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Migration and Morality Amongst Sri Lankan Catholics

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Migration and Morality Amongst Sri Lankan Catholics UNLIKELY COSMPOLITANS: MIGRATION AND MORALITY AMONGST SRI LANKAN CATHOLICS A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Bernardo Enrique Brown August, 2013 © 2013 Bernardo Enrique Brown ii UNLIKELY COSMOPOLITANS: MIGRATION AND MORALITY AMONGST SRI LANKAN CATHOLICS Bernardo Enrique Brown, Ph.D. Cornell University, 2013 Sri Lankan Catholic families that successfully migrated to Italy encountered multiple challenges upon their return. Although most of these families set off pursuing very specific material objectives through transnational migration, the difficulties generated by return migration forced them to devise new and creative arguments to justify their continued stay away from home. This ethnography traces the migratory trajectories of Catholic families from the area of Negombo and suggests that – due to particular religious, historic and geographic circumstances– the community was able to develop a cosmopolitan attitude towards the foreign that allowed many of its members to imagine themselves as ―better fit‖ for migration than other Sri Lankans. But this cosmopolitanism was not boundless, it was circumscribed by specific ethical values that were constitutive of the identity of this community. For all the cosmopolitan curiosity that inspired people to leave, there was a clear limit to what values and practices could be negotiated without incurring serious moral transgressions. My dissertation traces the way in which these iii transnational families took decisions, constantly navigating between the extremes of a flexible, rootless cosmopolitanism and a rigid definition of identity demarcated by local attachments. Through fieldwork conducted between January and December of 2010 in the predominantly Catholic region of Negombo, I examine the work that transnational migrants did to become moral beings in a time of globalization, individualism and intense consumerism. My work was based in two small fishing villages that surround the central area of Negombo – located thirty miles to the north of Colombo along the coast of the Indian Ocean. This dissertation therefore engages with non-elitist and rooted theories of cosmopolitanism as well as with contemporary philosophical and anthropological developments in the study of morality. These approaches understand morality beyond its deontological dimension and interpret it as a kind of practice, a work on the self geared towards becoming a particular kind of person. iv BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Bernardo E. Brown was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1974. After graduating from the Universidad de Buenos Aires with a degree in Political Science, he worked for local NGOs and taught social sciences at high school level in Buenos Aires. In 2003 he was awarded a fellowship by the New School University to join its Graduate Program in International Affairs. At the time, he started conducting research with undocumented immigrants living in New York City. Upon completion of his MA degree, he worked for the Consulate General of Argentina in New York until 2007, when he moved to Ithaca to join Cornell University‘s Department of Anthropology. After Cornell, he will take a Postdoctoral position at the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden, The Netherlands. v For Chatero vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Over the last six years I had the opportunity of living a life I never thought I would. For that reason alone, I owe an immense debt of gratitude to all the people at Cornell who encouraged me to pursue my research work in Sri Lanka. In particular, the faculty at the Department of Anthropology and the South Asian scholars at the Department of Asian Studies, have not only found value in my projects, but have patiently tolerated my ignorance in historic and cultural matters that I was exploring for the first time. At all times the entire community of South Asian scholars at Cornell welcomed my own ―unlikely‖ curiosity in that part of the world and generously shared an incalculable wealth of knowledge. My first and deepest gratitude goes to Dr. Viranjini Munasinghe, not only for being an extraordinary advisor, but for being the first person who thought that beyond all obstacles, there was something original in this project that was worth pursuing. Limiting my thanks to Dr. Munasinghe individually would be unfair, as after all these years her husband David – along with their children in Ithaca and parents in Colombo – have seen more of me than they cared to. Without her uniquely creative mind and intellectual wisdom I would not have discovered the delight that I find in doing scholarly work. My heartfelt thanks to Dr. Anne Blackburn, who from our first meetings helped transform my raw research ideas into projects of academic interest – vii I still cannot imagine doing this without her help. In