Sudan. 40 This giving of “stuff,” as with remittances, goes hand in hand with communication. 41 It is not subject to the calculability of the shagun. “Stuff” like money displays the fulfi llment of care and duty expected of the children, particularly the sons. It lubricates a continuing circulation of care. Jasbir’s mother keeps asking her son if he needs money for the house he is building. Jasbir says so far he has been able to manage, but if he needs help, he will ask his parents and his brother. Jasmine, his mother, is however making the curtains for the house in Melbourne. The last time she was in Melbourne they worked out the measurements and the colors.

Money Means Little Without Communication Sending money with no communication reduces its value. Instead of being the currency of care, it becomes a currency of alienation. Toni Morrison writes of two families in the USA, where estranged children send money to their mothers. One of the mothers says

… our relationship is down to her sending me money. I have to say I’m grateful for the cash. ... But I’m not fooled. I know the money she sends is a way to stay away and quiet down the little bit of conscience she’s got left. 42

So the morals of family care are ticked off, but money becomes a medium of alienation rather than care. As Viviana Zelizer says, COMMUNICATION, MONEY AND THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY 129

Money here still does relational work but one of distancing rather than connecting. That does not surprise me, but would be great to have more discussion and information on when and why and among which kinds of relations money works this way. 43

In the transnational family sample, Isher’s story is one of money signal- ing the distancing of relationship, rather than being a currency of care. Moving to Melbourne was a way of putting distance between the young skilled migrant and his toxic relationship with his natal joint family. When I met Isher and Ila in their home in Melbourne in 2012, Isher was 37 and Ila was 36. Isher came as a skilled migrant from the National Capital Region in 2003. The relationship between Isher and his natal joint family had begun to dissolve when he decided to get married. He still doesn’t understand how a loving, giving relationship disintegrated into one where he was no longer welcome in his mother’s house. Ila says money was at the center of the change in the relationship. She says, “When he was a bachelor … he used to give a major share of his income to his mother and for the house.” He had their house repaired, helped with his elder brother’s wedding. His sister-in-law worried that with his marriage to any girl, his contributions and their luxuries would stop. Isher thinks much of his mother’s negativity is because she feels bound to the eldest son, though he contributes little to the household. She cannot contemplate living in a house without him. Isher’s hurt is palpable. His mother did not help him shop for the ritual give and take of his wedding. His brother said he had no money to contribute. His extended kin said hurtful things. His mother did not call them home for their fi rst Dipavali, their fi rst Vaisakhi (the New Year). Isher had a high fever and went to his mother’s house, but she said she was going to a family wedding to which Isher and Ila had not been invited. “That was the turning point for me,” Isher says. It got worse. When his late father’s property was sold, he received nothing. His mother declared she had two sons instead of three. After a few years of struggle in Melbourne, Isher and Ila are doing well. They no longer need the fi nancial support that Ila’s parents initially provided. They bought their own house in 2009 and are looking to more investment in Australia. They invited Isher’s mother to Melbourne, paid her fare and expenses and sent her back with gifts. But without communication and care, there remains a chill on both sides. Isher and Ila are still not invited to his mother’s house. When she comes to visit them in Ila’s 130 S. SINGH parents’ place in India, she stays for a while and then returns. Isher sends his mother small amounts of money because his wife and mother-in-law think it is the proper thing to do. When Ila goes to India she gives some money to her mother-in-law. But the caring in the relationship stopped nine years ago. Money can also signal the end of a relationship as in Mary Gordon’s Final Payments. This is a story of Isabel, her father and the housekeeper. After Isabel’s mother died, a housekeeper, Margaret looked after them for 11 years. She was joyless and unlovable and harbored a wish to marry Isabel’s father. Isabel at 13 sacked her, with her father being complicit. It is Isabel who then looks after her father when he is ill. After her father dies Margaret insinuates that Isabel owes her and that her father kept sending her monthly payments. But for Isabel, Margaret stands for all that is unlovable. However a relationship crisis makes Isabel want to sacrifi ce herself so that she can again believe she is a good person. She goes to live with Margaret to look after her in her old age. As Isabel feels life seeping out of her, she decides she owes Margaret money for the years she worked for the family, but not her life. Isabel says,

I left on the table in front of Margaret a check for $20,000. It was all the money I had in the world. But I was free of Margaret now, and I felt weight- less. ... She let me walk away, as if she could not see me. There was nothing left between us. Margaret could not touch me now. 44

From this low point in money and communication, I go forward to describing how the medium of the mobile and money are melding with mobile money.

MONEY GOES MOBILE The sending of money to India was clunky in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. When I used to send money to my mother in the 1980s, I had a standing instruction fi rst with Citibank and then with ANZ bank. It was unsatisfactory and sometimes the money did not reach Dharamshala. Despite discussions with each bank, I then sent it every month by bank draft and paid the hefty fees. My mother had to deposit the bank draft in her account and it took a month for the money to come via a correspondent bank into her account. COMMUNICATION, MONEY AND THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY 131

Bank transfers remain the most expensive ways to send money from Australia to India, the average cost being 7.05 percent for sending $500. Of this, 3.3 percent is the exchange rate margin. 45 But even today, Dharamshala does not have branches of international banks. So for community donations or payments, I still have to post a local check which goes through the correspondent banking channel. The seamless way of giving my mother an ATM card to a joint account was not an option. Though we had a joint account, there were no ATMs in Dharamshala till 2005, nine years after her death. There were also no MTOs like Western Union operating in the mid-1990s in this small town. The expense, time and diffi culty of sending money meant that early migrants often arranged for money to be sent from India from deposits or revenue in India. Taking money by hand remains popular for Australian laws permit taking out $10,000 when going overseas. Recent migrants continue to take money by hand. It allows them fl exibility to earmark the money according to recipient, purpose and form. They can give money privately to their mothers so that the mother can control it. It also enables them to personally hand over different amounts to kin according to their relationship and donate to community. International remittances between India and Australia have also become electronic. ATMs, direct transfers and plastic cards are the electronic facili- tators to transferring money to parents if they have bank accounts. But often the electronic channel is in the background for the MTO option is affordable and ensures that the money reaches instantly or within a day, reaching family that may not have a bank account or is in a rural area. Harbans, in his mid-20s or early 30s, came as a student in 2003. He is now a partner in a grocery shop which also offers money transfers via MTOs like Western Union and MoneyGram. It brings the shop new customers and some MTOs give them 15 percent as the fee. In November 2011, he says that the people who send money to India through his grocery shop are the recent migrants who come from villages. Every day $5000–$10,000 is being sent divided across some 20 transactions amount- ing to $200–$250 each. The revolution of mobile money, that is, money transferred from mobile to mobile without a bank account, that has taken place in sub- Saharan Africa is still nascent in India. The scene is changing fast, but international mobile remittances in 2015 are still in the future. It is only recently that mobile regional and international remittances in sub-Saharan Africa have become possible as money network operators partner with 132 S. SINGH banks or MTOs. 46 But M-Pesa, which began in 2007 in Kenya and has become part of everyday life, illustrates how mobile money further melds communication and money. A recent study of M-Pesa shows that mobile money follows the norms of communication rather than banking. Mobile remittances are most com- fortably sent to siblings, matrikin or intimate friends, people with whom communication is comfortable. Mobile money is seldom sent to affi nal relatives, for it is not seen as proper to text parents-in-law.

It is more profi tably understood not as “banking” but as an adjunct to the mobile phone. Sending and receiving money is closely connected to the practice of speaking or texting, and transfers almost always follow a call, text or fl ash (intentional missed call, where the caller hangs up after allowing several ringtones) between the two parties. Mobile money and airtime transactions are a form of social contact that follows the etiquette of mobile phone use. 47

Mobile money in Kenya has also made possible a private and at times secret distribution of matrilineal money within a dominantly patrilineal kinship system. The main resources like land and the major parts of a family’s income remains in male hands. But women are able to attract small amounts of remittances from a large number of children, siblings and other matrikin. 48 This is based on traditional patterns of matrikin support particularly when affi nal relationships and the marriage itself are in trouble. In Papua New Guinea, even without mobile money women often send wantok money, that is, money sent to people connected to them by kinship or place. As in the Kenya study, women in Papua New Guinea control small and at times secret stashes of money from gardening and marketing. 49 Matrilineal kin also have a special place of love and caring in the patrilineal kinship system in North India. Matrilineal kin are indulgent and this expresses itself in gifts on special occasions and life-stage events. Women have a cherished place in the homes of their matrikin when they go for (short) visits. But without mobile money, this gift giving and contribution to the woman’s welfare is sporadic and happens when they meet face-to- face or at special celebrations. This is why migrants take cash with them, so they can hand it privately to their mothers. In this chapter, drawing on the data relating to early and recent migrants, I have shown there is a relationship between the quality, intensity and COMMUNICATION, MONEY AND THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY 133 medium of communication on the one hand and the fl ow and perceived value of money on the other. This is because both communication and money are relational media of care. Communication is particularly important to the way transnational money is valued, because caring in a transnational family has to be displayed rather than imputed from everyday behavior. This connection between communication and money becomes even more fi rm with mobile money as the frequency and instantaneity of communication is replicated in remittances. In the next two chapters, I consider the differences and continuities in the migration experiences of early and recent migrants.

NOTES 1. The importance of displaying family relationships is clear in Finch, “Displaying Families.” 2. Air letters or aerograms still exist in Australia. They are a fl at rate cheaper airmail letter sealed on the sides to make a letter and envelope in one. In 1993, for instance, there was a colorful picture of Sydney Harbor on the left with a postage paid stamp worth 75 cents on the right. In November 2006 the Christmas aerogram cost $1.00. See “Listing of Australian Non- Denominated and Flat Rate Postal Stationery,” The Postal Stationery Society of Australia, www.postalstationeryaustralia.com/CATALOGUE07. pdf . 3. Ryan, Klekowski Von Koppenfels, and Mulholland, “‘The Distance between Us’: A Comparative Examination of the Technical, Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of the Transnational Social Relationships of Highly Skilled Migrants.”; R. Wilding, “‘Virtual’ Intimacies? Families Communicating across Transnational Contexts,” ibid. 6(2006). 4. Stefana Broadbent, “Approaches to Personal Communication,” in Digital Anthropology , ed. Heather A. Horst and Daniel Miller (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013). Daniel Miller and Jolynna Sinanan, Webcam (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2014). 5. Steven Vertovec, “Cheap Calls: The Social Glue of Migrant Transnationalism,” Global Networks 4, no. 2 (2004). 6. Daniel Miller and Heather A. Horst, “The Digital and the Human: A Prospectus for Digital Anthropology,” in Digital Anthropology , ed. Heather A. Horst and Daniel Miller (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013). 7. Sandra M. Gifford and Raelene Wilding, “Digital Escapes? Icts, Settlement and Belonging among Karen Youth in Melbourne, Australia,” Journal of Refugee Studies 26, no. 4 (2013). 134 S. SINGH

8. Mirca Madianou, “Migration and the Accentuated Ambivalence of Motherhood: The Role of Icts in Filipino Transnational Families,” Global Networks 12, no. 3 (2012). Loretta Baldassar, “Transnational Families and the Provision of Moral and Emotional Support: The Relationship between Truth and Distance,” Identities : Global Studies in Culture and Power 14(2007). 9. Mirca Madianou and Daniel Miller, Migration and New Media : Transnational Families and Polymedia (New York: Routledge, 2012). 10. Isak Dinesen, Letters from Africa , 1914–1931 , trans. Anne Born, First ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 11. Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake (London: Flamingo, 2003). 12. The Lowland : A Novel (Noida, UP: Random House India, 2013). p. 63. 13. Personal communication, 18 August 2015 with Murray Rasmussen, Secretary, Victorian Telecommunications Museum, Telstra Museum, Hawthorn, Vic. He was citing the rates from International Calls, p. 16, from the 1975 Melbourne White Page Directory. 14. Personal communication, Murray Rasmussen. 15. Mahler, “Transnational Relationships: The Struggle to Communicate across Borders.” 16. Baldassar, “Transnational Families and Aged Care: The Mobility of Care and the Migrancy of Ageing.” 17. Madianou and Miller, Migration and New Media : Transnational Families and Polymedia . p. 1. 18. Ibid. 19. Horst, “The Blessings and Burdens of Communication: Cell Phones in Jamaican Transnational Social Fields.”; Lindley, “The Early- Morning Phonecall: Remittances from a Refugee Diaspora Perspective.” 20. Mark Poster, The Mode of Information : Postructuralism and Social Context (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990). p. 11. 21. John Urry, “Mobility and Proximity,” Sociology 36, no. 2 (2002); Baldassar, Visits Home : Migration Experiences between Italy and Australia . “Transnational Families and Aged Care: The Mobility of Care and the Migrancy of Ageing.” “Transnational Families and the Provision of Moral and Emotional Support: The Relationship between Truth and Distance.” 22. Tourism Australia, “India Market Profi le,” http://www.tourism.australia. com/documents/markets/mp-2013_ind-web.pdf . 23. Carlo Dade, “Transnationalism, Foreign Assistance, Domestic Communities: New Opportunities and New Challenges for Canada and the United States” Focal Point , no. March (2004). (p. 1). 24. Catherine Gomes et al., “Home Away from Home: International Students and Their Identity-Based Social Networks in Australia,” Journal of International Students 4, no. 1 (2014). Their sample of international stu- COMMUNICATION, MONEY AND THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY 135

dents covered students in vocational education, undergraduate and post- graduate studies. The students were from Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. However, no Indian students were included. 25. Miller and Sinanan, Webcam . 26. I am indebted to Viviana Zelizer, Bill Maurer, Keith Hart, Heather Horst and Raelene Wilding for discussion of this section. 27. Viviana Zelizer, “How I Became a Relational Economic Sociologist and What Does That Mean,” Center for the Study of Social Organization, http://www.princeton.edu/csso/working-papers/WP5.pdf . 28. Keith Hart, “The Persuasive Power of Money,” in Economic Persuasions , ed. Stephen Gudeman (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009); Money in an Unequal World : Keith Hart and His Memory Bank (New York: Texere, 2001). 29. I am drawing on Nigel Dodd, The Social Life of Money (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014); Bill Maurer, “Incalculable Payments: Money, Scale, and the South African Offshore Grey Money Amnesty,” African Studies Review 50, no. 2 (2007); Jane I. Guyer, Marginal Gains : Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 30. See Singh, Globalizatiion and Money : A Global South Perspective ; Bill Maurer, Taylor C. Nelms, and Stephen C. Rea, “‘Bridges to Cash’: Channelling Agency in Mobile Money,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute N.S., no. 19 (2013). Maurer, “Mobile Money: Communication, Consumption and Change in the Payments Space.”; S. Singh, “Impersonalisation of Electronic Money: Implications for Bank Marketing,” The International Journal of Bank Marketing 22, no. 7 (2004); Dodd, The Social Life of Money . 31. See Horst, “The Blessings and Burdens of Communication: Cell Phones in Jamaican Transnational Social Fields.”; R. Wilding, “‘Virtual’ Intimacies? Families Communicating across Transnational Contexts,” ibid.; ibid.; Baldassar, Baldock, and Wilding, Families Caring across Borders : Migration , Ageing and Transnational Caregiving . 32. See Sonia Livingstone, “New Media, New Audiences?,” New Media & Society 1, no. 1 (1999); Roger Silverstone and Leslie Haddon, “Design and Domestication of Information and Communication Technologies: Technical Change and Everyday Life,” in Communication by Design : The Politics of Information and Communication Technologies , ed. Robin Mansell and Roger Silverston (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); David Morley and Roger Silverstone, “Domestic Communication— Technologies and Meanings,” Media , Culture and Society 12(1990); Leslie Haddon and Roger Silverstone, “Information and Communication 136 S. SINGH

Technologies and the Young Elderly,” in SPRU / CICT Report Series (Farmer: University of Sussex, 1996); John Seely Brown and Paul. Duguid, The Social Life of Information (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000); Daniel Miller and Don Slater, The Internet : An Ethnographic Approach (Oxford: Berg, 2000); Miller and Horst, “The Digital and the Human: A Prospectus for Digital Anthropology.”; Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman, eds., The Social Shaping of Technology , Second ed. (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999); Broadbent, “Approaches to Personal Communication.” 33. Simmel, The Philosophy of Money , p. 387. 34. Viviana A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child : The Changing Social Value of Children (New York: Basic Books, 1985). p. 163. 35. Jens Beckert, “Where Do Prices Come From? Sociological Approaches to Price Formation,” Socio-Economic Review 9, no. 4 (2011). 36. Frederick F. Wherry, “The Social Characterizations of Price: The Fool, the Faithful, the Frivolous, and the Frugal,” Sociological Theory 26, no. 4 (2008). 37. Maurer, “Incalculable Payments: Money, Scale, and the South African Offshore Grey Money Amnesty.” 38. “Payment: Forms and Functions of Value Transfer in Contemporary Society,” Cambridge Anthropology 30, no. 2 (2012). 39. Bill Maurer, Taylor C. Nelms, and Lana Swartz, “‘When Perhaps the Real Problem Is Money Itself!’: The Practical Materiality of Bitcoin,” Social Semiotics (2013). They use the term “money shippers” citing Lyons, D. “Virtual Currency Bitcoin: Anonymous Web Shopping.” Newsweek , June 19 2011. 40. Akuei, “Remittances as Unforeseen Burdens: The Livelihoods and Social Obligations of Sudanese Refugees.” Lindley, “The Early- Morning Phonecall: Remittances from a Refugee Diaspora Perspective”. 41. Miller, Stuff . 42. Toni Morrison, God Help the Child (London: Chatto & Windus, 2015). p. 177. 43. Personal communication, Viviana Zelizer, 11 July 2015. 44. Mary Gordon, Final Payments , June 2006 edition ed. (New York: Anchor Books, 1978). p. 296. 45. SendMoneyAsia, “Comparison Results,” http://www.sendmoneyasia.org/ compare-costs-send-money-australia-china-india-indonesia-philippines- vietnam/list/1/australia-to-india-500.html . Accessed 13 August 2015. 46. MARK, “M-Pesa Customers Get Access to Seven African Countries.”; “Orange Strikes Deal with Ecobank M-Banking.” 47. Kusimba et al., “Social Networks of Mobile Money in Kenya”. (2013). p. 5. COMMUNICATION, MONEY AND THE TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY 137

48. “Social Networks of Mobile Money in Kenya”. 49. Singh and Nadarajah, “School Fees, Beer and “Meri”: Gender, Cash and the Mobile in the Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea”. PART IV

The Migration Experience: From Settlement to Mobility CHAPTER 7

A Story of Settlement

When I migrated to Australia with my husband and my youngest son in 1986 from Malaysia, we came to settle. This hope for settlement was set in a historical context of mobility. In my case, some of this mobility had been forced, when my family moved from Rawalpindi to Delhi at the Partition of India in 1947. 1 I went to the USA to study for a year and a half, returned and then migrated from India to Malaysia. Migration itself is a signifi cant act of mobility. But for 19 years I thought I had settled in Malaysia. This was until I migrated again to Australia. My family had permanent residence visas for Australia. My husband came before us to take up his new position. We bought a house, shipped our furniture so that by the time my younger son and I arrived, we had a home in Melbourne. My husband came to a professional position and I had already been approached for a job in my fi eld of journalism. Only my son’s high school needed to be fi nalized. In this chapter I connect back with issues of the transnational family, sending money home, infrequent communication and the shaping of the meanings and valuation of money, as discussed in Chaps. 1 , 3 and 6 . Early migrants’ experience of migration is set within the framework of the dilution and dispersal of the transnational family. It infl uences how the second generation negotiates a sustainable mix of Indian and Australian values and social practices, the sense of home and identity. This chapter also looks forward, comparing the experiences of early and recent migrants. Migrating to settle, the prevalence of the nuclear family, and the hope you have built a happy future for your children—

© The Author(s) 2016 141 S. Singh, Money, Migration, and Family, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54886-3_7 142 S. SINGH these aspects become remarkable only when placed side by side against the migration experiences of the recent migrants in Chap. 8 . The discovery that early migrants came to settle is important when compared with recent migrants who embrace a precarious mobility when they come to Australia. Most early migrants had nuclear households. That was the norm for them and for the rest of Australia. It becomes noteworthy when set against recent migrants trying to replicate and reimagine the joint family in Australia as discussed in Chap. 9 .

MOVING TO SETTLE My experience of moving to settle was not unlike the early migrants I met and studied. The expenses of travel with a family and settlement meant migration was the equivalent of a one-way ticket. All except 3 of the early migrants remain rooted in Australia. The case for settlement gets stronger as the children are born or grow up in Australia. If the family is to move, this usually happens when the children are not yet in school. There is one family who moved and then came back. Rita and Rodney moved to Australia in 1971 with a ten-month-old child, experimented with the USA in 1975 and 1976, returned to India, and then came back to Australia to settle. People also move after the children are settled in Australia. Ina, in her late 20s, tells how her parents came for three months from India in 1991 when she was seven or eight years old, returned and then came again in 1994. After 15 years in Australia, the parents are preparing to return to India, leaving their married children in Australia. She expects they will come and go. Settlement can coexist with routine mobility. Niranjan, 91, comes and goes keeping in touch with different parts of his transnational family, like some of the parents of recent migrants. Having decided to settle, the issues before the early migrants were to make a home in Australia while keeping connection with their families in India and elsewhere. It meant making new friends, living in new neighborhoods, seeking and building community and learning the ways of working and living in Australia. Religion became more important for it was the building block of community. For those who arrived in the early 1970s, there were few Indians around them who spoke their language and were of their religion. These friends came to stand for family. Even now, A STORY OF SETTLEMENT 143 their children call these family friends, uncle and aunty in ways that refl ect Indian rather than Australian norms of hierarchy and respect.