Colombo, her name alone opened innumerable doors to friends and colleagues who generously offered scholarly advice and helped me navigate Sri Lanka. Her passion for academic work and the rigor of her research can only be the best model a graduate student can ask for. My most sincere gratitude to Dr. Andrew Willford, whose genuine and tireless intellectual spirit of inquiry propelled my own academic curiosity towards fields that gave my research textures I had not suspected. Dr. Willford‘s true passion for ethnography is such an inspiration that after talking to him one cannot wait to leave campus behind and go back to fieldwork. To this wonderful dissertation committee, my most sincere thanks for allowing me to imagine myself as an anthropologist. Throughout the years a large number of people have made possible my work in Sri Lanka. First, the staff at the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies in Colombo, especially Ira Unamboobwe, Deepthi Guneratne and Mr. Weerasoorya, made possible my initial trips and tolerated my clumsy inexperience. Dr. John Rogers, AISLS Director, always generously offered his help and advice. His work makes possible a vibrant community in the United States for students and scholars interested in Sri Lanka. At the University of Colombo, Dr. Sasanka Perera went through the countless bureaucratic hurdles needed to obtain my research permits. Along with him, thanks to the staff at the Department of Sociology who welcomed me in their workplace. viii A long list of friends who often played the role of my teachers of Sri Lankan culture deserves a special thank you. Since my first time in Colombo, Aditya More and Arefa Tehsin, have been my dearest of Indian friends who shared their broad interests in Sri Lanka with me. Jagath Pathirage and Waruni Chandrasena showed me a unique side of Colombo‘s not-so-easy life in the arts and culture. To Ashan Munasinghe, Monica Smith, Harinie Kannangara and Tarique Gunasekera, a most special thank you for sharing unforgettable days all across Sri Lanka, especially those sometimes long nights in Negombo. Special thank you to Justin Henry, Kaori Hatsumi, Annelise Goger, Fr. Terence Fernando, Fr. Sarath Iddamalgoda, Dr. Premakumara de Silva, Bandara Herath, Vandana Nagaraj, Meredith Talbert, Katy Griffin and Dr. Michele Gamburd for help at different times of my research. Life in Ithaca was made possible by the friendship of some of my favorite people in the world. Deniz Yonucu, John Duong Phan, Tina Shrestha, Nidhi Mahajan and Rishad Choudhury are without a doubt the best friends I could have hoped for over the last six years. A special thank you to even older friends who were brave enough to come visit me in Ithaca from New York and even from Buenos Aires: Sheila Aminmadani, Maria Arruda, Miriam Eisenberger and Nicolas Oswald along with his (my) family, Candela and Bautista. I want to thank many others in Ithaca who over the last few years shared their lives with me: Todd Dickey, Blanca Torres, Ivan Small, Reighan Gillam, Tim Haupt, Dambar Chemjong, Courtney Work, Charis Boke, ix Erick White, Magnus Fiskesjö, Billie Jean Isbell and Barry Maxwell. For their generous help to navigate Cornell, thank you to Donna Duncan, Margaret Rolfe, Dr. Kurt Jordan, Durga Bor and Bill Phelan. Finally, to my family goes the most special thanks and all my love. I wish more than anything that my father, Jimmy, could read this dissertation. I can only imagine the pride he would take in my work and the guiding example he would have offered me in the last few years. My mother Tessy and my siblings Jim and Marianne along with their families are a constant source of joy and laughter that I could not imagine my life without. And lastly one more special thank you to my nieces Victoria and Belén who, against all sensible advice, have spent more than one of their summer holidays in the winters of Ithaca. x TABLE OF CONTENTS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii INTRODUCTION 12 CHAPTER 1: Cosmopolitanism 61 CHAPTER 2: The Family of Chaminda and Indika 101 CHAPTER 3: Between Religion and Nation 151 CHAPTER 4: The Ethical Life 196 CHAPTER 5: Indifference 240 CONCLUSION 278 xi INTRODUCTION Most people I talked to in Negombo wanted to leave. In fact, many of my closest informants left while I was conducting fieldwork. Some were trying to leave the country for the first time, some were going to Italy to join their families already there, others had been visiting their relatives at home and were now returning to their jobs abroad. Migration in Negombo was a constant source of conversation for everyone. Particularly the younger generations – who felt stuck in Sri Lanka with little prospects of employment – were constantly talking about who left, where to, who returned, what they brought, where could they go next, who could provide a connection, who had an acquaintance that knew of a way to leave. My own presence as a foreigner routinely riding my motorcycle on the streets of Negombo was motive for speculation.
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