Thinking of Settlement and Mobility In Australia for the fi rst six decades after the Second World War, migration meant settlement. Australia’s shift to a temporary migrant nation began in 2004. By 2012–2013, nearly four fi fths of the migrants were on temporary visas (78.6 percent). Less than one fi fth of the migrant intake was permanent (19.8 percent), with the remaining 1.6 percent being the humanitarian intake. 2 Settlement becomes remarkable when framed against mobility and the temporariness of migration of recent migrants. Everybody seems to be on the move at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century. Mobility rather than settlement has become the default position and the starting point of the study of social issues. 3 The new communication technologies enable the speedy and cheaper movement of people, communication, goods and money. Markets are global and education in Australia offers a global passport. Just as the new ICTs have transformed the connectedness of the transnational family, they have also changed the experience of migration. Movement by itself is not mobility. The concept of mobility is slippery, intangible and hard to pin down. “It is a kind of blank space that stands as an alternative to place, boundedness, foundations and stability.” Mobility gains signifi cance when it is given social meaning and becomes part of the mindset of a person, family and/or community. Inherent in the concept is the sense of agency and power. 4 People have the capacity to decide to move. At the same time people in different social settings can enable mobility to different degrees. 5 The distinction becomes stark when the hypermobility of transnational knowledge workers who are continually on the move 6 is compared with present-day refugees and asylum seekers trying to come to Australia, or parts of Europe. Governments have the power to stop people’s mobility. A common theme in Australia’s migration policy is the setting up of the criteria of desirable migrants. Recent migrants such as the student- migrants have to go through a period of testing, skilling and evidence of contribution to the labor force before they are given a ticket to stay. But then, as seen in Chap. 8 , the migrants who are most desirable also have the greatest options to move yet again. 144 S. SINGH

THE CHANGING CENTER OF HOME The decision to settle in Australia can over time translate to Australia becoming home. This happens especially if there is little family left in India, or if the central elder in the family has migrated to Australia. Parents’ and grandparents’ death can dilute family networks. Early migrants’ fading health lessens visits to see family. Kin may also have migrated to the USA, Canada and the UK. The transnational family network diffuses and becomes more diverse. This leads to a shift of the center of the transnational family. Transnational families are dynamic and fl uid entities, particularly when there are multiple migrations within the family. Linear models of family “chain” migration from the home country in the South to the host country in the North no longer suffi ce. The concepts of “home” and “host” are problematized, with different countries taking on varied levels of signifi cance to migrants across life stages. 7 For multiple migrants, interim countries can fall away. Even countries of birth can fade when empty of kin and property relationships. For Ambika, 68, who moved from India, Malaysia and Singapore to Australia in 1989—she was introduced in Chap. 3 —India, Malaysia and Singapore no longer mean home. Her siblings and their families are now in Australia. She still has aunts in India but some of her cousins have moved from India to Canada and the UK. For Ambika, visits to India, where she was born, are primarily to visit the Sikh temples. Weddings are held in Australia. At the last family wedding, Ambika’s maternal kin came from India, the UK and Canada. Her fi rst cousin—her father’s younger brother’s son—and his family stayed with them. They brought gifts when they came. When they were leaving, Ambika’s cousin gave Ambika and her daughter a shagan of $100 each. Ambika says,

I said “No, no, I am the older.” But they said “Brothers give to their sisters.” My daughter also said “No, no, I am working.” But they gave. The love was there. The connection was there.

Ambika’s comfort with her transnational kin who have moved to other nodes of the diaspora is replicated in research literature. 8 For Charan, in her late 60s, who moved from India to Europe and then to Australia in the late 1980s—I introduced her in Chap. 4 —Europe remains important as part of her story, but her children have all moved to Australia. She continues to think emotionally about India. She knows she A STORY OF SETTLEMENT 145 has the option to visit, but old age and declining health means she is now rooted in Australia. Banta and Bhagwan in their 60s, who have India, Malaysia and Singapore in their history before they moved to Australia in 1998, continue to have links in Singapore because they have a son, daughter and property there. But for Banta, Malaysia, where she was born, no longer has any resonance. Bhagwan fears that once they have sold their land in India, that too will fall away, even though he has a sister and her family there. Preeta, in her early 50s and a professional, was born in Fiji. There are some cousins left in Fiji. She sometimes sends money to them, but her recent visit was not so much to visit as to connect her sons to their roots. Among the seven multiple migrants in the early migrant study, Murali is the exception to this story of the fading away of interim countries. Murali is in his mid-40s, early 50s. He migrated from Malaysia to Singapore and then to Australia in 2002. He moved because of the career opportunities, a balanced education for his children and interestingly, the weather. Malaysia remains important for him because of his brothers and their families. But the emotional core of home for him lies in India, the country of his parents’ birth. This is refl ected in his strong emotional experiences when he fi rst visited his father’s village, and then his mother’s village when she died in India. He talks of taking his children there, as a sort of pilgrim- age. It is more of a hope than an established practice. For Murali, although no close kin remain in India, the sense of family and cultural history still remains signifi cant. For the old Indian diaspora in Malaysia, Singapore and Fiji, India remains important for it is the “cultural heart.” 9 It remains of “emotional importance” as their “ancestral home.” But their experience of migration, living in the old diaspora and now in Australia reveals a divide between them and the subcontinental Indians among the early migrants 10

The Dispersal of Family Across the Diaspora Early migrants experience a widening sphere of family relationships as their natal kin, children and grandchildren continue to move. This is true for 6 of the 19 early migrants. Niranjan, 91, is surrounded by an extensive family network and is at the center of the transnational family. He migrated with his wife from India to Australia in 1985 to be with their youngest son who had migrated earlier in 1974. Niranjan’s family is now spread across India, Australia, 146 S. SINGH

Europe, Canada and the USA. There is a dispersal of family networks, but no dilution. He remains a revered elder for his children and grandchildren, his brothers and is also respected by his late wife’s family. His daughter-in-law had stayed home from work so that she could serve us with a hot lunch of chicken, potatoes, raita (yogurt with grated cucum- ber), chick peas, paranthas , lentils ending with kheer (Indian rice pudding) with saffron. After four hours of interviewing, you know you have been listening to a fi ne man without regrets. He can look back on duties fulfi lled and fortunately has health, good English, the fi nancial means and caring children and grandchildren to live the kind of life people dream of. Two of his four sons live in Melbourne leaving two daughters and two sons in India. Of his 16 grandchildren, 5 live in Australia, one in the UK, another two are in the USA and one is in Canada. He still goes back to India, July to September, and is often centrally involved in the marriages of his grandchildren. His approval is important for the wedding to pro- ceed. His children from India also come to visit. He shows me a family photograph taken when his eldest son and daughter-in-law were visiting, saying “Here is me, here is my eldest son and daughter in law, then their son, and then his children.” Then voicing an Asian sentiment of deep content he said, “I had four generations living in one house.” 11

India Comes to the Diaspora for a Wedding The dispersal of family across the diaspora and the shift to Australia being home is displayed particularly at a wedding. The decision to hold your children’s wedding in Australia shows the family is settled in Australia. The family is also more likely to have a signifi cant kin group also settled in Australia, often because of the original family’s support in the early years of settlement. The one case that stands out against this trend is Brindha’s wedding. Brindha, in her late 20s, spent a few early years in India with her maternal aunts. Her decision to have her wedding in India was an overt recognition of the role her mother’s sisters in India played in her life. Anand, in his 60s—his story was told in Chap. 4 —is clear that his second daughter’s wedding will be held in Australia. For their elder daughter, the son-in-law was sourced through advertisements and the Internet in India, vetted by his father. The wedding was held in Chennai. Anand remembers feeling as if events careened out of control, for he no longer had the local knowledge. A STORY OF SETTLEMENT 147

It was at Laila’s wedding, however, that the diaspora came home. I had met Laila two years before her wedding in 2014. She was 20 then and I was impressed with her eloquence, her comfort with an intimate relationship with India and fi tting into Australia. She sat with us while I was listening to her father, Lal, 48 years old. The family had migrated from India via Kenya to Australia in the mid-1990s. I am connected to Lal’s family through a distant affi nal relationship, but had never met him or his parents in India before the study. The connection is so distant that even the anthropologist in me keeps getting lost. Lal’s father’s elder brother’s late wife was my mother’s niece through her adopted religious father. Lal’s paternal family continues to stay in a village in Punjab. I met them in India before I met Lal. He arrived in Australia via Kenya in the mid-1990s as a skilled migrant. Laila greets me soon after I arrive for the sangeet (song and dance function that takes place before the wedding) at a marriage hall in Melbourne. Unlike the sangeet functions I have attended in India, this one includes the girl’s and the boy’s side. They have also collapsed two other rituals of shagan and jago for the invited guests. Later in the week they would have a separate jago function, replicating the Punjabi wedding ritual of kin and neighbors celebrating the coming wedding through song and dance in the neighborhood. Laila is dressed in an orange and gold ghagara, perhaps more like clivia peach, with big earrings. Her hair has been done professionally in swirls. She says, “My father and mother have done so much for me. So when they suggested this match, I agreed.” Yes, she had seen the man, and met him many times between the agreement and the wedding. The mother says, they had no intention of getting her married so young, but the groom’s family was insistent. They had seen her at two weddings and liked her. We also thought this was such a good family, that we agreed. I ask Laila’s mother whether he has a home already, and she says, the family has four houses. Laila will be living with her husband’s family. “She wouldn’t want to be alone. She wants to live together (in a joint family).” Later, I hear the groom’s parents were in Europe and then migrated to Melbourne. He has been in Australia for six years. The music starts and with it the dancing. At the sangeet function, all your kin get displayed. The songs start with “Here is the father of the bride” and the next line in Punjabi rhymes with that. It goes from father, mother, brothers, sisters, father’s brother, father’s brother’s wife, mother’s brother, mother’s sister and so on. Not in any particular order. It depends 148 S. SINGH on who is present. As Laila’s family still has its roots in a Punjabi village, they know all the songs and sing along. The kin group is there on display. I see Lal’s younger brother and wife, his sister and brother-in-law who have come from India. Lal’s fi rst cousin— his father’s elder brother’s son—has come from California. He is my connection with the family, for he is my adopted nephew once removed. For much of the night he takes me from table to table, and says “This is my masi (mother’s sister). I want her to know that all of us are her family here. Make sure she is not alone.” He keeps saying this in a maudlin fashion, but I am nevertheless touched to be so included. The bride’s maternal relatives are also there in full force. There are also several nephews and nieces who have now settled in Melbourne with Lal’s support. They have come within the last ten years as skilled migrants and students. They have houses in Lal’s neighborhood. They are now married and some have young babies with them. The dancing continues. The groom is as good a dancer as the bride’s family. I look at the dresses to gain an idea of the diasporic fashions. But I do not know the fashions in Punjabi villages, and perhaps their ostenta- tion refl ects the village fashion supplemented by Bollywood. There is lots of jewelry. The one I love is worn by Lal’s sister, an old chunky necklace perhaps 50 years old. And Lal’s sister and sister-in-law from India are the only two women who have covered their heads with a duppatta (the long scarf with the Punjabi salwar kameez). The food is good and simple, a buffet of nan , curried okra, spinach with paneer (cottage cheese) and mutton. It is a choreographed scene compared to weddings I remember in India that were held at home or just outside it. But now in Punjab also, weddings are held in marriage halls with DJs and professional dancers. What continues to ring true is that brothers and sisters and their spouses have come across continents for a wedding in the family. In the middle of all this celebration, a daughter will soon leave home. The mother of the bride is crying in a dark corner, being comforted by another woman, while a nephew is drunk in front of his parents and pregnant wife. It is 11.45 and the music stops.

A NUCLEAR FAMILY HOUSEHOLD AND EXTENDED KIN The family household of the early migrants in Australia is most often nuclear. This is true of 13 of the 19 early migrant participants. The excep- tions are Niranjan who lives with his son and family and Anita and Anand A STORY OF SETTLEMENT 149 who are looking after Anita’s father. For a while, Ambika’s family was also a three-generational one, when her father was alive and living with them. Gurmeet and Gurjeet’s family was nuclear when I interviewed them. Since then, their youngest daughter, her husband and son have been living with them, and so have become a three-generational joint family. Many of the stories early migrants tell of their family have a sense of loss at the center. It is for parents who have died, for relationships with extended family that have become less frequent and intense. Even when the early migrants themselves have kept in touch and are a part of family weddings and celebrations, they grieve for their children’s loss of an extended family. Daya who migrated in 1983—whom we met in Chap. 4 —says, “I am a part of the family, but a cut-off fragment of it.” She herself feels a valued part of her transnational family. But she spoke poignantly of how her children no longer felt they belonged to a wider extended family and group of kin, the parivar . Her children do not include their uncles and aunts in India when they talk of family. She hopes when her son gets married in Melbourne, and some of her family comes from India, that all of them will again feel they are “a part of a large family.” I do not know whether her children feel this sense of loss. But Daya was so eloquent that it took another sweep of the data to show that for many others the reality of living in Australia is living with extended kin. Sometimes there are more kin in Australia than anywhere else. Part of the reason Daya feels this palpable sense of loss is that like 8 of the 19 early migrants she has no kin other than her nuclear family in Australia. For the other 11 early migrants, their kin network in Australia includes extended family, even though the family household is nuclear. The presence of kin spurred their migration to Australia for 7 of the 19 early migrants. For another four, their kin network has grown with family reunion. The feelings of initial loss are supplanted by a sense of completion and connection. This means the second generation in these families has grown up with extended kin even if their family households are nuclear. Kiran, whose story is told below, has most of her extended family already in Melbourne.

The Dilution of the Transnational Family Fifteen of the 20 second-generation participants are comfortable defi ning family in terms of their family in Australia. The transnational family has become less important for three fourths of the second generation. Though 150 S. SINGH many still feel a special relationship with India because of ancestry, a sense of spirituality, this is expressed through travel and donations, rather than regular communication, remittances and gifts. As Karen Leonard found when studying fi rst and second-generation migrants from Hyderabad, India that “… even though some fi rst-generation migrants could be truly transnational or cosmopolitan, their children rarely could be so.” 12 The second-generation Indian Australians are similar in this respect to the 1.5 and second-generation young adults from Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, China, and a host of other Latin American and Asian countries. A longitudinal study in the USA found that under 10 percent showed any objective or subjective level of transnational attachment. 13 As Rumbaut says, “… there appears to be no ‘tingling’ sensation, no phantom pain, over a homeland that was never lost to them in the fi rst place.” 14 Lena, a professional and born in Australia, says she does not feel connected to her extended family in India. She says this is mainly because she does not speak Malyalam, her family’s language. It also has to do with world view. Like other second-generation Indian Australians born in Australia, she remembers awkward visits to family in India. She says,

We used to go to India every two years for one or two months with Mum, and sometimes with Dad. And it was probably easier when we were small and you’d just play with them (the cousins). But slowly I think, we don’t speak the language, and that became a hindrance … But I’ve still got a grandmother who’s alive in India, so we still do go … but we’re a lot closer to the family here.

She feels her cousins in India are not comfortable that she speaks with an Australian accent. Hence they have “stilted, superfi cial conversations.” Her cousins think she has Western values, whereas the reality is that all of them have a mix of values. She recognizes “We probably think that they’re very conservative compared to us or that they’re very different to us, when in fact they probably aren’t that different. But the language thing is probably the hardest area.” Harsh, 24 and a professional, says that as a child she used to visit India for a month every four years with her parents. But she was uncomfortable. There were too many people around her. She could not do what she wanted to do, go where she wanted. She always fell ill. There is little relationship between her and the family in India. She used to tie rakhis (a thread tied on the wrist symbolizing the close relationship between a A STORY OF SETTLEMENT 151 sister and brother) on her cousins, but they did not reciprocate with gifts as expected in the last two years. So now she does it only for her brother. Lena and Harsh represent the dilution of transnationalism seen among most of the second-generation participants. But for 5 of the 20, there is a sense of connection and/or nostalgia for the family left behind. Most had come to Australia when they were 8–12 years old and so had memories of closeness with grandparents, maternal and paternal kin and being with cousins. Over time, this sense of loss lessened as cousins moved away, grandparents or signifi cant members of the parental generation died and/ or more of the extended family moved to Australia. Brindha, whose story is also told below, has occasionally helped her transnational family with money. A few others have exchanged gifts when they have visited. Some of this gift giving is prompted by the parents, but for at least three of them, it was personal and with much thought going into the selection of presents for the older kin and money for the younger. For Indu who came to Australia via Kenya when she was 11, her extended family in India remains important. This connection is lubricated through frequent visits, gifts, and an email group with her cousins. Moreover, with her paternal grandparents moving to Australia, she has much of her extended family in Australia too. Kiran, 35, married and with one child, has a lump in her throat when she speaks of the recent death of her father’s sister who lived in their village in Punjab. She and her parents migrated to Australia in 1986 when she was 11. Kiran is now married to an Indian student who came to Melbourne in 1999. They live next door to her parents and married brother and his family. Her daughter and her brother’s daughter were watching TV together while she was making chappatis, dal and okra. Kiran says she used to see going to India as going home. She remembers her life in the village vividly.

I remember everything … I remember there were peaches and bananas, and there were lemons and sugar cane, … We lived as an extended family. … Yeah my grandparents, my father’s two sisters … and about 10 kids. We used to all play together, all the kids in the neighborhood, about 25 of us.

They went back every couple of years. The last time it was for her cousin’s wedding. But her father’s sister died in 2009, the year I interviewed her. As she speaks, her eyes tear. Her aunt’s children now live in Melbourne, 152 S. SINGH with one in the UK. The village house is locked up. She says, “I don’t want to think about it because it’s too sad.” She realizes that interaction in the village has changed. The kids no longer play together but watch TV at home. And now the main family occasions are in Melbourne. Every year when her extended family in Melbourne meets for a barbeque at Christmas, there are 70 people present. Ishat also keenly felt the loss of his extended family. He is in his late 20s, and migrated with his family from Kenya when he was nine years old. Looking back over his migration experience, he says,

I think the one thing that I really missed out on is having … extended family around. … In Kenya there are … 10 [cousins]. ... You know because it’s not a very big place they all socialize together and they all do everything together … I have never really experienced that … [When] my great grandfather … died … the whole family was together. They called us up and they were thinking “Oh you guys are stuck there by yourself.”

Ishat has been going back to Kenya on regular visits with his parents. The last time he went on his own. He found his cousins had left to study overseas. He remembers “It was fun for a few days … then it was just quite frustrating because in Kenya you can’t really run around anywhere because it’s not safe to go out.” He adds, “I got bored out of my mind because it was just sitting at my grandparents.” Mahesh, 30, recently got married. He and his family migrated from India when he was eight years old. He feels strongly his home is in Melbourne. But he remains connected to his extended family through visits with his parents. His wedding was celebrated in Delhi. When he and his wife went to Nepal recently, they also went to India to particularly meet up with his paternal grandfather who could not attend the wedding in Delhi because of a broken hip. He says it was important for his wife to meet his grandfather. He also feels close to his mother’s sisters, particularly as they have visited the family in Melbourne. As he is older than most of his cousins, he did not know how to handle the gift giving. After consulting his parents, they gave gift money to all the cousins. His aunts and uncles either returned the envelopes or gave them money in turn. Brindha’s close, continuing emotional relationship with her maternal aunts has led her back to India. Brindha is in her late 20s and working in the information technology area. She is the only one in the study who was sent back to India when her mother had to prepare to resit the Australian A STORY OF SETTLEMENT 153 qualifying examination in order to work. So though she initially came with her parents at one and a half years, she spent another one and a half years with her maternal aunts, and came back again when she was three. She goes back to India on her own to visit her aunts and luxuriates in the remembered aroma and taste of food and being surrounded by loving care. There are no regular remittances, but she is also the only one who has helped her uncle fi nance his son’s education in Australia. She says, “I honestly love going to India and love buying them presents,” and taking them out for dinner. She takes them sari shopping, saying this sari is for her promotion or something else that happened in the last year.

BRINGING UP CHILDREN IN AUSTRALIA An emotional subject for discussion at parties with early migrants is how to mold your children who were born or grew up in Australia. It is diffi - cult to strike the right balance. Some surround their children, particularly their fi rst born, with the Indian community, Indian food, language, song and dance, and religious activities. For some of the children, this memory remains part of being Indian. Others feel suffocated as outside infl uences are quarantined. But when children grow up without the language and community activities, some later see it as something they have missed. Parents worry their choice of settling in Australia has meant their children have lost their connection with India, with family and with the way they see themselves. When children in school suffer because of differences of color and accent, the cost of settlement can seem too high. However, most of the children have coped with their difference.

Tensions Around Food and Indian Values Bringing up children in Australia is an important part of feeling settled in Australia. When speaking to the parents, the process seems to have been smooth. Their children, however, tell of tensions around their move to a more Australian way of life. It centers around food in the house, travelling alone, living with a boyfriend, going to see a movie alone, whom to invite for their wedding, where it should be held and parental reaction when the girls stopped Indian dancing. Coming up against their differences with their parents makes the second generation realize they are Australian. But growing up with community, language, Indian song and dance also makes them familiar with the sounds and images of India. 154 S. SINGH

Rita and Rodney and Anita and Anand who migrated in the early 1970s surrounded their children in their early years with their own community, sent them to dance and music classes and tried to keep up with their own language. It did not always work out as planned. In the two cases where the parents insisted on all things Indian, it became a template of what the children did not want. Anand and Anita sent their daughters to Bharat Natyam classes and the Hindu religious organization to which they belonged. Their older daughter is more fl uent in Tamil than the younger one. She also had an arranged marriage in Chennai and is now in the USA. But Anand says he will not be going the same route with his younger daughter, Alka. She is comfortable in her two worlds. “I see myself as an Australian in some aspects,” Alka, 21, says, “and I see myself as belonging to the Indian diaspora in some aspects. I took part in a lot of Indian activities. I used to dance, and I have a lot of Indian friends.” She danced the Bharat Natyam for ten years, but stopped four years ago. She went to India for the last time when she was 14, that is, when her sister got married. My youngest son and I attended the arangetram for Rodney and Rita’s eldest daughter. It marked her on-stage graduation as a dancer after years of study. Years later, I attended her wedding to an Anglo-Australian. Rodney says their children are no longer connected to their home town in India, particularly after his parents died. Their children do not speak Malyalam but understand it a bit. There is a tinge of sorrow that after Rita and Rodney die, their children may not feel part of the Malyali community in Australia. They may not also have an emotional attachment to India, and will go there as tourists. Rodney and Rita are, however, comfortable that their children have married outside the Indian community. Rodney says, “I think we didn’t … teach [the] kids that you have to marry Indians or else you are in deep trouble or something. We left everything to them to decide what to do and we thought they would make a good decision.” Their younger daughter, Lena feels Indian and Australian. She is a professional, born in Australia and her husband has an Australian/mixed Indian heritage. Part of her Indianness comes from having grown up with parents who saw themselves as Indian and Malyali, with Indian food, and surrounded by the Malyali community. She looks Indian and so cannot escape her Indianness. Then there is the music and Malyali fi lms that are familiar because she has grown up with them. She says her parents possibly A STORY OF SETTLEMENT 155 think that she has lost her Indianness and that when she has children, they will not be Indian. Lena says her children will look Indian. And she is proud of being Indian. She has traveled widely in India and fi nds it a beautiful country. She reads Indian literature in English and has discovered more of it as her mother-in-law has a treasure trove of it. But she feels Australian when she feels disconnected to her cousins and family in India as described above. She defi nes her Australianness by saying what is not Indian about her. She does not like showing off her money. She likes to exercise. Australia is very much her home. But most of the time she is just herself and does not think of identity. She questioned it more when she was in university and that is why she went travelling on her own. However, most of her friends are second-generation “something” and mostly from Asia. Harsh’s relationships with her parents are more fractured. She is 24 and arrived for the interview from work dressed in a skirt and blouse, high heels and a rolled up umbrella. She was born in Australia and continues to live with her parents. She feels stuck to be in her parents’ world for she cannot understand where they are coming from and why some things are so important to them. She thinks that over the years they have become more Indian. She would like to live her own life without making her parents unhappy. She suspects that unlike her brother, she will not be allowed to leave home before she is married. Both her parents are professionals. They migrated to Australia in 1981. The pressure is building up around her marriage. Her parents say she is free to do what she likes, but the boundaries are clear. They are not “fi x- ated” on a Punjabi but would like her to marry an Indian Hindu. A Sri Lankan could also be acceptable as long as he is Hindu. She is thankful her parents have not gotten to the point of lining up 20 boys and aunties at a temple. Harsh can understand Hindi and Punjabi, though she speaks to her parents in English and they respond in Hindi or Punjabi. She wears Indian clothes when she goes for weddings about twice a year, but does not like gold jewelry. She also does not like Indian music, dance or fi lm. Religion is a backdrop to her life but she is not asked to go for the prayer ceremonies. She feels most Australian when she is relating to her parents. Harsh says when she was in university she went to see a movie by herself during the holidays. Her mother said, “What? Alone?” Harsh said nobody else wanted to see it. She says her mother said Harsh couldn’t do that. It was dangerous. She could have gotten killed. Harsh says, “I just thought what 156 S. SINGH is wrong with you? I think it comes from this over protective style of par- enting. So at times like that, I feel really Australian.” The relationship with her parents boils over when it comes to food. Harsh dislikes Indian food, particularly chappati . She can eat rice, but her mother being Punjabi makes chappati every day. She comes back from full-time work and begins cooking chappati, dal and vegetables. They cannot accept that she does not like the taste of dal, chappati or Indian- style vegetables. She doesn’t like bhel (a tangy snack based on puffed rice) either, and that is something her father cannot do without. It is one of the fi rst things her parents tell their friends about their daughter. Harsh says, “I wish I did. It would make my life easier.” On weekends Harsh cooks Italian and Japanese, Chinese and Thai. Her father eats it reluctantly. She says that despite these tensions, she has imbibed the conservative values of her family. She feels Indian when she reacts negatively to people having affairs, getting drunk and then boasting about it. Food triggers strong emotions. Mahesh, 30, is a professional and married. He says his father has become more rigid and set in his ways as he gets older. “He only eats [North] Indian food. There was a time when he used to eat pizza.” He never liked Chinese food. He doesn’t even like South Indian food. “He’s never tried most other things.” As a result the family seldom went out to eat. If they did, it was only to eat Indian food or pizza. It meant he had no knowledge of food other than Indian vegetarian. In university when he went with friends to eat out, a lot of the food was new to him. It is only after he met his wife that he discovered fi ne din- ing. Now at home they eat everything. Indian, pasta, salad, noodles. He says he is “fi nally getting to know what Melbourne’s food is like. Twenty years too late….”

“I Was Only Eleven”: Surviving Difference in School The early migrants do not talk of overt racism. They emphasize the opportunities available in Australia and what they have accomplished. Even Gurmeet who found a job in his fi eld after two years was effusive about Australia. Rodney, a professional from Kerala, found it diffi cult to get his fi rst job in Australia, despite his local specialization. Rita says they also knew that it was expected that an Indian could make number two in the hierarchy, but not number one. Rodney, however, chooses not to see it as racism. He says, it was also diffi cult to get a job in India. He says, “I A STORY OF SETTLEMENT 157 went on doing my job.” Once he was established, there were no further problems. For the most part, early migrants dealt with racism by trying to meld with the dominant Anglo-Celtic culture at work and in public places. Racism was more explicit for the Indians who came in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from British India to work in the cane fi elds in Queensland and New South Wales (NSW). There were restrictions on cane-cutting. It was told that when an Indian passed through a cane fi eld the fi eld was known as “black cane.” 15 Despite or because of the growing prosperity of these farmers and workers, it was only in 1993 that Sikh men were offi cially permitted to wear their turbans in the Woolgoolga Returned Services’ League (RSL) club. It was a symbolic victory, for the Sikhs continued to patronize the Woolgoolga Bowling Club which had welcomed them earlier. 16 For the second generation the challenge of growing up in Australia was that they were seen as different in school. It was easiest for the second- generation participants who were in schools with students who were also second generation and/or from a wide ethnic range. Those who were born here or fi rst went to school in Australia also fared better, though Jaya’s story below is an exception. Jaya was only one year old when she and her parents migrated, and being spurned because she was “brown” was one of the school experiences of which she spoke. Color and accent are at the center of the three most disturbing stories. The others interpret their settling in and adjusting period in terms of coping with difference. Their school experience is along a continuum of difference, and narrowing to bullying and racism. This perception of difference fl ows into their sense of belonging and identity. Most are comfortable saying they are Australian of Indian origin. They feel more Australian or more Indian according to context as Lena’s story above shows. But for three, it contributed to them feeling more Indian than Australian. Two of them went further in that Nancy whose story is told below felt Anglo-Indian and Kiran whose story is told above felt Punjabi. However, that has perhaps more to do with Kiran’s strong links to her extended family and vivid memories of growing up in a Punjabi village than being called “Aboriginal” in school. For Giri, 28, and Ashwin, 27, the recognition of differences together with a detached relationship with the extended family in India made them feel more Australian than Indian. 158 S. SINGH

The school years brought to the front the difference in the cultural values of their parents and what they perceived in school. Most of their families were conservative. They emphasized the academic. Religion was important for many. And visiting family on a weekend was a common activity. This made for a lack of fi t with Anglo students. Mahesh, 30, says that for him years seven and eight when he moved to an Anglo-dominated school were diffi cult. He sees it as resulting from cultural difference rather than racism. One of the differences was that his family was conservative. He was different from his class mates who were rebelling against their parents, already with girls and would go drinking. He didn’t even wear “Kris Kross” the hip-hop baggy colorful pants that were ten sizes too large with big T-shirts almost to the knees. This was in the 1990s. His ambition was to get a scholarship to Melbourne High so that he could become a brain surgeon. This focus on the academic also made him look like a nerd and a geek. Nancy, 35, an Anglo-Indian reacted to being different in trying to be like all the other students. She insisted on Devon (a kind of processed meat) and sauce sandwiches on white bread or dry Weetabix with honey. She saw the others eating this. Like the girls in Wogs out of Work , a play about the Greek immigrant experience after the Second World War, she did not want to open her lunch box and have it smell different. But she could not make herself fi t the stereotype of white Australia with “all those images of the beachy, surfi ng, ute-driving, camping Australians.” She knew from an earlier visit to the snow with her family when she was a kid that she would never have “this core of Australianness.” She remembers kids teasing them and then she heard people telling her Dad “Go back where you came from.” She says, “I’ve never been back to the snow since.” Nancy adds, she does not feel Australian even when she lives abroad. She also does not feel Indian, but is comfortable being Anglo-Indian. It was with a sense of relief that many of the second generation found others of the “second-generation something,” or South and Southeast Asians in the schools to which they moved or at university. Ashwin, 27, says he does not know why it hurt as much as it did. He did not have any particular friends in high school. University was liberating “for it didn’t feel like, I’m just in this hell hole that I can’t get out of.” Some like Giri began to own terms that were meant to be abusive. Called a “curry muncher” in school, in university he and friends formed a “Curry group.” Most of the second-generation participants talked relatively easily about their school days, even if they had been diffi cult. Two, however, spoke of A STORY OF SETTLEMENT 159 their distress even when they were in their 20s. Another referred to it, but the story of extreme bullying was told by his mother. Jaya, in her early 20s, came to Australia with her professional parents when she was one year old. She tells of her primary school years in a very Anglo school. Color became an issue for her when she was 11. They had a buddy system at school where the older children were teamed up with younger children. Her buddy was to be a fi ve-year-old boy. But he did not want her because she was “brown.” She came back and told her parents who said “You must not let these things get to you.” But “It hurt, for I was only 11 myself.” Later, the boys’ parents arrived at Jaya’s house with a card and a present and apologized on their son’s behalf. Jaya moved school in year seven. She thinks her parents realized it was diffi cult for her. She had not really seen it as diffi cult for she did not know anything different. But her tone lightens as she describes the relief of being in a private school where the girls were “ethnic.” There were Indian, Sri Lankan, Malaysian and Chinese girls. These girls remain her friends fi ve years later and later in the evening she was going out with some of them. All of a sudden she knew what it was like to “fi t.” They brought dal and rice for lunch; spoke of their parents in ways with which she could relate; had the same family values and the emphasis on the academic. For Ina, 27, the most diffi cult point in her school years was when she was called to read a paragraph. She was 12 years old when she migrated with her parents in 1994. She dressed differently from other pupils, talked faster and had a different accent. She had also been pushed up to year eight. After a few months in school she was asked to read “and the whole class started laughing.” The teacher “had a bit of a smile on his face” but he stopped the laughter. Later one of the students apologized. Ina came back home and cried. “I don’t remember what my parents said, but it was something like ‘Keep at it.’ … I guess they felt guilty. I guess [they thought] it was just something that I would get over.” But since then Ina has had a “phobia of public speaking.” After that incident, she says when she had to read in class “I would stand there in front of the class just numb.” Later, she would do a one to one reading with the teacher. She has not discussed it since then. Differences in color and accent led to brutal bullying for Hemat and his younger brother. Hemat was nearly 10 when he came with his family to Australia. Thirty-three and married when interviewed, he says “School was a horrible experience.” His mother Hema learnt about it years later. She said she would go and speak with the teachers, but Hemat said the 160 S. SINGH teachers would not do much. It was the bigger kids targeting the kids who were vulnerable. Hema blames herself saying “I think I was very stupid really. I just did not know these things happen in the schools here.” For Hemat it meant years when he was not comfortable with himself. He says, “I went from just being myself” to trying to shape myself so that I would not be different. He says for years he “wasn’t able to verbalize it.” He says he has come out of that experience into a safer place. “I understand how to live now in this society … that it’s okay to practice the culture of my heritage and live in this society; that I’m not victimized.” Hemat paid a high price for settlement in terms of physical violence and self-esteem. For the others like Kiran and her sister Kanta, the difference in color meant they were called “Aboriginals.” Rita who migrated in 1971 says one day her son came home crying and said, “They’re all calling me ‘Chocolates’.” They also called an Aboriginal boy Chocolates. Like Hemat, her son did not want his mother to complain to the teachers. Rita said, “Look, you don’t have to worry. We (Indians) all got melanin. That protects us against skin cancer.” After two to three weeks, the teacher came over to where Rita was standing and said, “Do you know, your son, he told everybody, ‘You’re going to get skin cancer because….’”

“WHERE ARE YOU FROM?” “Where are you from?” is one of the fi ve top questions most second- generation Australians are asked. The second-generation Indian participants say, however Australian you feel, it is diffi cult to escape your color and how you look. This defi nes them for others as Indian. Being brown means they are not from Australia. Even when the second-generation participants do not feel very Indian, people in Australia ask “Where are you really from?” When Harsh is asked, she says, “My parents are Indian.” She has tried to say “Australian” but then they ask “No. But originally?” This also happened to her in Japan. When asked she said “Melbourne.” The younger Japanese would often say how much they like Australia, but the older ones would ask “Originally?” Four fi fths of the second-generation participants see themselves as Indians and Australians, sometimes more Indian and sometimes more Australian. Language, music, dance, fi lm and literature were important in their connection with India. There was a sense of familiarity with the A STORY OF SETTLEMENT 161 country through visits to the transnational family. Moreover as Harsh says, much of the culture is imbibed as the background of family life. It was also usual to hear the participants say Australia was home. They knew how things worked. This was where they lived. Ashwin, 27, came with his parents in 1986. He was four. He feels “very connected to Australia … I would say I’m Australian. That would be my natural instinct. But I don’t. It’s not that I discount my Indian heritage. I defi - nitely acknowledge it, but I don’t feel very strongly towards it.” He adds, “I think I’m very much a product of this country and I think this will always be home, like I’ll always come back to Melbourne and I’ll probably end up here at the end of it all.” What came through in the interviews was a lack of angst about identity. Giri, 28, says “I would be Australian of Indian origin … I’d like to think that I’m fairly well balanced in my appreciation of both cultures.” It means “taking the best of both worlds and do things like most Australians do.” Their sense of themselves, their identity as Indians and/or Australians is a work in progress. They remember having felt different about it in school, university and when they sought to defi ne it for themselves through engaging themselves with India. Identity, like transnational activities, changes over a person’s life stages. 17 Hemat is refl ective about it. He says that for a while he renounced being Indian “only because that was the safe way to do it; that was the safer option.” He also did not like the hierarchical aspect of Indian society that he saw. But as he grew older and searched for more depth, he says he connected again with India. “The fi rst time I went to a national park [in India] I just felt ‘Yes, I have now arrived, I’ve returned to the source’.” Being Indian and/or Australian is defi ned in opposition to each other as seen in Lena and Harsh’s stories above. It is in India or vis-à-vis their parents they discover their Australian side and in Australia that they fi nd themselves Indian. Language, song, dance, fi lm, religion and spirituality—particularly if they had sought them out themselves were reference points for their sense of Indianness. Visiting India for themselves rather than with parents also gave them a sense of connection. Hemat found this connection in India through his love of forests. For Chitra, in her late 20s, her family roots go back to India and Malaysia, it was a search for spirituality that led her to India. Malaysia remains important too for her. She says,

I am proud of who I am and love being here but I also see the beauty in India. In Malaysia it’s because I’ve got family. I can’t say that I’m hugely 162 S. SINGH

partial to any one of those countries. I live here, I work here, my life is here but my origins are sort of there.

The way you see yourself is also a matter of context. Brindha says she is Australian for fi ve and a half days when she is working and Indian for the other one and a half days when she goes to temple with her mother. Ina says when someone asks her where she is from, she says India. She likes Indian clothes, fi lm and music and “loves speaking Hindi.” Though when she is in India, she does not always feel Indian. Their comfort with a hyphenated identity can be traced back to their parents’ privileged position in Australia. They are professional, of high or middle income, and fl uent in English. In Australia, the second generation occupies the same professional position as their parents in Australian society. Hence their stories are different from a second generation whose parents were Vietnamese refugees or Greeks and Italians migrating to Australia after the Second World War. The Indian second-generation stories are about maintaining status rather than seeking it. The early migrants were metropolitan and thus their children differ from Indians who migrated from villages in a particular region to Singapore. 18 The Indian second generation in Australia are not pressured to marry people from their villages. Only two among the nine second-generation participants married people to whom they had been introduced by kin. The experience of the second-generation Indians in Australia differs from the “in-between world” described by Vassanji writing of second- and third-generation Indians in Kenya. 19 Vassanji writes of Vikram Lall, the son of a shopkeeper and the grandson of railway workers who came from India. He lives in an in-between world, in that he is an Indian in Kenya but in Kenya is not regarded as really being Kenyan. Indians in Australia are part of the migrant kaleidoscope of Australia, rather than being a minority brought in during the colonial era. Though the second-generation Indians get asked “Where are you from?” they too can ask many others in Australia the same question. The second-generation participants also do not speak of going continually between India and Australia. Most often the visits to India were only once every fi ve years or so, or triggered by events such as weddings. And except for Brindha, none of them had been left behind with kin in India during their childhood. So, the second-generation participants talk of Australia or of Melbourne being home, of feeling comfortable in the country and being shaped by it. A STORY OF SETTLEMENT 163

They also differ from the second-generation Indians whose parents continued to be deeply rooted in their religion, language and caste in Silicon Valley as described in Desi Land. 20 The second generation’s professional position also means they can be comfortable with their own ethnic identity which has gradually become a broader South Asian or Asian identity. As described in the next chapter, the new fl ow of young Indian migrants did not increase the second generation’s sense of Indianness. Instead, it made more distinct why they were Australian. This differs from the Haitian experience where continued migration reinforces Haitian values. 21 There are four second-generation participants who do not see themselves as Australians and Indians. Daliah, 39, sees herself in terms of her religious rather than cultural identity. She was four years old when she moved from Kenya to Australia in 1974. She grew up in central Victoria. With her parents she was part of the Indian cultural activities, but it was when she was with other Muslims from Afghanistan, Iraq or Egypt that she connected. “For me that was a greater identifi er than being in an Indian culture.” Kiran and Kanta who came from a Punjabi village see themselves as Punjabi, rather than Indian. The linguistic identity has become dominant. And as seen above, Nancy sees herself as Anglo-Indian rather than Indian.

“I Just Want Her to Be Happy” Meera, 39, stands out from the others in that she says “I probably feel more Australian actually. Yeah, I don’t feel Indian at all. … Sometimes I even forget I’m Indian.” But when people in Australia ask Meera where she is from, she says “India.” When she is overseas, she says “Australia.” Later she says, “I wonder how important it actually is to have a strong identity. … I feel like my identity is always changing. I’ll probably be quite different in fi ve years to what I am now.” Meera was 12 when she moved with her parents in 1983 to Australia. She is married to an Anglo-Australian and has a daughter. School was the defi ning infl uence in her life. It was a school that attracted hippie parents and so her school mates were more open and accepting. For the most part, Meera rejected the Indian world she saw around her parents. She says her love of Indian food is about the only “Indianish” thing in her life. She doesn’t like Indian music and fi lm and does not celebrate Dipavali. She has one Indian friend, all the others are Anglo. She was not interested in 164 S. SINGH dressing up in Indian clothes and even now does not like wearing jewelry. She grew up Hindu but religion in terms of ritual was not important for her. Yet through her independent travel to India, she feels connected. When she donates, she donates to India. She and her husband at present support an ashram in India. So what makes her so Australian? She says Melbourne is home. She connects Australia with acceptance, freedom and opportunities. This also comes with a degree of social isolation. She refl ects and then says,

I probably don’t feel that Australian either, because Australian culture is very sort of party and drinking alcohol and eating meat, and I don’t drink alcohol or eat meat much, so, I’m probably not that Australian either.

After school, she and her “hippie” friends took a year off and traveled to India for three months. Meera’s relatives did not take kindly to her and her friends. She has no relationship with her transnational family, does not attend weddings, though her parents remain very involved. Later she traveled again to India, and also to Thailand, China. She loved going to India and in Dharamshala became interested in Buddhism. She moved out of home for periods soon after she was 18. For a while she was also in a relationship. She went into social work and found she was not good at it, and moved to fi nance, where she excels. Looking back she says her mother loved her unconditionally and so she had the space to fi nd out where she wanted to go and who she was. Her relationship with her father has remained uncomfortable. He was more affected by the Indian community’s judgment of her. Even now she associates being “judgmental” with being Indian. At work though she has more Indian friends than she ever did, for she is meeting many different kinds of Indians. Meera says her parents were relieved at her Buddhism, her marriage and change of work direction. She says, her mother thinks her husband is “too good for her.” Meera is happy for her daughter to learn about the Ramayana, to do the prayers with her grandparents.

I’m more than happy for her to follow whatever she wants really. I just feel, with Buddhism, especially with meditation, it’s such a great skill to have in life; just to be able to manage your emotions. … So, I really try and infl u- ence her to do meditation. … I don’t really care which religion she follows. A STORY OF SETTLEMENT 165

Meera’s daughter likes dressing up in Indian clothes and bangles. With the Ramayana and the puja and her Indian friends, will her daughter be more Indian than Meera ever was? Meera says, “I just want her to be happy. … I just hope she’s not lazy. … If she just sat around watching TV all day and didn’t want to do much with her life … I couldn’t accept that.” Her daughter could be anything she wants and Meera says she and her husband would be happy with that.

NOTES 1. Singh, The Girls Ate Last . 2. See Jock Collins, “Report Marks Australia’s Shift from Settler to Temporary Migrant Nation,” The Conversation , December 2, 2014; James Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera : The Story of Australian Immigration , Second ed. (Port Melbourne, VIC: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 3. Mimi Sheller and John Urry, “The New Mobilities Paradigm,” Environment and Planning A 38 , pages 38(2006). 4. Tim Cresswell, On the Move : Mobility in the Modern Western World (New York: Routledge, 2006). p. 14. 5. Kevin Hannam, Mimi Sheller, and John Urry, “Editorial: Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings,” Mobilities 1, no. 1 (2006). 6. Val Colic-Peisker, “Free Floating in the Cosmopolis? Exploring the Identity-Belonging of Transnational Knowledge Workers,” Global Networks 10(2010). 7. Bryceson and Vuorela, “Transnational Families in the Twenty-First Century.” 8. See Marcela Ramirez, Zlatko Skrbiš, and Michael Emmison, “Transnational Family Reunions as Lived Experience: Narrating a Salvadoran Autoethnography,” Identities 14, no. 4 (2007). 9. Mark-Anthony Falzon, “‘Bombay, Our Cultural Heart’: Rethinking the Relation between Homeland and Diaspora,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 26, no. 4 (2003). 10. Carmen Voigt-Graf, “Transnationalism and the Indo-Fijian Diaspora: The Relationship of Indo-Fijians to India and Its People ” Journal of Intercultural Studies 29, no. 1 (2008). 11. See Alice Pung, “Two Cultures and a Baby: On Pregnancy and Birth, Tradition and Family,” The Monthly 2015. When Alice took her new born son to her Cambodian grandparents’ house in Melbourne, she looked around her and said, “We are four generations under one roof again.” (p. 39). 12. Leonard, Locating Home : India ’ s Hyderabadis Abroad . p. 266. 166 S. SINGH

13. Rubén G. Rumbaut, “Severed or Sustained Attachments? Language, Identity, and Imagined Communities in the Post-Immigrant Generation,” in The Changing Face of Home : The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation , ed. Peggy Levitt and Mary C. Waters (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002). See also Nancy Foner, “Second- Generation Transnationalism, Then and Now,” ibid. Leonard, Locating Home : India ’ s Hyderabadis Abroad . 14. Rumbaut, “Severed or Sustained Attachments? Language, Identity, and Imagined Communities in the Post-Immigrant Generation.” p. 91. 15. Rashmere Bhatti, “From Sojourners to Settlers,” in A Punjabi Sikh Community in Australia : From Indian Sojourners to Australian Citizens , ed. Rashmere Bhatti and Verne A. Dusenbery(A Centenary of Federation Project supported by the Commonwealth and presented by Woolgoolga Neighbourhood Centre Inc, 2001). p. 49. 16. Verne A. Dusenbery, “Punjabi Sikh Positionings in Australia,” ibid. 17. Peggy Levitt, “The Ties That Change: Relations to the Ancestral Home over the Life Cycle,” in The Changing Face of Home : The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation , ed. Peggy Levitt and Mary C. Waters (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002). 18. Selvaraj Velayutham and Amanda Wise, “Moral Economies of a Translocal Village:Obligation and Shame among South Indian Transnational Migrants,” Glob al Networks 5, no. 1 (2005). 19. M. G. Vassanji, The in-between World of Vikram Lall , (2005) ed. (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2003). 20. Shalini Shankar, Desi Land (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008). 21. Georges E. Fouron and Nina Glick Schiller, “The Generation of Identity: Redefi ning the Second Generation within a Transnational Social Field,” in Migration , Transnationalization , and Race in a Changing New York, ed. Héctor R. Cordero-Guzmán, Robert C. Smith, and Ramón Grosfoguel (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001). CHAPTER 8

Recent Student Migrants: A Story of Mobility

I am sitting in a village near Tarn Taran in Punjab in the winter afternoon sun in Pargat Singh’s compound. He has a large landholding. The house is new, the wheat is growing and I can hear the buffaloes. His two daughters are settled overseas, one in Melbourne and the other in Canada. His cousins are also overseas. His wife brings out sweets and pakoras with brewed tea. His mother is on a charpoy , a bed woven with twine, surrounded by his daughter’s brother-in-law and sister-in-law. Pargat tells of his sister’s husband Puran Singh who was offered a good job in the USA. He went there fi rst, and the plan was that his wife would follow. Puran returned in two months, saying “My heart did not fi t there.” Pargat says it became a family joke: “Two people came back from America. One was Columbus and the other was Bhai (Brother) Puran Singh.” The joke would have lost its punch if he had talked to the student participants in Australia. The migration of students to Australia is shrouded in transience and uncertainty. They come on temporary visas. Permanent Residence (PR) is possible under stipulated conditions, but not guaranteed. The rules between 1999 and 2013 changed toward longer temporary work visas and fewer sure pathways to PR. It is a precarious mobility. If student migrants get a PR visa, they have the option to settle, but the default is temporariness, return or further mobility. Students’ precarious mobility is not only different from the earlier migrants who came to settle, it is also different from the recent skilled workers who have come at a later life stage with life savings and a PR visa. Students are also different from the transnational knowledge workers who

© The Author(s) 2016 167 S. Singh, Money, Migration, and Family, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54886-3_8 168 S. SINGH have the skills that allow them to choose to move countries following professional opportunities. 1 Students and their families together make the decision for the student to come to Australia, stay or move on. This decision is based on an assessment of the opportunities available in India and Australia. It is a different kind of decision than the one made by my family who left Rawalpindi for Delhi because of the Partition of India in 1947. The students and their families have more agency and choice than the desperate bid for a life and a future by refugees and asylum seekers who come by boat to Australia. The option to stay is decided by a government regime based on changing rules, expectations and procedures. But once there is a right to stay, the student and his or her family decide whether it is more profi table to stay, return, go between India and Australia or move on. PR gives the students an additional option for economic prosperity through individual and family transnational mobility. 2

THE EDUCATION-MIGRATION NEXUS Students have traditionally been sojourners. In Australia, in the late 1990s, students were cast as potential migrants. Like some other OECD countries Australia linked education and migration policy. The education- migration nexus aimed to get migrants with skills needed in Australia. Potential migrants would pay for their acquisition of skills. Further periods of temporary work would ensure they had learnt how to live and work in Australia. These “designer migrants” 3 would lead to a more educated and skilled workforce for Australia. 4 The policy worked as intended till 2004–2005. During the transnational family phase of the study, I met students like Arvind in his late 30s who came to study in Australia in 1997. His graduate education led him directly to professional employment. Harbans in his early 30s, who came to study in 2004, is established in business. Even those like Charandeep who came in 2005 to study at a university found their occupational and residency paths relatively uncomplicated. Five of the six university students participating in the 2010 student study came in 2005, and the sixth came in 2006. They were from major cities with a relatively good grasp of English. They are in professional jobs. Two had already bought homes when I interviewed them in 2010. RECENT STUDENT MIGRANTS: A STORY OF MOBILITY 169

In 2004–2005, Australia included trade occupations in the list that would lead to extra points for migration. Entry requirements were low- ered and the length of the course decreased. Migration then became the main draw card. In the small towns and villages of Punjab, the excitement was not about the excellence of Australia’s education, but the brick houses that have been built with the money sent home by migrants. Twenty-fi ve of the 35 students I interviewed already had a bachelor’s degree or above. Education in Australia was simply a ticket enabling migration that would shore up the future of the student and ensure the prosperity of their families in India. 5 This linked education and migration policy attracted students more often from regional cities and villages. Most of those who came after 2007 enrolled in private institutes for cooking, hospitality or community welfare as an easy route to PR. Many, particularly from Punjab, had a poor grasp of English. I interviewed 13 of the 35 participants in the student study wholly or mainly in Punjabi rather than English. The numbers of Indian students exploded. In 2000 there were 10,572 international students from India in Australia. This number grew to 27,661 in 2005 and by December 2010 the number had grown nearly fourfold to 100,310. 6

Migration Policy Moves from Settlement to a Precarious Mobility Australia’s search for skilled labor since the late 1990s also signaled an important change in migration policy. Migration no longer automatically meant settlement, as it did with the earlier migrants. Temporary migration, with the option of moving to PR while onshore, became the experience of a larger part of the migrant population. The migration was not only temporary but also increasingly uncertain for longer periods of time. In 2010, the rules for permanent residency changed for the students. Completing courses in hospitality, cooking and community welfare was no longer suffi cient for PR. The Skilled Occupation List replaced the earlier Migrant Occupations in Demand List. A higher level of English profi ciency was required together with evidence of work experience. These changes aimed to correct some of the defi ciencies of earlier policy and its implementation. They were accompanied with longer temporary work visas after completion of the course. Long processing times added to the wait in the limbo between temporary and permanent residence. 7 As Robertson says, the students’ migration journey has become staggered with multiple gates. 170 S. SINGH

This process of staggered entrance creates extended periods of precarious- ness for student-migrants and makes their experiences of migration distinct from the settler migrations more historically common in Australia and other settler nations. 8

These changes in migration policy happened at a time when there is a greater circularity and mobility among recent migrants. The late Graeme Hugo argued that recent migrants, particularly those from Asia who have migrated since 2001, migrate for mobility rather than permanent settlement. 9 About 20 percent “of all settler arrivals in Australia leave permanently to return to their home country or travel to a third country.” 10 He says “Complexity, circularity and reciprocity are structural features of the migration system, not peripheral or ephemeral elements.” 11 Return migration has always been part of migration, but unlike past patterns, it is the younger rather than the older migrants who return. Some of these move- ments are planned, and some evolve over time. 12 Migration for mobility includes those who use indirect settlement migration, such as gaining citizenship or residency in New Zealand to be eligible for entry to Australia. Some use Australia as a stepping stone to migrate onward or “accelerate” mobility by moving to other countries. 13

WHY DO INDIAN STUDENTS MIGRATE TO AUSTRALIA? Indian students migrate to Australia to get a middle-class future for themselves and their families in India. For some like Akash, whose story was told in Chap. 5 , the hope of working and living in Australia was the only way he could look after his family. For others like Dharma in Chap. 2 , it is a choice to experience a new world and expand their horizons. Friends who are already there are an added impetus. For two of the families I interviewed in India, the sons came to study in Australia to get away from rich, domineering fathers. At least two in the student and transnational family studies came for a better education. Families speak of sending their children to Australia, particularly their sons, as a way of getting them settled. In the small towns and villages in Punjab, I heard families say they wanted to send their sons away from drugs and violence. Looking at the rich and gracious life style one family had in Punjab, I asked, “Why did you send your son away from this?” The father said, “At least he will be safe.” RECENT STUDENT MIGRANTS: A STORY OF MOBILITY 171

Not everyone migrates. Pargat Singh above is clear his 22-year-old son is not going to move overseas. He says when his father’s younger brother died, all his children were overseas. There was no son to bathe their father’s body before cremation. It fell on the nephews. Pargat remembers that and says that if his son goes overseas there will be nobody to bathe his body. The son also needs to stay in India to manage their substantial property. My cousin in her late 80s also stands out. She heads a four-generation joint family in Amritsar. All of them remain in India, though migration has touched the extended family from the maternal, paternal and affi nal sides. My nephew’s wife thinks the key is that they gave the children the freedom to travel. They sent the children on their own to visit family in the UK, USA and Canada, or just to travel. The children saw the long hours of work, no help at home and the loneliness of living without family. The children decided they were better off in India. It helped that the family is well off with multiple strands of business. The children have an education that allows them to set themselves up in professional practice or become part of the family business. Not everybody in India has these options and freedoms. Gita and Govind’s story below shows the diffi culty of getting a job that can afford a middle-class life in India. The family is part of the decision-making process to move to Australia.

Chasing a Middle-Class Life: Gita and Govind’s Story Gita (in her late 20s) and Govind (in his early 30s) migrated to Australia in 2008. Both come from upper middle-class families in a regional city in Punjab. I meet Gita and Govind in their rented house which is sparsely furnished and has an old-style TV. Gita and Govind have graduate degrees but they found it diffi cult to get a job. Govind got occasional jobs which gave them pocket money, while living with his parents. After they had two daughters Govind felt he needed to support his family. Govind tried to get a job in the education sector but the permanent jobs in Punjab were frozen. He then tried a call center where the starting salary was ₹4000 a month (US$83.3 in 2010). This job also meant he had to move away from home to Bangalore. He tried marketing but earnings were purely on a commission basis. None of these jobs would offer the middle-class life his parents had enjoyed. After two years of searching for a good job, he began thinking of migration. He had distant relatives in Canada, but Gita had a brother 172 S. SINGH in Melbourne. Govind and his father discussed the choice between Melbourne, Sydney and Bangalore, and thought that Melbourne offered the most potential, even though it was a considerable investment. His mother did not want them to go. “She was very emotional,” Gita says. Gita qualifi ed for a student visa and chose to do community welfare. They left their children with Govind’s parents. It seemed an unspoken sorrow waiting to spill over. They came with $2000 in hand. Getting a job in Melbourne also proved diffi cult. Working in an Indian restaurant meant poor and erratic pay. It cost $1200 to get the certifi cate for work in aged care. They were loathe to ask Govind’s parents for more money. Govind delivered marketing material. He got $35 a day for an area. “If you walk six to seven hours a day you can make $100 a day. But that too is not every day.” He was unsuccessful getting a license for taxi driving. In the fi rst few months with no place and no job, Govind wanted to go back. But Gita said they should persevere. Govind’s parents were retiring and Gita and Govind did not want to become a liability. When his parents sent him money for a car, he was able to go through a recruitment agency for factory work. Now Govind works as a casual factory worker—$18 an hour and it is a good week if he works fi ve days. The middle-class job has not eventuated but they have been able to pay for their living expenses. They hope to save enough for the fees for Gita’s last semester. Govind says the manual work he does in a factory has changed him. “In India I used to get up at 6am to play cricket. Here I wake up at 5am to go to work.” He has not told his parents about his factory work. He knows they will be distressed. But Govind’s parents will come to know, because they are visiting soon, and bringing back the children. Everything is still hanging in the air, but they have the confi dence they can survive.

EXPERIENCING AUSTRALIA Listening to Gita and Govind, I came away with the feeling that life had been a struggle in Australia. They left a gracious family life and friends, and lost the early years of their daughters’ childhood for the possibility of a fi nancially independent life. Govind’s experience of working in Australia is different from the harbor view at work seen in Dil Chahta Hai. They are like others in the student study whose English in the beginning was ordinary. They had no previous RECENT STUDENT MIGRANTS: A STORY OF MOBILITY 173 work experience. They are more fortunate than Akash in Chap. 5 who faced the constant pressure of paying for rent, food, fees, repaying the loan and sending money home. As with other students, Gita and Govind have come out from under and are proud to be able to sustain themselves. Like many of the other student participants, they found little support among the early migrants or the second generation. But they were more isolated than many of the single and younger migrants who found support among students from their home town.

Recent Migrants Support Each Other The support networks for the international Indian students comprise those who have come recently from their home town. Recent skilled migrants or older students from their home town are also seen as mentors, easing their way into housing, work and business. The students’ world is often totally Indian in terms of study, living arrangements and employment. Ekta in Chap. 4 is unusual in the support she found among her work mates and neighbors. Only three of the 35 students named non-Indians among their fi ve best friends. Many of these relationships with other students and recent migrants from India stand in the place of absent family. 14 In Dharma’s case these relationships have lasted even beyond his death. However, not all these relationships are positive. Ravi, 30, from Kerala says he has been cheated out of a job by an Andhra student and fl eeced by a Gujarati student who promised him a farm job. Harbinder, 29, says that on her fi rst day on a train in Melbourne, a Punjabi student sitting opposite her suggested he would look after her if she slept with him. Indian students fi nding their main support with other students from their home town could be particular to my sample of Indian students. Most were registered with private institutes rather than universities. Some were not fl uent in English. It goes against another study that found international students had a mix of networks extending to other international and local students. That study was based on a diverse group of graduate, undergraduate and vocational international students in universities, TAFE and private colleges. 15 There is a chasm between the Indian students and the early migrants. Gita and Govind say they feel unwelcome in the Indian community. On the streets and in the markets, in the beginning when they saw Indians, they would say Sat Sri Akal or smile. More often than not, people would 174 S. SINGH avoid them. They stopped greeting other Indians. They continued to go to the Sikh temple, though there too they felt unwelcome, as few greeted them. Many of the early Indian migrants judge the students harshly, saying they are bringing down the reputation of the Indians as a professional and respected community. This neglects the fact that many Indian student migrants are now in professional jobs and show great enterprise. However since most taxi drivers are Indian, they have become the face of the recent migrants. Some of the student participants also brush aside the success of the early Indians, particularly those who came through family reunion. They see making money in factory work, restaurants or carpet cleaning businesses as lacking status. This disconnect between the early and recent migrants is not unusual among migrant populations. The three cohorts of post-war Italian migrants to Australia also lack connection because of different socio-economic characteristics and the context of migration. 16 In Singapore, there is overt antagonism between the “true Singaporeans” and the new Indian temporary labor as well as the “foreign talent.” 17 Most often it is Indian students’ experience of working in Indian work- places that have cemented their negativity toward the early migrants. Of the seven students who worked or inquired about work in an Indian restaurant only one reported a positive experience. The other six in 2010 say the wages are low, training gets extended, and the hours are long. They say Indian restaurants make you work for free for one day to a month. The norm is $35–$50 for 7–12 hours. If you quit, it is not unusual for the restaurant to keep back 10–12 days’ wages. One of the six speaks of sexual harassment. None of the student participants was working in Indian restaurants at the time of the study. The experience of Indian students in the workplace is in tune with that of international students in general. 18 The early Indian migrants set up structures of support for the recently arrived students, but most of these have failed the students. Only 4 of the 35 student participants were closely connected to Indian community organizations—one through hockey, two through Gujarati dance and one through voluntary work. For two of the three Christian students, churches fi gured prominently in their stories of support. 19 Gurdwaras situated where the recent migrants are settling attract large and growing congregations. Recent migrants are yet to be meaningfully represented in executive committees, but their sheer numbers will in time dictate the look and feel of Indian organizations in Australia. RECENT STUDENT MIGRANTS: A STORY OF MOBILITY 175

As the student-migrants settle, they build and lead their own community organizations such as Australian branches of the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO), the Subcontinent Friends of Labor, the Indian Executive Club, Celebrate India and the Australia India Welfare and Cultural Society. Some organizations like Wyndham Jags Cricket Club, Sur Sanjh Australia and the Multicultural Seniors Association of Victoria, Inc. focus on the Western suburbs of Melbourne where many recent migrants have bought or rented houses. Other initiatives involve the setting up of Facebook pages refl ecting radio, newspapers, women’s events and the Indian community. 20 Through these organizations, recent migrants seek a greater voice in the Indian and wider Australian communities.

Gender Behavior Disconnects the Second Generation and Indian Students Indian students and the second generation do not connect and judge each other harshly. Only 4 of the 35 student migrants say they know any second-generation Indian Australians. Three are connected due to work and social outings, but neither side invites the other home. One continues to meet the daughter of the family friend in whose house she stayed when she fi rst came to Australia. Jay, an international student in his mid to late 20s, thinks the second- generation Indian Australians are self-centered and only look after themselves, compared to the Indian students who have the responsibility for looking after their parents. Chand, 24, a student who is part of the transnational study says he cannot relate even though he has a cousin who grew up in Australia. He feels his cousin is more Australian than Indian and that blocks close connection. The second-generation participants are even more dismissive. At times they refer to the Indian students as “FOB” meaning “Fresh off the Boat.” They see them as talking too loudly and not wanting to adapt to Australian culture. Sixteen of the 20 second-generation Indian Australian participants say they do not know a single Indian international student through study, work or social circles. The second-generation participants speaking at a time when there were racial assaults against Indian students empathized with their pressures of being without support and family. But they did not identify with them. Harsh, 24, a second-generation professional says when she saw TV images 176 S. SINGH of Indian students demonstrating, she feared others may think she is an Indian student. For the second-generation Indian Australians, particularly the women, the chasm is because of their experience of the students’ unacceptable gender behavior. Three of the female second-generation participants relate only negative encounters with Indian students at musical evenings, in supermarkets, taxis, and the streets of Melbourne and Adelaide. Kanta, 27, whose sister is married to an Indian student who came in 1999, says after an Indian concert, a pack of students began to use sexist language, one nudging the other. They assumed these modern looking young women did not understand Hindi or Punjabi. Kanta thinks the freedom of being away from family makes them behave in unacceptable ways. At times, it is a grating of different cultures of communication and privacy. Questions that are considered normal in India can seem intrusive in Australia. Harsh says she feels uncomfortable around Indian male students. They are often in a “big pack of their friends” and “one of them will come up to you and say, ‘Excuse me. Are you from India?’” She adds, “I was in Safeway and I wanted to buy some capsicum…, I went to the grocery guy and I asked him ‘Do you guys have any capsicum today?’ He wouldn’t answer my question. He just kept asking me if I was from India.” Jaya, in her early 20s, a second-generation Indian, and herself a university student, says, “I have been in many taxis where the driver has been Indian and I have actually felt unsafe in that taxi. Like … basically now, we, as girls, we never take a taxi on our own if it’s late at night.” She adds,

They immediately ask me if I am from India and then little things like they change their rear view mirror so they can see your face. And then they just talk a bit too much and try and fi nd out too much information about yourself and (continue) staring at you.

Only one of the Indian students refl ected on some of his early missteps. Charandeep in his early 30s says, “When I fi rst came I asked a girl in class where she lived and all that. She was upset and said ‘You are getting too personal.’ Then I realized.” He, however, put this learning at the same level as learning not to talk loudly on the phone and that loud music was not acceptable. Some Indian student-migrant taxi drivers have been involved in cases of sexual assault harassment. 21 It is diffi cult to get fi gures from the courts because ethnicity is not recorded. But talking to court offi cers, I hear that RECENT STUDENT MIGRANTS: A STORY OF MOBILITY 177 even they are reluctant to take taxis after they have heard the cases. When I tell them I have been treated with deference and respect in taxis with Indian taxi drivers, they point out that I am not young and not white. Students in one group interview say they know Indian students who behave disgracefully both with white women and Indian female students. I ask whether this kind of gender behavior is because student-migrants, particularly those who come from villages and small towns have grown up with gender seclusion. Chandra, 23, from a regional city, and who had gone to English schools dismissed this saying “this picture of gender exclusion is out dated.” Meera, a second-generation Indian discussed in the previous chapter, says her cousins from a metropolitan city in India behave in a manner more licentious than here and it is apparently accepted by their parents. Punjabi fi lms such as Singh Is Kinng and Crook : It ’ s Good To Be Bad portray Australia as a land where drink fl ows and white women freely offer sex. This happens even in sensitive fi lms such as Bhaag Milka Bhaag , where there is the compulsory romp with a young white woman in Melbourne. Sexual harassment, like family violence, has not been overtly discussed in the Indian community. It is seen as bringing shame, tarnishing the whole community because of the acts of a few. There are thus hardly any efforts at educating young Indian men in appropriate gender behavior. The conversation soon shifts to recent Indian migrants as the ones who fl ock to the temples. They are the ones who observe the traditions of respect and deference to elders. I have had my feet touched more often by young Indians in Melbourne than in Delhi. But as the court offi cer says I am neither young nor white. This social problem remains hanging in the air.

Working in Australia The story of work in Australia is one of contrasts. There are the stories of struggle and exploitation at the bottom. The most vulnerable students are those who have recently arrived, with poor English, from villages and regional cities and with little fi nancial support from their parents. They are forced to accept jobs with poor wages and unreasonable conditions. They move on to better jobs as soon as they can. Sharan, 19, came to Australia in 2009 after studying Plus 2, that is, 12 years of school. She had been in the country only ten months when I interviewed her as part of a group of students from Punjab. She comes from a regional city in Punjab. Her English is poor. She says in Punjabi, 178 S. SINGH

“I worked in an Indian home all day for $30 a day, 7am to 4pm. … There was no other work that I could fi nd. When you go looking for a job, they ask for experience. But if you cannot get a job, you do not have experience.” She left as soon as she could. She says, “I now clean for a white woman. She gives me $12 an hour.” This was still below the going rate for cleaning in 2010, but for Sharan it was a step up. On the other side is Dharma who at 25 had three businesses and already had bought land to build a house for himself and his family. Students who came to study in universities in 2005 and those in the transnational sample who came earlier are in professional jobs. They have their PR, and in 2010 all but two own their own homes. Jasbir, 31, who came to study at a university in 2003—his story was told in Chap. 6 —is now working in fi nance and about to move into his home that is being built. He says,

One of the best things that I have learnt from our work life here is, you have to set goals for yourself and you need to work towards them. … I wanted to be in my house by the time I was 30 … I will be 31 when I move in but I give myself credit marks.

Jasbir says he feels connected to Australia. There are “good people here.” At his fi rst workplace, he met an Australian family who made him part of their family. Now with their home built, he will feel settled in Australia. He says,

When we move into the new house … and you are able to put food on the table every night, good food, and you have your family with you. You are married, you have your wife. I think that is the defi nition of one being settled….

Students with previous experience in their fi elds also got well-paid jobs. This is despite the fact that most employers want full-time work and prefer to hire permanent residents. Ekta, in Chap. 4 , had no trouble getting a job with a large bank in Melbourne. Jaidev in his mid-20s and Tirath, 29, who had previous experience in hospitality also found jobs in good restaurants. Jay, in his mid to late 20s, is working in an international hotel. Though he comes from a middle-class family in a village in South India, he speaks fl uent English. He had worked for two years in an international hotel in India and then worked a year in Europe to save up for further education. RECENT STUDENT MIGRANTS: A STORY OF MOBILITY 179

Within his fi rst seven days, he was working at an international hotel. He sends his parents about $300 a month. Students without fl uent English and no prior experience have shown much fl exibility in the work they do while they are studying in Australia. Jaswant, in his early 20s, comes from a city in South India. He had done a diploma in food production in India. He went looking for a job in a restaurant, but the person said he did not want anybody but the butcher did. So he is working with the butcher. Others are working in supermarkets, security, laundry services, cleaning, factory work, telemarketing, driving trucks and of course taxi driving. With the fl exibility there is perseverance. This leads to students moving up step by step from a casual cleaning job to a night contract, from a car park attendant to a customer services offi cer. It also takes them from casual jobs to more permanent jobs. Kailash, 25, comes from a middle-class family in a small town in Kerala. He arrived in Australia in 2008. Speaking in heavily accented English, he describes a checkered work history. He worked in a factory for four months, was laid off and began to do “cash in hand” cleaning jobs for $10 an hour. He found these jobs by going door to door. Then he worked in another factory for the summer. He then decided to do a personal care assistance course in Preston for $1250. A few months later, he got a job as a cook in an aged care facility plus some work as a personal carer. But that organization lost accreditation. Through the Internet he got his present job in Gippsland for 20 hours a week. They pay him award wages. He bought a car which allows him to live in Gippsland and attend classes in Melbourne three days a week. This kind of temporary work, often unskilled or semi-skilled, is a shift from the students’ middle-class family life in India. Few have had to work in India in restaurants, drive taxis, become security offi cers or clean offi ces. When the hero in Crook says it has been his ambition to drive a taxi, it is a tongue in cheek remark. Indian ideas of doing well in life are to have a white-collar job, a professional position or a successful business. Though taxi driving is now openly talked about in the small towns of Punjab as having fi nanced houses back home, some student migrants are often reluctant to talk openly of what they do in Australia. As Govind says, it is diffi cult for parents at home to understand the context of life and work in Australia. Others like Lakshman, 30, whom we met in Chap. 6 , saw his friends working in call centers, in factories and as security guards to pay their 180 S. SINGH fees and expenses. He also saw that in Australia work is seen as good, whatever the status. Six months into his Masters of Business Accounting at a university in 2005, he got work as a security guard in a factory. After the fi rst night, Lakshman phoned and told his father. His father erupted. “What house do you belong to?” he asked his son. “What are you doing? You have gone to a low level,” his father said. “He told me there is a lot of money in taxi driving. I asked him, ‘Do you know what family you come from?’” Lakshman did not work the next night as a security guard. And he stopped thinking about driving a taxi. Later, he went into marketing, which both father and son thought was more useful. Most of the Indian students and student-migrants in this study have come through their diffi cult early years and dealt with fi nancial stress in addition to the diffi culties of settling in a new country. Students are repaying their student loans, while three are also able to send some extra money home. Despite their troubles, their experience has led to greater work skills, income, more reliance on one’s self and/or spouse, and dignity of work. The recurring theme is that they have learnt to be independent and no longer rely wholly on their families.

“IT HAPPENED TO MY FRIEND”: RACISM IN MELBOURNE Overlaying the diffi culties of establishing support networks and fi nding appropriate work were the racial assaults on Indian students in 2009 and 2010. In early 2010, the Indian media ran daily news of Indian international students being robbed, assaulted and killed in Australia, particularly in Melbourne. It was reported that 32 Indian students died in Australia between 2003 and 2009. 22 The Indian High Commission said 130 Indians have been attacked. Police said 1447 Indians were victims of reported crime in Victoria, in the year ending July 2008. 23 The publicity about these attacks was so great that parents continually rang their children studying in Melbourne to see if they were safe. Racist assaults against Indian students were at the center of the 2010 Punjabi fi lm Crook , complete with battered Indian students, Indian taxi drivers singing, white girls in nightclubs and gangs in balaclavas. On my visits to India, when people heard I lived in Melbourne, they asked “Are you safe?” Indian student enrolment in Australia plummeted 59.6 percent from 120,913 Indian students enrolled in 2009 to 48,822 in 2013. Only in 2014, the numbers began to creep up to 63,096. 24 RECENT STUDENT MIGRANTS: A STORY OF MOBILITY 181

There was an early denial in Australia that these attacks were racist. “The denial of racism is a familiar hallmark of contemporary racism….” 25 Australian governments at the state and federal level, together with the education industry, blamed the victims and labeled the crimes as “opportu- nistic.” They argued some degree of violence is “normal” in Australian cities. 26 Victorian police saw them as soft targets because they traveled alone late at night with expensive gadgets. Earlier, the police had advised Indian students not to speak loudly in their own languages in public places. 27 This was an eerie reminder of the advice given to German Jewish migrants and refugees arriving in 1939. The Australian Jewish Welfare Society fearing a rise in anti-Semitism gave cards to the new arrivals reminding them not to speak German in the streets and trams and to “modulate your voices.” 28 There is still no defi nitive analysis of the circumstances of the crimes, the ethnicity of the victims or of the assailants. 29 The police have said that most of the perpetrators were teenagers and that alcohol and drug-related violence was behind many of the attacks. It is speculated that the perpetrators came from existing migrant groups in the outer suburbs, people who were reacting to the large numbers of Indian students displacing them in housing and jobs. 30 The debate in Australia has moved toward the need to recognize there are racist pockets and to demonstrate that these attacks will not be tolerated. 31 Half the 35 participants in the student study have experienced racist abuse or violence (seven participants) or say their close friends, family, fellow students or housemates have experienced racist violence (11 participants). Many incidents are not reported because of perceived police inaction and prejudice. Though nearly half the participants tell stories of racist abuse and violence, only 2 of the 35 participants talk of perhaps moving away because of racism—one from Melbourne to Perth and one returning to India. Harbinder, 29, from an upper middle-class family in northern India came to study in Australia in January 2009. After working a late shift she got off at West Footscray at 12.30 am, and was set upon by four men. She says,

… I don’t know what nationality they were, but they were funkily dressed up, with colored hair and they were boozed. One of the guys grabbed me from my back, held me. I started screaming. He clutched my arms, so I was really struggling to get my phone out. Because my roommate’s phone was 182 S. SINGH

on the speed dial, it accidentally got dialled to her. … They thought I’d called the cops and they just left me there and ran away.

She reported it to the police the next day. The policeman asked “‘Did they steal anything from you? Did they take your money away?’ I’m like, ‘No, but isn’t this enough that my knees are bruised?’ So he’s like, ‘Well, there are no cameras there.’” Harbinder’s story is unusual in that she is one of the few women participants who speaks of racist abuse and violence. The others who experienced racial abuse themselves speak of being taunted in public transport or on the street with chants of “Indians go back.” The stories of racist violence against their friends are more graphic. They tell of a knife being held to a person’s throat, of a housemate being robbed of his mobile, watch and wallet, and of another being attacked on a city street. These stories of racism also reveal Indian students’ “black and white” image of the ethnic categories in Australia. The participants who speak in Punjabi use the terms gorai (white) and kalai (black) to talk of the perpetrators. Australia is divided into “pure Australians” or “real Australians” and the others. Ravi from Kerala refers to “real Australians” as those “born in Australia” or those who have lived “in this country for more than 20 years [and have] a British origin.” He sees Australia and Australians as good. The problem is with the “others,” that is, the “new migrants.” Two say that the racism in India is worse. Another says he was taken aback when one of his Australian customers at his shop accused the Indians of being racist, saying, “You guys have your own businesses, you hire only Indians. In Australian businesses we hire everybody.” Ravi speaks of the importance of learning to live with the Australian community and to appreciate their ways. He sounds like the ending of Crook. Despite its Bollywood touches of gangs and criminality, the fi lm ends by showing that the way forward is for Indians and Australians to live together.

RETURNING OR MOVING ON The majority of the student participants—23 of the 35—are caught in a limbo of precarious mobility, not knowing whether they will have the option to stay. Even then, it does not mean that given PR, they will stay. Among the 35 student participants, the six who came in 2005 and 2006 to study have chosen to settle. Another four are exploring options to move to the USA or Canada. Two plan to return. RECENT STUDENT MIGRANTS: A STORY OF MOBILITY 183

Moving again is on the radar for four of the student participants studying commercial cookery. Joshua in his mid-20s had come to Australia because he could not get into the USA. He thinks he will now go there to do a Masters in Engineering, as he had originally planned. Jaswant, in his early 20s, wants to change tack completely and move to work with wild life in Canada or Europe. Another two, Jay and Jaidev, both in their late 20s, are planning to move, frustrated by the change in the rules of permanent residency in 2010. Jay says “We invested a lot of money and time to come here. Now they have changed the rules. At that point Australia looked very promising. Now it is not.” Jay and Jaidev’s Australian qualifi cation in commercial cookery gives them a global passport. Together with their international work experience it transforms them into “designer migrants” for the global market. Their desire and ability to move may not translate to actual moves. Charandeep had planned to move to Canada, but after he got the job to which he aspired, he bought a house and his parents have joined him in Australia. Jayant in his mid-20s had always planned to return after his commercial cookery course to join his upper middle-income family in the hotel business. He was one of the two who had come to Australia in order to get better trained. For Ravi, 30, the decision to return is the result of the uncertainty because of the rule changes in 2010. His wife and child have a visa to come to Australia. He has decided against them coming. He says “I think I should stay for another two years, clear my liabilities, and just go back.” He hopes he will regain the ground he lost by selling his electronics business to come to study in Australia. Recent migrants also return so they can care for family, what Baldassar calls the “mobility of care.” 32 Dharma was sure he would return if his family did not want to move to Australia. Sumit, 36, who participated in the transnational study, returned for family reasons and his story is told below. Recent migrants are also returning because they have evaluated that family support and/or income in India is better than in Australia. Asha, in her mid-30s, who migrated in 1997 with her husband who was a student, talks of two families who have moved back. One is a dentist who could not work in Australia as a dentist. Her husband got a very good offer in India and they moved back. Asha’s brother and sister-in-law also returned to India. They had a yoga and Pilates business that was doing well in Sydney, but they got tired of doing all the work at home and in the business. Asha’s sister-in-law comes from a wealthy family so they went back and started their own fi tness business in Mumbai and are fl ourishing. 184 S. SINGH

Two in the transnational study choose to come and go. Giresh, 50, who migrated to Australia via the USA as a skilled migrant in 1994, has chosen to have his family based in Australia, but he spends much of his time in India developing his social enterprise. It is a way of giving back. He has also built a home in Tamil Nadu, so that his wife and children will be comfortable in their own environment when they spend time with him in India. This move also places him close to his mother and sister who remain in Tamil Nadu. Faraj, 34, also plans to commute. He came as a graduate student in 2002. He comes from a wealthy business family in West Bengal and is presently a professional in the educational sector. He also runs two businesses in Australia. When I interviewed him in 2013, he hoped that by the time he was 40, he would have a supermarket of educational services in India. This will mean he and his family will to and fro between India and Australia. His base in India is fi rm as they will be living with his joint family. I bumped into him a year and a half later and he told me they were expecting their second child. His mother-in-law and sister were coming to help with the baby. When I met him again in 2015, he had had a son. He detailed how he made sure the caesarian section was performed at the auspicious time of 4.30 pm after the 17th of the month. He was confi dent his global education project will start before he is 40.

Sumit Returns but Moves Again Sumit’s story is of a migrant who returned, set up business in India and is now moving again—this time to New Zealand. His story is an example of the circularity of migration including return and further mobility. It also tells how a returning migrant faces a challenge of adjustment which in some cases is more diffi cult than migration. Sumit’s story is different from the stories of earlier migrants returning so that they could die in the home country, as happened to Murali’s mother who went from Malaysia to her village in South India. It is also different from the journeys captured by migrants where they go back to see if they can reconnect and in the process take stock of themselves. As Alain Mabanckou says when he returned to Pointe-Noire in the Republic of Congo, after 23 years away, RECENT STUDENT MIGRANTS: A STORY OF MOBILITY 185

I’m just like a black stork, whose years of wandering now outnumber the years left to him to live. I have landed here, by the stream of my origins, one foot suspended, hoping I might stop the fl ow of my existence, whose smooth course is troubled by the myriad leaves blown down from the family tree. 33

Sumit, 36, an international Indian student stayed for fi ve years in Sydney. When he was 31, his parents called him back to their regional city in Punjab so that he could get married and perhaps start a business. He also refers to other “family issues” but does not elaborate. He returned just before he got PR in Australia. He says “The family side is good,” but his experience of return has been disappointing. He got offers of jobs, but he wanted to follow the tradition and started a restaurant business with a partner who had also lived overseas. The relationship with the business partner has remained good. But having to deal with government corruption, broken promises, continually ensuring the staff are doing their job and working 14–15 hours six to seven days a week has taken its toll. “Look at me,” he says. “My beard was jet black before. I am 36. I take two pills a day for high blood pressure. My beard is going white. … If I had worked for fi ve years like this in Australia, I would have been a millionaire.” Sumit says if he had come from a rich business family like one of his friends who returned, and joined the family business it may have been different. Sumit and his business partner are planning to leave for New Zealand. Sumit hopes the business will sell; otherwise, he will leave it with a cousin. Sumit’s savings will enable him to go to New Zealand on a Long Term Business visa. His business partner is going on a spouse visa as his wife will be studying in New Zealand. Sumit has been under so much stress that his mother and brothers agree he should leave if that makes him happy. He has pulled back from long working hours and now spends more time with his wife and four-year-old son and three or four friends. He hopes that New Zealand will again offer him a taste of the life he lived in Sydney, except that this time he will have his wife and child with him. He will also have his business partner and a few people he already knows in New Zealand. He says, “I was happy in Sydney.” He fondly remembers outings to the Blue Mountains and the Great Ocean Road, the possibility of engaging continually in sports like swimming, golf and go karting, going walking, ordered driving, delicious food and people minding their own business. 186 S. SINGH

He says in Sydney there was no one to ask what he was doing. “When I came here my family keeps asking me ‘Where are you going?’ … Now that I have some responsibilities for my family, I can understand why they are asking me.” He says his extended family is now well settled, partly because he used to send money home. His family relationships have strengthened. They are still a joint family with four individual homes close to each other. But his experience of running a business in India has given him a white and black picture of Australia/New Zealand on one side and India on the other. He says, “My mind is not settled,” even though he has his family, a home of his own and a business. “I want more peace. A good life. A clean life. You can’t buy satisfaction with money.” When I spoke to him in early 2014, nothing worked for him in India. He says there is no place to go out; they are not able to have any fun, there are no sporting facilities. Traffi c on the road is unruly. See my one-year-old car. It is banged on all sides. I ask “Are you worried you will be disappointed in New Zealand and the people?” He says, “I don’t think so. The system I want is there. I think what I want they have.” He is planning a restaurant. He has visited New Zealand and fi nds the country is very peaceful. They have very few people and there are opportunities. Will he miss his family? I ask. “Not much. Not the way I missed them before,” he says. He will remain connected to India and is keeping his home. He has fulfi lled his responsibilities to his extended family. Now his priority is to give his four-year-old son a better future. He says,

Now I have my own family. We should move back. I pray to God every day, whatever I can give them, please give them. It will be a dream come true for them. You can enjoy all the facilities, all the things. … You can enjoy your life.

He adds he has two friends who moved from Australia to the USA. “After 12–13 years they still say ‘I wish I had remained in Australia.’”

MOBILITY AND MIGRATION POLICY Recent migrants’ experience of mobility and migration has outpaced the policy debates. The previous debates around multiculturalism and/or assimilation have been overtaken by the importance of the transnational RECENT STUDENT MIGRANTS: A STORY OF MOBILITY 187 family. Policy moves toward temporary migration versus a settler nation have been overturned by the most desirable migrants opting for mobility. The dominant focus on the economic implications of migration needs to be supplemented with an understanding of the cultural and family context of recent migration. James Jupp quotes a German saying, “We sought only workers but we got people.” 34 The economic benefi ts of migration will only accrue to Australia if its policy ensures that the migrants have the kind of life they seek in the new country. Ignoring the social issues, may mean not being able to capitalize on foreign direct investment, the two-way fl ow of remittances; continuation of global education income and the social capital brought by migrants to nurture economic and political links between Australia and the source country. Australian migration policy has focused on controlling who can come in temporarily, who can stay permanently and who is eligible for citizenship. This tiered approach has behind it Australia’s needs for a young skilled labor force that can assure the country’s prosperity and the continuation of its welfare society. It also takes into account the positive economic implications of migration. The rebranding of the immigration portfolio to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection further emphasizes Australia’s desire to close its borders after allowing the migrants it wants. But Australian immigration policy has to be about more than borders. It also has to address the social and cultural factors that make these migrants stay. Australia can give migrants the right to stay, but migrants retain the right to move or return in a globalized world. Recent Indian migrants, particularly after skills acquired in Australia, have a global passport and see themselves as moving to whichever country offers them the best options for individual and family welfare. This is within the context of a resur- gent India, an increasingly global labor market, the norm of mobility and global networks of communication. India now makes it easier for its diaspora to return for short or long periods with the Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI). This is short of the dual citizenship that Australia offered its citizens in 2002, 35 but OCI removes barriers of work and residence from its returning diaspora. Australian migration policy needs to acknowledge the central role of the transnational family in migrants’ decisions to come, stay, move on or return. Some of the migrant decisions have to do with work, wages and 188 S. SINGH status. But as seen from the stories above, in India it is the migrant and his or her family who make the key decisions around migration. The next chapter makes this even more transparent as recent migrants reimagine the Indian joint family in Australia.

NOTES 1. Colic-Peisker, “Free Floating in the Cosmopolis? Exploring the Identity- Belonging of Transnational Knowledge Workers.”; ibid. 2. Michiel Baas, Imagined Mobility : Migration and Transnationalism among Indian Students in Australia (London: Anthem Press, 2010). 3. Simmons, “Economic Integration and Designer Immigrants: Canadian Policy in the 1990s.” 4. There is a more detailed discussion of the education-migration nexus in Shanthi Robertson, Transnational Student-Migrants and the State : The Education-Migration Nexus (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 5. Singh and Cabraal, “Indian Student Migrants in Australia: Issues of Community Sustainability.” 6. Australian Education Internatiional (AEI), “Aei International Student Enrolment Data 2010,” https://internationaleducation.gov.au/research/ International-Student-Data/Documents/INTERNATIONAL%20 STUDENT%20DATA/2010/2010Dec_0712.pdf . Accessed 14 April 2015; “International Student Data 2005,” https://internationaleducation.gov.au/research/International-Student- Data/Pages/International StudentData2005.aspx#1 . Accessed 14 April 2015; Australian Government Department of Education and Training, “Final Annual International Student Enrolment Statistics for 2000,” (2000). 7. For more detail see Robertson, Transnational Student-Migrants and the State : The Education-Migration Nexus . 8. Ibid. p. 68. 9. Graeme Hugo, “Australia’s Changing Population and the Future,” Migration Australia 1, no. 1 (2011). 10. Ibid. p. 35. 11. “In and out of Australia: Rethinking Indian and Chinese Skilled Migration to Australia,” Asian Population Studies 4, no. 3 (2008). p. 285. 12. “Australia’s Changing Population and the Future.”; “In and out of Australia: Rethinking Indian and Chinese Skilled Migration to Australia.” 13. Xiang, “Gender, Dowry and the Migration System of Indian Information Technology Professionals.” RECENT STUDENT MIGRANTS: A STORY OF MOBILITY 189

14. Simon Marginson et al., International Student Security (Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Baas, Imagined Mobility : Migration and Transnationalism among Indian Students in Australia . 15. Gomes et al., “Home Away from Home: International Students and Their Identity-Based Social Networks in Australia.” 16. Baldassar, “Transnational Families and Aged Care: The Mobility of Care and the Migrancy of Ageing.” 17. Catherine Gomes, Multiculturalism through the Lens : A Guide to Ethnic and Migrant Anxieties in Singapore (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2015). 18. Marginson et al., International Student Security . 19. Singh and Cabraal, “Indian Student Migrants in Australia: Issues of Community Sustainability.” 20. Personal communication, Jasvinder Sidhu, 22 June 2015. 21. John Silvester, “We Can’t Ignore the Reality of Cab Attacks,” The Age , 21 September 2013. “Sexual Assault in Train: 2 Indians Held,” South Asia Times ; Jason Rawlins, “Indian Student Guilty of Sexual Assault” ABC News, 2010 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-12-01/indian-student- guilty-of-sexual-assault/2358652; “Indian Student Charged with Sexual Assault,” ABC News, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-02-03/indian- student-charged-with-sexual-assault/320790 . Accessed 30 April 2015. 22. Freedom of Information request by SBS Radio’s Punjabi program. DIAC provided the fi gures by the International Student Task Force, 7 December 2009, in a letter addressed to Manpreet K. Singh, Executive Producer – Punjabi Program Audio and Language Content. 23. P. Sharma, ‘Do you speak Australian?’ Outlook , 8 February 2010, www. outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264016 retrieved 16 February 2010. 24. Austrade (Australian Trade Commission), “International Student Data” Austrade, www.austrade.gov.au/Education/Student-Data/2009#. VYevgvmqpBc . 25. Kevin M. Dunn, Danielle Pelleri, and Maeder-Han Karin, “Attacks on Indian Students in Australia: The Commerce of Denial in Australia,” Race & Class 52, no. 4 (2011). p. 72. 26. Supriya Singh, “Indian Students in Melbourne: Challenges to Multiculturalism,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 32, no. 6 (2011). 27. Singh and Cabraal, “Indian Student Migrants in Australia: Issues of Community Sustainability.” 28. Neumann, Across the Seas : Australia’s Response to Refugees – a History . 29. Singh and Cabraal, “Indian Student Migrants in Australia: Issues of Community Sustainability.” 30. ‘A racial factor cannot be denied’, The Age , 11 January 2010, www.theage. com.au/opinion/editorial/a-racial-factor-cannot-be-denied- 20100110-m0na.html retrieved 12 February 2010; Sharma, 2010, op. cit. 190 S. SINGH

31. For more detail see Singh, “Indian Students in Melbourne: Challenges to Multiculturalism.” 32. Baldassar, “Transnational Families and Aged Care: The Mobility of Care and the Migrancy of Ageing.” p. 280. 33. Mabanckou, The Lights of Pointe-Noire . p. 126. 34. Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera : The Story of Australian Immigration . p. 217. 35. Ibid. PART V

The Transnational Joint Family CHAPTER 9

Recent Migrants Re-imagine the Joint Family

“Without the family, one is alone and lost. The priority for all of us is family, not freedom,” says Binod, 38, in his small offi ce behind his family’s Indian grocery store. Binod came in February 1999 as a student migrant, when he had just turned 23, borrowing $6700 against the family home. His father had a small business but automation was increasingly making it obsolete.

Parts of this chapter are based on Singh, S. (2015). Beyond the dichotomy: Money and the transnational family in India and Australia. seminars.wcfi a. harvard.edu/fi les/tsi/…/5-singh2015_tsiworkingpaper.pdf . Accessed on 28 September 2015- Working Paper Series “From Economic to Social Remittances: An International Overview” papers originally presented at the Conference “Following the Flows” held at Princeton University – sponsored by DIAL (grant ANR 2011-BSH1 012-03), the Institut de Recherche pour le Dćveloppement, the Center for Migration and Development and the Offi ce of Population Research (Princeton), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (grant R24 HD047879) and the Centre Maurice Habwachs (École Normale Supćrieure). Series Editors Peggy Levitt, Professor of Sociology (Wellesley College), Research Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Hauser Institute (Harvard University), co-director of The Transnational Studies Initiative, [email protected], Thomas Lacroix, CNRS Research Fellow (University of Poitiers), Associate Researcher (Oxford University), [email protected], Ilka Vari-Lavoisier, PhD candidate (École Normale Supćrieure), Research Collaborator (Princeton University), [email protected]. With permission.

Binod worked fi ve days at night in a restaurant for $10 an hour, and full time over the weekends. He sent money home. In 2002, he got married in Gujarat. When he came back to Melbourne, he told his wife, they do not want “to live alone.” They sponsored his brother and sister-in-law. By the time they arrived in November 2003, Binod and his wife were expecting. His parents came to help. Binod worked at his full-time job and also drove a taxi till his brother got a job. In 2004 they bought a fi ve-bedroom house in an outer suburb for the extended family. The parents routinely came for six months and then returned to India. Binod says, in 2007, he started thinking that in another four to fi ve years, they would have two kids. It is not good for the four of them to go to work and for the kids to go to day care. So they decided to open a grocery shop. He had no experience of business, but he was confi dent he was a good salesperson. He borrowed $75,000 against a $25,000 fi xed deposit. In 2009, after consulting the parents, they fi lled in the contributory migration application and paid $84,000 for their permanent residence. Both brothers kept their day jobs. His mother and one of the daughters- in-law looked after the children, while the father and the other daughter- in-law looked after the shop in the morning. The two brothers would look after the shop in the evenings and weekends. Binod says, “My routine is to get up at 4.30—go to work from 6am to 2pm, then take 22 minutes to come back. I am in the store from 3pm to 9.30pm.” When I interviewed him in 2013, each couple had two kids. They were looking for land to build a bigger house. Binod said they get a lot of compliments from their customers who wonder how three families can live together under one roof. He says to them, “If you share and you care you do not have a problem.…If you want to win the battle you have to be in a group and the fi rst group is your family.” He adds, “My wife has supported me for 12 years.” It is a story of joint family harmony. At times it sounds too good to be true. After the interview, I came out of his offi ce to the grocery shop with more than 7000 products from all over India and a money transfer business. His parents, wife and sister-in-law were near the front counter. The brother was at the cashier. Binod reached over to give me a return gift of a box of laddus , a traditional sweet made from chickpea fl our. He then turned to his father and handed the box to his father, for him to do the honors. I recognized Binod had publicly given his father the honor and respect as head of the family. And at the same time, he had honored me as a family guest. RECENT MIGRANTS RE-IMAGINE THE JOINT FAMILY 195

THE TRANSNATIONAL EXTENDED FAMILY AMONG RECENT MIGRANTS IN AUSTRALIA The early migrants and the second generation lived in nuclear family households, that is, a couple family or a couple family with children. This was often a continuity of the nuclear family they had known in India or in the source country. A few of the early migrants had parents living with them or were responsible for their housing and part of their fi nances, as seen in Chaps. 3 and 4 . This was a reaction to sickness and death, and the need to care for parents left alone. This is not unlike a grandmother in England staying with children after the death of her husband. 1 The norm for the early migrants and second-generation migrants remained the nuclear family household. There is a shift in expectations of family life in Australia among the recent migrants. As discussed in Chap. 6 , talk about the transnational family among migrants who have come since 1996 has a different fl avor, compared to early Indian migrants who came in the 1970s to mid-1990s. Recent migrants are able to feel they are a continuing part of the transnational family, characterized by frequent reciprocal visits and daily or weekly telephone calls and a two-way fl ow of money. Most student migrants are single. They have not yet set up their own households. Skilled migrants come with young families presenting the issues of care. As migration is a family decision for recent migrants, the care of the parents also has to be jointly decided. The recent migrants bring with them the norm of joint family living. Joint family structures and practices that the recent migrants experienced in India infl uence their plans for family life in Australia. Half the recent migrants studied in the transnational phase of the study, 2010–2014, have come with the experience of living in patrilineal joint families and their attendant family practices. Touching the elders’ feet to show respect, articulating the obligations and responsibilities of children toward parents–these were routinely heard and seen among the recent migrants in Australia. This is an important aspect of the social remittances that recent migrants bring from India. 2 The possibility of a joint family household is present for recent migrants in a way that is different from the early migrants. In the transnational family sample, 16 of the 31 households 3 are, were or plan to be in temporary or long-term extended family households. This does not mean that half the households are joint households. It means there is a possibility of them being joint at different life stages. It is not unlike a planned nuclear family household that becomes extended or joint in response to the needs of children and/or elderly parents. 196 S. SINGH

The latest HILDA survey (2014) substantiates the increased importance of the extended family household among recent migrants arriving after 2000 in Australia. “Other Households Types”—the closest approximation to an extended family—are found at least three times more among recent migrants than for Australia in general. In 2011, there were 21.7 percent of “other household” types among recent migrants, compared with 6.6 percent for Australia. 4 Joint family living in Australia is re-imagined so that it differs from the pattern in India. The Indian patrilineal joint or extended family household is a three-generation household marked by male descent. The most common form of the joint family household includes parents, sons and their children. The patrilineal joint family is popularly seen as the Indian family. It is more widely distributed than the matrilineal joint family marked by female descent. That is found only among the Nayar castes in the south and the Khasis in the north-east. It is the patrilineal joint family that is the point of reference for the transnational family sample of migrants. There are more nuclear households in India than joint households. However, the joint family is more important than its prevalence. This is because most Indians spend some part of their time in a joint family. Women most often start their married life in the patrilineal joint family. 5 I too lived for part of the fi rst year of my married life in a three- generational joint family household in Malaysia. The household included my grandmother-in-law, father-in-law, my husband’s siblings, my husband and I. It was an unusual household in that the maternal grandmother-in- law was part of a patrilineal joint family household. The Indian joint family changes in Australia to a transnational joint family household. It includes male siblings and their children plus parents who come and go between two countries. The transnational joint family has a different developmental cycle compared to the Indian joint family as will be seen in the next section. It is also envisaged as more fl exible than it is in India. Parents often move between India and Australia in response to the needs of childcare in Australia and their own needs to keep up with their family and friendship networks in India. The transnational joint family also operates in a different legal context. In India, the undivided joint family is a legal fi nancial unit, being able to own property and undertake fi nancial transactions. It is recognized in income tax law. 6 This is not true for the transnational joint household outside India. So the transnational joint family is expressed primarily in its household structure rather than in the way property and earnings are shared. RECENT MIGRANTS RE-IMAGINE THE JOINT FAMILY 197

Recent migrants plan for the presence of siblings and parents in Australia on a temporary or permanent basis, when they buy their homes, think of their rhythms of paid work and childcare. Even when single persons buy homes, they buy a home with a view to its suitability for their parents. Dharma, 25, was single when he bought land to build a three-bedroom house for his parents, his father’s sister who had brought him up and himself. He said it was not possible to live without his family. If they did not come, he would return. Charandeep, who came as a student migrant in 2005, in his late 30s bought a house in an outer suburb that was an easy drive to the temple, for he knew the temple network would be important for his parents. I ask, “Will your future wife want to live in a joint family?” He says, “I will only marry a woman who does.” The norm of the joint family is so taken for granted, that recent migrants explain why they are in nuclear family households. Eight of the 15 households which have no plans of being extended family households have no siblings in Australia. In four cases, parents have immovable family and business responsibilities in India. These are families like those of Lakshman whom we met in Chap. 6 and Faraj in Chaps. 5 and 8 , who are rooted in India because of their family businesses. In one other case, the family in India is looking after older kin in their extended family. In six cases parents came but left, preferring their social and family networks in India. As one Indian taxi driver who came as a student migrant, said, his mother saw Australia as a “sweet jail.” Everything works but nobody visits.

THE DEVELOPMENTAL CYCLE OF THE TRANSNATIONAL JOINT FAMILY CHANGES The extended family household in Australia for recent migrants goes through a different developmental sequence compared to India. In India, the three- generational patrilineal joint family household is created when a son gets married, brings his wife to the parental home and has children. Other sons get married and do the same. The Indian joint family household disperses over time, giving rise to various combinations of joint and/or nuclear family households. Married brothers usually separate after their parents’ death, though ties of property and norms of joint family etiquette often remain. 7 In Australia the trigger points differ for the conversion of a nuclear family household to an extended family household. A young man (usually) comes fi rst, siblings join, get married and have children and then the parents join them. Binod’s joint family household displays the Australian developmental cycle and its differences from the Indian version. 198 S. SINGH

The earliest and most common phase is that the husband and/or wife’s sibling, nephew or niece, join a migrant household. This is part of the settlement process of Indian migration to Australia. When this did not happen with one of the participants despite having a cousin in Australia, it revealed family discord. In my transnational sample, the two persons who lived singly had no siblings, cousins, aunts or uncles in Melbourne. The period of living together can vary from a few months to three years. One of the participants said his nephews had needed a nudge after a year to establish themselves independently. When a brother gets married, he may continue to live in an extended family household or live apart. This is what happened in Ajay’s story below. But if the sibling is a sister, she usually moves out to establish her own home with her husband. This is what happened in Isher and Ila’s household. Ila’s sister who had been staying with them, moved out at marriage. The second point of conversion to an extended family comes when the migrant couple has children. This leads to the parent/s fl ying in for up to a year to help look after the children. It can be the husband or wife’s parents. This has happened already with fi ve of the participants. Ila and Isher’s household is an example of the household switching between the nuclear and the extended, depending on whether Ila’s mother, Indra, is visiting or not. Arvind and Asha’s household also goes through similar changes when the grandparents visit, as told below. The third extension to the household is when parents join or plan to join the migrant household permanently as happened with Binod. In the transnational family sample, 5 of the 31 households were at this stage. It is interesting to note that in all cases the long-term plans are to stay with the son, recreating the patrilineal joint family. The recent migrants’ version of the joint family also has more comings and goings built in. The parents in all cases have kept either their own family home or downsized to a more manageable place. This also means the migrant family has an established base in India. The mobility thus is not just with the migrant part of the family but also with the parents. This coming and going is the norm while the parents are mobile. When mobility is not possible, then the continuous settlement is with the son or sons. The extended family household reverts to the nuclear household when female siblings move out at marriage or the grandparents fl y back for good. In my sample, it is too early to identify the process and the factors behind the dissolving of a household with married brothers and children or a patrilineal three-generation joint family in Australia. It is expected that over time there will be the dispersal of the joint family and its reconstitution. RECENT MIGRANTS RE-IMAGINE THE JOINT FAMILY 199

The relative infl uence of the norms of the Australian nuclear family and the transnational joint family will no doubt play a part.

Ajay and His Brother Buy a House Ajay, 25, sits in his father’s new house in a regional city in Punjab. It is shining with new marble. His wife and child are inside with Ajay’s mother. His brother, Abhay, 26, has just gotten married in this house and his wife too is inside. Ajay tells how after fi nishing his Year 12, his father sent him to Melbourne in 2007 to study hospitality. Ajay stayed with a cousin, his father’s nephew. He got a job at a recognized entertainment complex and obtained his permanent residence. Abhay joined Ajay and his cousin two years later to do automotive engineering. In late 2013, they bought a house two houses away from their cousin’s. It is a four-bedroom house plus study plus theater room with land of about 600 square meters. There are two master bedrooms for the two brothers. They were helped by the father, a retired professional, in the purchase of the house. Now their sister has joined them to do her studies. Ajay speaks of plans to open a family business around a fi ne food Indian restaurant in their suburb. It will be a family project with some money coming from the father in India. Abhay will leave his automotive engineering job and help with the food business. So in Melbourne, in the north eastern suburbs, they will be living in a joint house, with a family version of money and a joint business.

The Flying Grandparents Indra, with two grandchildren and two daughters in Melbourne, has visited Melbourne four times between 2003 and 2011. Her story is one of the fl ying grandmother complemented by the fl ying grandchildren. She persuaded her daughter to have children, promising to look after them. So for the birth of each of her grandchildren, she went to Australia for three months and then brought them back to India. The fi rst time her daughter also came back with her. Indra says,

I did more for my grandchildren than with my own children. I bathed and dressed them, fed them. I also took each grandchild back to the parents for a year at a time so that they bonded. I was 62 at the time. No, it was not a sacrifi ce. I did my bit.

Her daughter, Ila, in her late 30s, early 40s, says, 200 S. SINGH

We as parents only saw them grow on the telephone or on video. We would say ‘Oh they have started crawling’ But I would tell myself that I was working and would have had to put my child in child care and would be wonder- ing how my child is doing. This way the child is in trusted hands. Whenever they came back, they knew me. They bonded on both sides.

Arvind and Asha, in their late 30s, were more fortunate. Asha’s parents and Arvind’s mother were able and willing to come look after their two daughters for a year at a time. This helped Arvind concentrate on his career and Asha to complete her graduate education. We talked as Asha laid out the dinner of black beans, curried pumpkin, bitter gourd fried crisp, okra, egg curry and rice. Puris followed. The meal fi nished with Indian sweets, and Indian tea that Arvind made. Soon after my fi rst visit, Asha’s mother, Abhi, came from India for a year to look after the two grandchildren, six and a half and four and a half years. This is the fi fth time she has come to Australia since Asha and Arvind came in 1997 as student migrants. This year she and her husband will alternate between Asha and her sister in Sydney. After they leave, Arvind’s mother will come. Asha’s mother, Abhi, likes it in her daughter’s house because Arvind likes to talk and her granddaughters speak Hindi. She does not complain of social isolation in Melbourne, saying, in her home in Delhi, it is just she and her husband. She has made a social life for herself in Melbourne by seeking out other Indians in a suburb that has few Indians. Between cooking during the week and picking up her granddaughters from the school nearby at 3.30pm, she visits and is constantly being visited. She also has a nodding acquaintance with her neighbors but is conscious that her English is halting. The last time Abhi and her husband were in Melbourne, they went for a walk and got talking with a Sikh gentleman. He told them there was a family from Bangalore nearby. They took this family’s address and then and there, they went to the house and rang the bell. When the woman answered, Asha’s mother said, “Sardarji told us about you.” She invited them in. The same thing happened with a Fijian Indian woman who lives on her own. These two women together with Asha’s two Indian friends meet Abhi every week. One week Asha’s mother cooks them delicacies. The other week they take her out. When she is not cooking or socializ- ing, Abhi sees a lot of Hindi fi lms. It is a shared interest with her grand- RECENT MIGRANTS RE-IMAGINE THE JOINT FAMILY 201 daughters. Before the food is served, Asha tells her daughters, “Sing Hindi songs, sing” and they begin singing. Ila, Asha and Arvind got more help with their children than Daya and Rita who were early migrants. In another two student families, children were temporarily left behind while the student and her spouse established themselves. In one of these families, the mother could not bear the separation and brought her child back to Australia. The fl ying grandparents then took it in turns to look after the child in Australia. And as we saw in Chap. 4 , when Ekta’s marriage dissolved, her mother came from India to care for her daughter and granddaughter.

“SISTER, YOU DON’T HAVE A THEATER ROOM?” Seeing the migrant children’s rooms was part of the ritual of the visit to their families in India. This was the unbroken pattern when parents had built a new home. Symbolizing presence and a wished for continuity is part of the home making ritual in transnational families. 8 Among the early migrants who were professionals, their homes in Australia refl ected their upper-middle-income position. The recent migrants helped their parents build or renovate their house in India. At the same time they tried to ensure they had a large enough home in Australia to possibly accommodate the joint family. So there is no sign of the ostentatious houses demonstrating status that are built by Jat Sikhs who had migrated from the Doaba region of Punjab to the UK. 9 In the new house built by Lakshman’s parents, each of the three sons had their own set of rooms. They were to be furnished by each son. Lakshman and his wife whose story is told in Chap. 6 had bought their own home in Melbourne. But they know they have another set of rooms waiting for their visit or return. Lakshman’s mother points to the fridge her son had bought for the new house for he wanted to be part of it. Turning to Lakshman, his father says “There is no pressure on him to return. It is easy. He is welcome if he comes back. His set of rooms is ready for him to decorate in the latest fashion.” It was the same ritual in Harbans’ parents’ new house, partly built with the money he sent home. Harbans had migrated to Australia in 2003 as a student. His father showed me how to the right were rooms for Harbans and his family and to the left were rooms for the younger brother and his family. Harbans’ brother was soon to go to Melbourne as a skilled migrant. 202 S. SINGH

When I went to Jasbir’s parents’ new house in India, his mother also took me on a tour of the house to show me the bedrooms of each of her two sons. The sons were already in Melbourne. Jasbir and his wife have also designed their new house to accommodate Jasbir’s brother and parents. Jasmine says,

I was there when they designed the house. They saw the display home but they moved the home theater to the back. There are four bedrooms, one for the parents, one master bedroom, one for the younger brother and another will be the study. There is also a garden in the front, which he says I must come and landscape. And there will be a vegetable garden at the back. I am very fond of gardening.

Jasbir was never part of a joint family for the paternal grandparents died in 1984 and the rest of the father’s siblings were dispersed across the country. However, he has set up the framework for joint family living in Melbourne. He has already budgeted for the contributory visa payment for his parents and is preparing their application for permanent residence. Jasbir has also planned an appropriate ritual around his new house in Melbourne to show his parents his love and respect. He says, “I want them to take the keys rather than me. I want the whole family to move into the house at one time…” Though the house will be completed at the end of the month, the auspicious day for the home rituals is in the middle of the month. Jasbir says “Dad is into a lot of religious things.” So the builder will stop work for that day. They will go with the temple priest and keep a chair in one room to show they have partially moved in. In a mirror image, Niranjan, 61, shows me his set of rooms in his youngest son’s house. He has a room with a desk overlooking the garden, a toilet and bathroom and a separate prayer room. His grandson has also invited Niranjan to come and stay with him. Niranjan says, “When my grandson built his fi ve bedroom house, he built a set of separate rooms and toilet for me.” This is a material representation of the place that parents or grandparents have in their children’s and grandchildren’s home. Recent migrants when buying a house now buy a four-bedroom house with a “theater room.” It is so much the norm that a young Indian taxi driver asks me, “Sister, you don’t have a theater room?” The idea is to buy a house that will at the outset be able to accommodate a three-generation joint family. Jasbir when talking of the house he is building describes his house as one RECENT MIGRANTS RE-IMAGINE THE JOINT FAMILY 203 that would fi t the present needs of his extended family. He realizes that as the children come, there may be some dispersal, but he exercises his right as the eldest son to insist his parents will continue staying with him. Visiting homes of recent Sikh migrants in Melbourne where the parents have already moved, the common element is that the large TV on the wall is turned to the PTC Punjabi channel from India with the live broadcast of hymns from the Golden Temple in Amritsar. In Chetan’s house, the study has been converted into a prayer room for his father. This requirement for homes that are large and affordable has meant that recent Indian migrants have concentrated in the South and Northwest of Melbourne. This clustering is recent. It is different from the earlier dispersed and random settlement of the Indians before 2001. This emergence of “ethnic clusters” is changing the built environment of Greater Melbourne. 10 The Sikh temples have grown with this settlement so that Craigieburn to the North and Tarneit and Hoppers Crossing in the South now have large congregations. Businesses answering Indian needs for food and services have been established. When I visited Tarneit to speak with Dharma, I also bought a large selection of Indian groceries. I exclaimed on this easy availability of foods from all over India. The Indian taxi driver taking me home to Eltham in the Northeast said to me, “What do you expect?” he said pointing to the Anglo dominance in Eltham. “You live in the land of the white man.”

WHEN MORALS FALTER Parents and sons who agreed to be interviewed were a self-select sample in that they were comfortable with the relationship between money and caring in their family. Despite the norms of giving and sharing, things can go wrong in families. The joint family household is seen as an ideal to be achieved, a picture of intergenerational harmony. But in Indian literature, television and fi lm, the joint family is also the context of the greatest betrayals and every day acts of unkindness. Baghban , a 2003 Bollywood fi lm, tells how parents who have given their sons all their money thinking they will be looked after in their old age can be proven terribly wrong. It was more usual to hear how this had happened in other people’s families. Binod says “I have seen families fi ght… brothers were separated, but for what?” He talks of a case where a man and his family were staying with his niece and paying her $1500 a month in rent and getting mistreated. Binod counseled them to leave and 204 S. SINGH got him a job and another house. When the man told his niece they were planning to leave, “the niece just got up and slapped them. At midnight she threw them out of the house.” Some stories are trickling through that a few parents have moved to a separate home in Australia in response to the son or son-in-law’s con- tinual demands for money. The need for housing older Indian couples has now been offi cially recognized in distinctive schemes. This remains to be studied as an emerging area of fi nancial and elder abuse in the Indian community. Perhaps the worst story I heard was how the son of an upper-middle- income family came back to New Delhi from the USA and persuaded his widowed mother to migrate and stay with them. He sold the family home and left the mother with her luggage on the street, waiting for the second taxi to take her to the airport. The man telling the story was in his 70s and lived in a three-generation patrilineal joint family and was counting his blessings. More often people feel they would have wanted it different. Ashish Bose wrote tellingly how the notion of fi lial duty works best when the children stay with the parents. It disappears in different degrees when parents move to stay with the children. 11 One of the memorable accounts of a mother who moved to stay with her son and his family comes from Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni. Mrs Dutta sold her home in Calcutta, mesmerized by the portrait of her smiling family. In a letter to her friend, she writes she knows her grandchildren love her. How can it be otherwise?

But sometimes when she listens, from the other room, to them speaking on the phone, their American voices rising in excitement as they discuss a glit- tering alien world of Power Rangers, Spice Girls and Spirit Week at school, she almost cannot believe it. 12

Feeling alone and unneeded, her certainties about family, about the proper role of a daughter-in-law, grandmother and grandchildren col- lapse. She writes,

I am no longer sure I know what happiness is. All I know is that it isn't what I thought it to be. It isn’t about being needed. It isn’t about being with family either. It has something to do with love, I still think that but in a different way than I believed earlier, a way I don’t have the words to explain. 13 RECENT MIGRANTS RE-IMAGINE THE JOINT FAMILY 205

Mohinder’s mother sounded like Mrs. Dutta from Calcutta. Mohinder, 39, was visiting his family home in Punjab with his wife and children. He had migrated to Australia in 2002 as a skilled migrant with his family. His mother now lives with her youngest son in the USA for eight months of the year and four months in Punjab. She says she misses the Gurdwara, her neighbors and her own place.

I am alone. The children go out all day long. The grandchildren are not the same as the children. They don’t speak Punjabi. They say ‘Have your medi- cine’. They say ‘Thik ?’ [Alright?] And that is the end of the conversation.

The mother became a widow when her two sons were still young and studying, so she saw diffi cult times. The mother says,

I think I made a mistake in letting Mohinder go. I knew my daughter-in-law did not want to go. I could have weighed in and said to my son, “Don’t go. I will be alone.” My younger son had already gone to the US even though Mohinder had applied earlier. But then, seeing the younger brother do well, would my eldest son have felt my mother is the one who blocked my path to prosperity?

Gina, 70, is also torn between the feeling that she should be with her sons and grandchildren in Australia and her comfort in her own place in a metropolitan city in South India. She lives close to her daughter and her family. But she knows the norms of a patrilineal joint family mean it is her daughter’s mother-in-law who has pride of place in her daughter’s home.

A Mother Cries in Chennai I meet Gina in her daughter Geeta’s house in Tamil Nadu. There is the smell of vadai frying. Gina says the next time I come, I should stay with her and she will cook for me. I already knew one of her sons, Giresh, 50, who migrated to Australia as a skilled migrant in 1994 via the USA. Gina went to Sydney twice—once when her youngest son had a baby and the second time when her daughter Geeta was trying out whether she and her husband would want to stay permanently in Sydney. Geeta and her husband have a family business and they chose to come back. Gina too prefers 206 S. SINGH to live in India in her own house with two servants. Geeta is close by, her extended kin are in the region and her church an auto ride away. Gina says, “Here I can go anywhere. I am very happy here. I have my own house here.” She has friends and neighbors. The vegetable man comes home. The sons call once a week. She adds, “I have very good children.” She is torn for she says, “I live alone. I am becoming old. I sit and cry…I miss my sons.” Gina may still be able to have her own place and regular contact and care with at least one of her sons. Giresh, 50, visits once a month, as his business brings him back. He has already been working between India and Australia for a year, driven by the possibility of making a difference. Their house is nearly ready close by and his wife and children are getting used to the idea of spending time in India.

RETHINKING FAMILY Family for recent migrants is transnational and can be extended. Both forms are challenging traditional ways of thinking of family in Australia. In Australia, the nuclear household remains the default, whether it is a couple only or a couple with children. Against this, the recent increase in single person households, group households and blended families is marked. The extended family household is not as yet a census category in the Australian Population and Housing Census. The multi-family household category partially covers the boundaries of the extended family. In terms of thinking about family, the extended family is residual. The transnational family is an everyday reality for most Australians. Australia is a migrant nation with close to half the population either being born overseas or having one parent born overseas. It is also a country of emigration with an estimated million Australians living overseas. 14 You don’t need to be a migrant to belong to one. You are part of this global trend if your children move and grandchildren grow up in another country. You stay at home, but like any migrant you have to calculate time differences and use the mobile phone and Skype to be part of the grandchildren’s world. Transnational families are studied most often in the context of migration, rather than in the framework of family studies. The constant change and fl ux of the transnational family in an increasingly mobile world make it diffi cult to pin down. But measurement at the best of times is just a snap- RECENT MIGRANTS RE-IMAGINE THE JOINT FAMILY 207 shot. The problem is exacerbated because the transnational family does not confl ate with the household. As Bryceson and Vuorella note

From a Western perspective, there has been a tendency to make the family synonymous with the household; the management and sharing of everyday life in a common dwelling. This confl ation… would woefully fail to capture the composition and structure of transnational families. Transnational families’ sense of place is continually being reformulated through their loca- tional dispersal. 15

Distinguishing the family and the household also remains contested in relation to the joint or extended family in India. The Indian Census has measured nuclear households and joint households. However, the sentiment of jointness can remain even when being in a nuclear household. 16 In order to measure participation in a transnational family, we will need to agree to a minimal list of criteria. Frequent communication and visits will be at the center. Attendance at signifi cant family events, whether in the source country or Australia, is an important way of displaying membership of a transnational family. For migrants from the global South sending and receiving money to and from family is important. Help with childcare from the transnational family is now increasingly common. It would be good to elicit how these criteria change with life stage. It will also be per- tinent whether one is a migrant, a multiple migrant, belongs to the second generation or is the stay-at-home component of the transnational family. This will necessarily be a work in progress for a while, but not recognizing the transnational family means negating the family practices and experiences of most Australians.

NOTES 1. Dench, Grandmothers of the Revolution . 2. Peggy Levitt and Deepak Lamba-Nieves, “Social Remittances Revisited,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 37, no. 1 (2011). 3. Two of the migrants are married and so are in one household. However, the transnational family of both husband and wife were studied, making for 32 transnational families, as noted in Table A.2. 4. Markus Hahn and Roger Wilkins, “Household Dynamics, 2001 to 2011,” in Families , Incomes and Jobs , Volume 9 : A Statistical Report on Waves 1 to 11 of the Household , Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey , ed. Roger Wilkins (Parkville, Vic: Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic 208 S. SINGH

and Social Research, The University of Melbourne, 2014); Roger Wilkins, “Immigrants to Australia since 2001,” ibid. 5. Patricia Uberoi, “The Family in India,” in Handbook of Indian Sociology , ed. Veena Das (New Delhi: Oxford, 2004). 6. Shah, A.M., and Tulsi Patel. 2011. Family. In Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism, ed. Knut A. Jacobsen, Helene Basu, Angelika Malinar, and Vasudha Narayanan, 46–59. Leiden: Brill. 7. Veena Das, “Masks and Faces: An Essay on Punjabi Kinship,” Contributions to Indian sociology 10, no. 1 (1976); A. M. Shah, “Foreword,” in The Family in India : Structure and Practice , ed. Tulsi Patel, Themes in Indian Sociology (New Delhi: Sage, 2005); Uberoi, “The Family in India.” 8. See Heather A. Horst, “Reclaiming Place: The Architecture of Home, Family and Migration” Anthropologica 53(2011). 9. Steve Taylor, “‘Home Is Never Fully Achieved …Even When We Are in It’: Migration, Belonging and Social Exclusion within Punjabi Transnational Mobility,” Mobilities 10, no. 2 (2015). 10. Prem Chhetri, “Changing the Cultural Mosaic of Melbourne City – Mapping the Cultural Footprint of Recent Indian and Chinese Migrants, 1941 – 2011,” Unpublished presentation at Asia@RMIT seminar series (Melbourne, RMIT University, 2015). 11. Ashish Bose and Mala Kapur Shankardass, Growing Old in India : Voices Reveal , Statistics Speak (Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corporation, 2008). 12. Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni, The Unknown Errors of Our Lives (New York: Anchor Books, 2002). p. 13 13. Ibid., p. 33 14. Graeme Hugo, “An Australian Diaspora?,” International Migration 44, no. 1 (2006). 15. Bryceson and Vuorela, “Transnational Families in the Twenty-First Century.” p. 28 16. Shah and Patel, “Family.” PART VI

Conclusion CHAPTER 10

Conclusion: Money, Migration, and the Family

In this book I have told stories of Indian migrants to Australia over fi ve decades from the late 1960s to 2015. Like migrant stories everywhere, they are stories of enterprise, of new beginnings, of loss. They are stories of how migrants have retained or tried to hold on to the sense of being a family across national borders. These are also refl ections of how in their journeys they have tried to work out a new and more multilayered sense of self, home and belonging. Money and the transnational family was the lens through which I saw the lives of the early migrants who came between the late 1960s and mid- 1990s. I followed this with the second generation who were born here or came before they were 12 and experienced some of their school years in Australia, and the recent student and skilled migrants who came after the mid-1990s. Hearing each story was like having a life unfold. Visiting the migrant and his or her family meant that some of the dots were connected between their lives in Australia and India. Writing the stories of the early migrants, the second generation and the recent migrants in one place brought home to me the fi ve major changes that have taken place over the fi ve decades. The changing scale and composition of Indian migrants, the changes in remittances, patterns of settlement and mobility, the communicative shaping of money and imagining the transnational joint family are not self-evident and transparent even when you have been part of the Indian community for close to 30 years.

Firstly, there has been an increase in the scale of Indian migration. The socio-economic characteristics of the migrants have changed leading to a younger, more male and single infl ux. Indian languages are now commonly heard in the large cities of Australia, as the India-born become the fourth largest overseas-born group. Secondly, there has been a transformation in the narrative and meaning of remittances. Like many others who have written about remittances, I thought of them as sending money home. This is what happened with the early migrants. The recent migrants are also sending money home, but money is also coming from their families for education, housing, business and with family reunion. To measure this two-way fl ow needs the kind of forensic accounting, that fi rst revealed remittances were a large international fl ow of funds. It would more fully enumerate the economic value of migrants in countries attracting migrants from middle-income countries like India and China. Thirdly, the pattern of migration has changed. Early migrants were professionals from metropolitan cities who came with their nuclear families holding permanent resident visas. They came most often to further the man’s ambition to progress a professional career. They migrated to settle. Recent migrants are mostly young, male and single and often from regional cities and urban villages. They migrate as a way of increasing individual and family options for prosperity. Many recent migrants come with temporary visas and experience a long period of precarious mobility. Even when they have an option to settle, this has to fi t with opportunities for individual and family well-being. So the default for migration has shifted both in policy and experience from settlement to mobility. Fourthly, new information and communication technologies like the mobile phone, Skype, and the Internet and cheaper travel have led to a more connected transnational family. It is a different era from air letters and occasional visits home. More importantly, changes in communication shape the meanings, fl ow and perceived value of transnational money. This is because both communication and money are relational and media of care. With the early migrants, communication was often patchy and fl owed one-way from the migrant part of the transnational family to those still in the home country. A dollar sent was less than the dollar received when approximated against the value of physical care. Among the recent migrants, instantaneous and frequent communication means children and parents realize that money sent and received symbolizes sacrifi ce and care. A dollar received is infl ated with care to mean more than the CONCLUSION: MONEY, MIGRATION, AND THE FAMILY 213 dollar sent. The communicative shaping of money is further substantiated when sending money home without communication counts for nearly nothing at all. The fi fth difference is that recent migrants plan for a joint family life in Australia if it is possible. The transnational joint family has an upside-down sequence compared to the Indian patrilineal joint family. In Australia the joint family is built around the son, rather than the parents. It is the son who comes fi rst. Sometimes siblings join him. He buys a house or gets married—depends on whichever comes fi rst. Parents come to help with the young children. Some come to help temporarily and later stay permanently. So the house that is built or bought has to accommodate a three- generation joint family. To afford this kind of home, the recent Indian migrants have clustered in the south and north-west, changing the built environment of Melbourne. The transnational joint family has also more fl exibility for the parents to come and go between two homes in Australia and India, while they can. The changes in remittances, migration patterns, communication and family are challenging for the Indian community and policy makers. The issues for the Indian community in Australia are great. There is a serious lack of connection and empathy between the early migrants and second generation on one side and the recent migrants on the other. They live in different parts of the city. The realities of their lives are different. The traditional community organizations set up by the early migrants have not grown to include young recent migrant leaders. There remains a chasm between the second generation and the recent migrants. Both belong to the same age groups but are separated because of different cultures of gender behavior, communication, space and privacy. Connecting with each other is not a felt need for either side. The early migrants have to reach out to include the recent migrants. It is simple demographics for the recent migrants now represent the majority of the India-born population in Australia. Moreover, some of the social issues facing the community like fi nancial abuse, family violence and inap- propriate gender behavior will need to be tackled by those who can speak to recent migrants as their peers. These problems will not be wished away as some elders in the community hope. The changes are also challenging for policy. The changes are diffi cult to quantify and so do not fi t the language of policy. Policy response involves measuring the two-way fl ow of remittances in order to arrive at the true 214 S. SINGH economic contribution of migrants. This can then be further used to increase trade and direct investment. It means fashioning the migration policy to take transnational family welfare into account to ensure Australia keeps its more desirable migrants. National instruments of policy like the Population and Housing Census need to measure the incidence of the transnational family and the extended family. Changing concepts of migration, money and family are diffi cult for policy makers and for migrants old and new. But these changes have to be grasped for they are part of the lived experience of migrants communicating and caring in transnational families. APPENDIX 1: THE PARTICIPANTS

This study is based on interviews with 186 persons from 95 households (See Table A.1 ). The interviews are complimented with participant observation in Australia and India. I began with a study of Indian migrants who came to Australia between the late 1960s and mid-1990s. Most of the participants were professionals, representing a mix of direct migrants from India and “twice or thrice migrants” 1 who had migrated from India to Malaysia, Singapore, Kenya, Fiji or the UK, and then to Australia. All but one was married and had migrated with their families. He was an outlier, having migrated as a student in 2002, neither fi tting the early migrants nor those in the student study, for they came in 2005 or later. I then moved to a study of the second generation. The participants, university students or professionals included 13 women and 7 men, mostly single, 18–39 years old. Most had Australia and India as their reference point for identity and belonging, though they experienced Australia and India differently from their parents. This was followed by a study of students who had come to study in Australia from 2005 to 2010. It was supplemented with interviews with community leaders to gauge the kind of support offered to students. The student participants were Sikh, Hindu and Christian. Community leaders were drawn from Sikh, Hindu, Christian and Muslim organizations and were asked about the kind of support they offered Indian students.

In 2011 the study began to cover transnational families rather than just migrants. In India, I went through friends and family, as participants would not discuss matters of family and money with somebody unknown. I had not met my participants before, even when there were distant family connections. I also accessed participants through the networks of two educational consultants in Punjab. It was important to go through trusted networks. For the educational consultants, my coming from an Australian university was a trusted brand. But my participants did not see my belonging to a university as a necessary plus. Nineteen of the 32 families came from Punjab. Another six from the National Capital Region (NCR) and Himachal were from Hindi-speaking areas, for I could speak Hindi and Punjabi. Early on in the transnational family study in India, it became clear it was essential to be able to communicate in a local language to get the perspectives, particularly of the older women of the family. It was important that I was Punjabi. As I had grown up in Delhi, I was fl uent in Hindi. It was also comforting for the older women that I too was in my late 60s. This explains the bias in the sample in that 25 of the 32 transnational families were from the Punjabi- and Hindi-speaking regions of India. Only two of the matched samples were from other states in India. I met the Gujarati family in Melbourne and the Tamil Nadu family was Christian and spoke English. The transnational family sample was predominantly middle- and upper- middle-income, split nearly evenly between metropolitan cities, regional cities, towns and villages. It was mainly Hindu and Sikh, with two Christian families, but no Muslim families. This refl ected the religious boundaries of academic, personal and familial networks in both Australia and India. It also emphasized the low level of Muslim migration from the Punjabi- and Hindi-speaking regions of India. In 2011, only 3.4 percent of Indian migrants in Australia were Muslim. The interviews in the fi rst phase were mainly one-to-one interviews, whereas in the second phase with the transnational families in India, they were family interviews. Most of the migrants were initially interviewed in Australia and their families interviewed in India. In three cases I met both the migrant and his family in India, when the migrant was visiting. In another three cases, the families were in Australia, either because they were visiting or had joined the migrant through family reunion. In only one case in Australia I interviewed both the migrant husband and wife’s family in different states in India. APPENDIX 1: THE PARTICIPANTS 217

The 2011 stage of interviewing was a response to a feeling that I was earlier getting only one side of the picture. A multi-sited approach to ethnography following both sides of the transnational family could better deliver a more nuanced picture of migration, money and family. In 2011 and 2012 I purposively sought migrants in Melbourne whose families I could meet in India. In 2014, a further opportunity presented itself to study migrants in Australia and Singapore who had families with micro businesses in India. 2 The Singapore sample led to two transnational family visits. I have not included them in the fi nal list of participants, though the emotional content of one of the life stories has remained with me. Studying migrants in Singapore led me to realize that the strictures of the nation-state shape the sending of money, family futures and the relationship between the source country and that of destination. These issues are starkly different for the Singapore migrants as Singapore does not offer the choice of settlement and family reunion to unskilled and semi-skilled migrants. Hence money sent has to work for the family left behind as well as the migrant’s future when he or she returns. There is no possibility of creating an extended family in Singapore. And in the end, the migrants know they have to return to the source country unless they can or want to leverage their experience in Singapore to migrate to a country that permits settlement. My approach to the research was that of grounded theory, moving up from data to theory. I analyzed the interviews using qualitative research software N8 and NVivo to assist in the analysis of qualitative data. This computer aided analysis made more transparent how theory emerged from data. It tested the fi t between data and theory. Computer aided analysis also made visible the silences in the study and what was not said. It often required multiple sweeps of the data as new questions emerged and codes got transformed. Sometimes the query was text based, in the face of new insights. I used textual matrices, to see which of the participants did not fi t the patterns I was describing. 218 APPENDIX 1: THE PARTICIPANTS

Table A.1 The Indian migration project, Australia, 2005–2014

Characteristics of the sample Number Number of families of persons

First phase: Interviews conducted May 2005–February 2012 Early Indian migrants who migrated 1970s to mid-1990s 15 a 19 Second-generation migrants 16 d 20 Indian students who migrated 2005–2010 32 b 35 Indian community leaders and representatives – 13 Total 63 87 Second phase: Interviews conducted October 2011–February 2014 Transnational families of student and skilled migrants who migrated 1997–2014 Matched samples 17 68 c Unmatched samples 15 31 Total number of transnational families 32 99 Total 95 186

a There were four married couples b There were three sets of married students c There were two students from the fi rst phase in the matched samples d There was one married couple. Three of the second generation were children of early migrants interviewed.

Tables A.2 , A.3 , A.4 , A.5 , A.6 , A.7 and A.8 follow with the characteristics of participants and where they appear in the story. APPENDIX 1: THE PARTICIPANTS 219

7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 , , , , , , , , 4 7 6 7 7 4 7 4 4 6 7 6 4 4 , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

3 4 4 3 3 3 4 3 3 4 4 3 3 3 4 4 7 Chaps. Chap. Chaps. Chaps. Chaps. Chaps. Chap. Chaps. Chaps. Chaps. Chaps. Chaps. Chaps. Chaps. Chap. Chaps. In the story Chaps. 2002 1988 1998 NA 1971 1973 1973 1994 1998 1987 1983 1996 1995 1986 2002 1985 1988 1971 Year of Year migration 1989 Singapore India Singapore India India India India UK Singapore Europe India India India India India India Fiji India Migrated to Australia from Singapore

Hindu Christian Sikh Muslim Christian Hindu Hindu Hindu Sikh Sikh Hindu Sikh Sikh Hindu Hindu Sikh Hindu Christian Religion Sikh 45–54 45–54 68 NA 65+ 65+ 55–64 44 65 65+ NS 55 55–64 54 25–34 91 45–54 65+ Age 68 M M M M F M F M F F F F M F M M F M Gender F Murali Karan Bhagwan Mansur Rita Anand Anita Ashok Banta Charan Daya Gurjeet Gurmeet Hema Jeevan Niranjan Preeta Rodney Pseudonym Ambika Early migrants interviewed May 2005–February 2012

15 13 5 14 18 2 3 4 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 16 17 19 Table A.2 Table No. 1 220 APPENDIX 1: THE PARTICIPANTS

7 8 , , 7 4 7 4 8 7 , , , , , ,

4 3 4 3 7 4 7 7 7 4 4 4 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 In the story Chap. Chap. Chap. Chap. Chap. Chap. Chap. Chaps. Chaps. Chap. Chaps. Chap. Chap. Chaps. Chaps. Chaps. Chap. Chap. Chap. Chap.

Year of Year migration 1973 1986 1982 1991 1974 NA 1985 1981 1972 late 1980s 1986 early 1970s 1988 1983 1986 1994 1997 1991 1986 1967/1968

Parents Parents migrated from India India Malaysia Kenya India (via USA) India India Kenya India/New Zealand India India India India India India Kenya Kenya India India India

Age at migration 4 years 1–5 years 9 years 4 years 11 years 4.5 years born here 6 months 1 year 4 years born here 8 years 12 years 9 years 12 years 11 years 9 years 11 years born here born here

Religion Hindu Hindu Hindu Hindu Muslim Hindu Hindu Hindu Hindu Hindu Sikh Christian Hindu Buddhist Hindu Hindu Hindu Hindu Sikh Christian

Age 21 27 25–29 25–29 39 25–29 28 24 25–34 20–24 27 NA 30 39 33 27 25–34 25–29 35 35

Gender F M F F F M M F M F F F M F M F F M F F Second generation interviewed 2009/2010

Pseudonym Alka Ashwin Brindha Chitra Daliah Etash Giri Harsh Ishan Jaya Kanta Lena Mahesh Meera Hemat Ina Indu Ishat Kiran Nancy Table A.3 Table No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 12 14 15 17 18 19 9 10 11 13 16 20 APPENDIX 1: THE PARTICIPANTS 221 ) , 5 8 8 8 , , , ,

4 5 4 5 4 5 8 8 8 8 8 8

9 continued , ( Chap. Chap. In the story Chaps. Chaps. Chap. Chap. Chaps. Chap. Chap. Chaps. Chap. Chap. 8 University University University/private institute Wife in university University University Wife in private institute University Private institute Wife in private institute Private institute Private institute Private institute Private institute Private institute Wife in private institute Private institute Private institute University Private institute Private institute Private institute 2006 2005 Year of Year arrival 2007 2005 2005 2008 2009 2007 2007 2008 2008 2008 2008 2008 2008 2008 2007 2005 2005 2008 2008 Punjab Punjab From region From region in India Gujarat Punjab Punjab Punjab Himachal Gujarat Gujarat Andhra Andhra Andhra Andhra Punjab Punjab Punjab Punjab Punjab Haryana Punjab Andhra

Sikh Hindu Religion Hindu Sikh Hindu Sikh Sikh Hindu Hindu Hindu Hindu Hindu Christian Sikh Sikh Sikh Sikh Sikh Sikh Sikh Hindu 27 25–30 Age 25–29 34 23 31–35 25–30 25–30 25–30 25–30 25–30 18–24 25–30 18–24 18–24 18–24 18–24 27 25–30 25–30 18–24 M M Gender M M M M F F M M M M M F M M M F M F M Student migrants, interviewed 2009/2010

Amar Champesh Pseudonym Bimal Charandeep Chandra Govind Harbinder Indrani Inder Jay Jaidev Jayant Joshua Dimple Darshan Dalip Deepak Ekta Farid Gita Jaswant

1 4 Table A.4 Table No. 2 Group A 3 5 13 14 15 16 Group C 17 19 20 21 Group B 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 18 222 APPENDIX 1: THE PARTICIPANTS

8 ,

4 8 8 8 Chap. Chap. In the story Chap. Chaps. In the story Private institute Private institute Private institute Private institute Private institute Private institute Private institute University/private institute Private institute Private institute Private institute Private institute Private institute Private institute University University/private institute 2008 2008 2008 2008 2008 2008 2008 of Year arrival 2009 2007 2007 2005 2010 2010 2005 Year of Year arrival Andhra Andhra Andhra Andhra Kerala Kerala Andhra From region in India Punjab Haryana Punjab Punjab Punjab Punjab Andhra From region From region in India Hindu Hindu Hindu Hindu Hindu Christian Christian Religion Sikh Sikh Sikh Sikh Sikh Sikh Hindu Religion 18–24 25–34 25–35 25–36 30 25–30 25–30 Age 25–30 18–24 18–24 18–24 18–24 18–24 29 Age M F F M M M F Gender M M M M F F M Gender (continued)

Muragam Neelam Priya Praveen Ravi Kailash Lacha Pseudonym Sohan Suraj Sunil Samarjit Shinder Sharan Tirath Pseudonym

Group D 24 25 26 27 28 22 23 No. Group E 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 No. Table A.4 Table APPENDIX 1: THE PARTICIPANTS 223 )

9 9 9

, , 9 8 9 6 6

, , , , , 8 7 8 5 9 5 5 5 5 9 9

continued ( Chaps. Chaps. Chaps. Chap. Chap. Chap. Chap. Chap. Chap. Chap. Chaps. In the story

Skilled Student Student Student Spouse Student/ skilled Student

1994 2007 1997 2005 Year of arrival Year of migrant 2009

Tamil Nadu Tamil National Capital Region National Capital Region Punjab From region in From region India Himachal

Christian Hindu Hindu Sikh Hindu Religion Sikh

50 18–24 35–44 34 35–44 Age of principal migrant 29

M M F Gender of principal migrant M M F

The transnational family: matched samples interviewed 2011/2012

Giresh Chand Chitra (mother) Charandeep Mother Aunt Gina (Giresh’s mother) Abhi (Asha’s mother) Charandas (father) Asha (wife) Wife Geeta (Giresh’s sister) Chandar (father) Pseudonym Arvind Harbinder Mother Father Aunt

4 No. Table A.5 Table 2 3 5 1 224 APPENDIX 1: THE PARTICIPANTS

9 9

, , 9 9 8 8 9

, ,

, , ,

6 6 6 6 6 7 7

6 7

Chap. Chaps. Chap. Chaps. Chap. Chap. Chaps. Chaps. Chaps. In the story

Skilled Student Skilled Student Student/ skilled

2003 2003 Mid-1990s 2003 Year of arrival Year of migrant

National capital region Punjab Punjab Punjab From region in From region India

Hindu Hindu Sikh Sikh Sikh Religion

37 31 48 36 Age of principal migrant 25–34

M M M Gender of principal migrant M

(continued)

Isher Wife Lata (sister) Laina (father) Mother Brother Ila (wife) Laila (daughter) Iqbal (Ila’s father Indra (Ila’s mother) Jasbir Lal Harjinder (brother) Harpal (father) Sister-in-law Harjot (mother) Jasmine (mother) Pseudonym Harbans

7 Table A.5 Table No. 8 9 6 APPENDIX 1: THE PARTICIPANTS 225

Chap. In the story

Skilled Student/ skilled

2002 Year of arrival Year of migrant

Punjab From region in From region India

Sikh Religion

Age of principal migrant 39

Gender of principal migrant M

Meena (wife) Meera (daughter) Maninder (mother) Pseudonym Mohinder

No. 10 226 APPENDIX 1: THE PARTICIPANTS )

continued 9

( , 9 9 8

, , ,

5 5 2 9 5

Chaps. Chaps. Chaps. Chap. Chap. In the story Chap.

Student Skilled Student Student Student Student/Skilled Student

1999 2005 2006 2008 2007 Year of Year arrival of migrant 2006

Gujarat Punjab Punjab Punjab Punjab From in region India Punjab

Hindu Sikh Sikh Sikh Hindu Religion Hindu

38 25 25 45–54 Age of principal migrant 25–34 29

M M M M Gender of principal migrant M M

The transnational family: matched sample interviewed 2014

Baksh (father) Cousin Mother Stepmother Binod Father Mother Father Pseudonym Abhay (brother) Ashish (father) Sister Mother Ajay’s wife Abhay’s wife Birender Dharma Amar (father) Mother Chacha 2 Cousins Ajay Chetan Akash

4 Table A.6 Table No. 3 6 2 5 1 APPENDIX 1: THE PARTICIPANTS 227

9 9 ,

, 8 8

, 6 6

, 5 5

Chaps. In the story Chaps.

Student/Skilled Student

Year of Year arrival of migrant 2005

From in region India Punjab

Religion Hindu

Age of principal migrant 30

Gender of principal migrant M

(continued) Lalita (mother) Lakh (brother) Lokesh (brother) Wife Lalit (father) Pseudonym Bhuaji Lakshman

Table A.6 Table No. 7 228 APPENDIX 1: THE PARTICIPANTS

5 Chap. In the story Skilled Skilled Student Student/skilled Student Skilled NA NA NA Year of Year arrival of migrant NA 1998

Tamil Nadu Tamil National Capital Region Nadu Tamil From region From region in India Punjab Himachal Christian Sikh Hindu Religion Hindu Sikh 45–54 NA NA Age of principal migrant NA F M M M M Gender of principal migrant The transnational family: unmatched sample interviewed 2011/2012

Diya (mother-in-law) Diya (mother-in-law) Dayal (father-in-law) Damayanti (sister-in-law) Dharvar law) (brother-in Fateh (father) Pseudonym Betty Feroze (brother-in-law) Kala (mother) Kartar (father) Navtej (mother) 2 3 No. 1 4 5 Table A.7 Table APPENDIX 1: THE PARTICIPANTS 229

8 ,

5 9 8 Chap. Chaps. In the story Chap. Student Student Student Student Student Student Student Student Student Student/ skilled Student NA 2002 NA 2003 NA NA 2007 NA 2014 Year of arrival Year of migrant 2004

Punjab West Bengal West Punjab Andhra Punjab Punjab Gujarat Punjab Punjab From region in From region India Punjab Sikh Hindu Sikh Hindu Sikh Sikh Hindu Sikh Sikh Religion Hindu NA 34 NA 25–34 NA NA 25–34 NA NA Age of principal migrant 35–44 M M M M M M M M M Gender of principal migrant M The transnational family: unmatched sample interviewed 2014

Pargat (father) Pargat Faraj Mother- in-law Mother- Aunt-in-law Narender Eknath Gayatri (wife) Manjit (brother-in- law) Charu (mother) Daljit Mother Grandmother Brother Garg Chandan (father) Fakir Singh (father) Pseudonym Mother Grandmother Sumit 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1 5 Table A.8 Table No 10 230 APPENDIX 1: THE PARTICIPANTS

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A communication technologies Australian migration policy (ICTs); recent migrants; coping with mobility, 78 remittances; transnational family “designer migrants”, 17, 168, 183 airletters, 109, 110, 111, 212 economic worth of the migrant, 103 changes in, 109, 110, 112, 115, education-migration nexus, 168–70 116, 125, 127, 212 family reunion, 3, 10, 102, 216 frequency of, 15, 117, 124, 133 move to temporary migration, gender patterns of, 119 169, 187 and meanings of money, 109 permanent settlement, 17, 170 and the new ICTs, 15, 109, 110, search for skilled labor, 169 115, 119–24, 125, 143 skilled migration, 6 telephone, 111, 112, 113, White Australia Policy, 6 114, 118 in the transnational family, 5, 13, 14, 15, 18, 28, 109–33, 141, C 143 caring . See also communication; and value of money, 109, 124, 125, remittances; transnational family 133 ambiguities of, 38 what remains unsaid, 110 dimensions of, 45 community . See also diaspora measuring money against physical philanthropy caregiving, 127 in Australia, 83, 154, 213 reciprocity of, 45, 52 building, 142 tensions of, 45, 51–5 giving back, 49, 184 communication . See also caring; early in the home country, 48 migrants; new information and religious, 50, 76

D liberalization of foreign exchange, 92 diaspora philanthropy middle class in India is growing in educational, 49 wealth, 4 extent of, 82 rising asset prices, 93 and kind of migrant, 92 local and transnational, 48–51 maleness of, 69 F relates to life stages, 48 Facebook, 109, 117, 175 religious, 49, 50 family reunion . See also early migrants; dowry, 82, 83, 87, 88 . See also fi nancial joint family; recent migrants abuse caring for grandchildren, 81, 145, 146, 204 some parents bring money, 102–3 E family violence . See also gender of early migrants, 3, 4, 5, 10, 38, 46–8, money; money management and 50, 52, 53, 58, 66, 69, 71, 73, control; recent migrants; 74, 77, 78, 83, 84, 92, 111–15, remittances 118–19, 124, 126–7, 131, 141, community and family pressures, 83 142, 144, 145, 148, 149, 153, lack of respect for women, 82 156, 157, 162, 173, 174, 195, patriarchal values, 82 201, 211, 212, 213, 215, 219 . sense of entitlement, 82 See also communication; fi nancial support, 82 abuse; Indian migration to fi nancial abuse, 82–8 Australia; remittances diffusion of the family, 5 dilution of the family, 149 G melding with Anglo-Celtic culture, gender of money . See also diaspora 157 philanthropy; inheritance; narrowing of the extended family, 5 patrilineal family; remittances one way communication, 5 accepting money from her daughter, one way fl ow of remittances, 72, 77, 81 112–13 changes in, 77–81 prevalence of the nuclear family, 141 life stages, 41, 80 racism, 156, 157 male control of money, 69, 83 and recent migrants, 3, 38, 109, remittances, 13, 14, 59 115, 118, 124, 132, 133, 141, gifts, 27, 28, 33, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 174 46, 47, 48, 52, 54, 55, 58, 59, remittances, 46–8, 58, 212 71–3, 77, 81, 93, 99, 122, 129, settlement, 5, 169, 203 132, 144, 150, 151 women slip in fi nancial status, globalization 67–81 a global South perspective, 14 emergent India personal dimensions of, 14 INDEX 251

H M housing male money, 82–8 . See also diaspora built environment of Melbourne, philanthropy; fi nancial abuse; 213 gender of money extended family, 5, 43, 44, 194, management and control of money . 195, 197, 198, 203, 206, 214 See also family violence; gender of migrant clusters, 43 money; remittances fi nancial abuse, 82 independent management, 51, 69 I joint account, 85, 87 Indian migration to Australia . See also male control, 69, 82, 83 early migrants; housing; mobility; recent Indian migrants, 4, 65, 92 recent migrants; settlement; remittances, 13, 84–6 student migrants separate account, 85, 87 attraction of Australia, 7, 8, 67 migration experience British India period, 5 independence, 6, 27, 65 demographic changes, 4, 92 licence to leave, 56 fi ve decades of, 3–18, 115 living without family, 171 phases of, 9 work ethic, 31 push factors, 17, 103, 187 mobile money, 14, 15, 58, 124, 125, rapid increase of, 4 130, 131, 132, 133 Inheritance . See also caring; gender of mobile phone, 14, 47, 98, 109, money; transnational family 110, 112, 115, 116, 117, 118, of agricultural land, 54 119, 124, 132, 206, 212 . See also changing views of, 80, 81 new information and gender of, 81, 100 communication technologies; silences around, 53 student migrants symbolizes belonging in the family, mobility . See recent migrants; student 52 migrants women cede inheritance, 69 money as a gift calibrating it, 42 shagun , 71, 72, 122 J money management and control, 42 joint family . See also caring; housing; money relationships in the family patrilineal family; recent migrants Anglo-Celtic, 39 development cycle of the, 196, Global South, 14, 42, 44, 58, 207 197–201 Indian, 38–42 in India, 69, 184, 186, 188, 195, intergenerational reciprocity of 196, 197, 201 money , 45 re-imagining the joint family in morality of, 14, 18, 27, 37, 38–42 Australia, 5, 13, 28, 46, 142, multiple migrants, 3, 46, 70, 171, 188, 193–207 144, 145 252 INDEX

N informal, 38, 49, 104 new information and communication infrastructure, 16–18 technologies (ICTs) . See also international fl ow of funds, 8, 37, communication; early migrants; 104 Facebook; mobile phone; recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) migrants; Skype; transnational defi nition, 91 family meaning of, 91, 212 access to, 110, 118 measuring, 104, 213 affordability of, 4, 14 money transfers, 38, 91 hyperconnectivity, 117 morality of, 37, 38, 51, 56, 93 instantaneous, 4, 16, 110, 125 recent migrants pay to migrate, 92 mix of , 116 regulation of, 18 scripts, 44, 46 sending money home, 38, 44, 56, P 71, 91, 94, 103, 212 patrilineal family, 38, 44, 81 . See also social, 45, 94, 195 joint family

S R second-generation racism . See also early migrants; Australian way of life, 153 second-generation; student connection with India, 153, 160 migrants dilution of the transnational family, denial of, 181 149–53 recent migrants . See also experience of racism, 10 communication; migration food , 153–6 experience; remittances; identity, 85, 155, 163 transnational family Indian values, 153–6 demographic changes, 4, 92 intermarriage, mobility , 167–88 language, 160, 163 remittances, 91–104 little connection with student temporary visas, 5, 82, 167, 212 migrants, 70, 82, 175 remittances . See also caring; early remittances , 150 migrants; gender of money; Where are you from?, 160–5 money relationships in the family; settlement . See early migrants recent migrants; second- skilled migrants . See also joint family; generation; transnational family recent migrants; transnational are male, 132 family bilateral remittances, 91 demographic characteristics of, 4, circulation of care, 45, 128 27, 92, 213 currency of care, 18, 37–59 settlement costs, 93 fl ow two ways, 18, 91, 104 Skype INDEX 253

family conversations, 117 T visual, 79 transnational family . See also caring; sociology of money communication; inheritance; interweaving personal and market money; new information and money , 44 communication technologies; money across cultures, 14 relationships in the family; money is a social phenomenon, 13 remittances student migrants . See also Australian display of belonging, 46, 48, 71 migration policy; joint family; everyday family life across borders, recent migrants; remittances; 117 transnational family life stages of the, 144 independent living, 69, 172, 180 simultaneity of communication in and the Indian community in the , 115 Australia, 83, 213 transnational money . See also caring; living without family, 171 communication; early migrants; loans , 44, 73, 94, 97 recent migrants; remittances; parents send money for education, transnational family 96–9 and communication, 13, 109, 124 precarious mobility, 167, 169, 182 and early migrants, 118–19, 126–5 racist assaults, 180 meanings of, 15, 45, 109 reasons for migrating, 183 and recent migrants, 109, 115, 118, send money home, 92, 97 124, 132, 133 working in Australia, 172, value of, 52, 124–30, 212 177–80 studying money and family analysis of data, 217 V continued relationship, 12, 29 visits . See also communication; early emotional aspects of migration, 12 migrants; recent migrants; grounded theory, 217 transnational family intimacy of the interview, 29 cheaper travel, 116, 212 participant observation, 12, 215 frequency of, 15 two phases, 9–11 physical copresence, 116