Replacing the nation in the age of migration: negotiating South Asian identities in Toronto
ISHAN ASHUTOSH
Ashutosh, Ishan. (2015). Replacing the nation in the age of migration: negotiat- ing South Asian identities in Toronto. Fennia 193: 2, 212–226. ISSN 1798-5617.
This essay examines the role of the national in shaping the geo-political divides and connections of the South Asian diaspora in Toronto. South Asian diaspora identities are explored through two contrasting political projects that reveal the ambivalent role of the nation in producing diasporic subjectivities and their shifting borders. First, by discussing the perceptions of South Asians in Toronto, it is contended that national and religious divides are reproduced in the dias- pora as a means of national belonging to the society of settlement. Diasporic geo-political divides are not merely transposed from societies of origin to settle- ment, but rather lie at the intersection of transnational and multicultural politics that encompass societies of origin and settlement. The reproduction of national divides in the South Asian diaspora is situated in the neighbourhoods of immi- grant settlement that are positioned as the objects of multicultural efficacy. The second political project reconstitutes the national through cross-national soli- darities. Through a discussion of South Asian organizations and political initia- tives in Toronto and other cities in North America, this section illuminates di- asporic politics predicated on new understandings of history and connection that rejuvenate and politicize multicultural politics. The argument presented finds that national boundaries are re-inscribed in the diaspora at the intersection of the multiple claims of membership. Simultaneously, experiences and interac- tions in the diaspora provide the grounds for transforming and questioning the limits of national belonging.
Keywords: Toronto, South Asian diaspora, multiculturalism, transnationalism, ethnography, migration
Ishan Ashutosh, Indiana University, Department of Geography, Student Building 120, 701 E. Kirkwood Ave., Bloomington, IN 47405, U.S.A. E-mail: iashutos@ indiana.edu
Introduction politics capable of transforming the inclusions and exclusions that underwrite national membership This essay examines how overlapping national ide- (Ashutosh 2014). Diasporic identities are of par- ologies inform the various subjectivities of Toron- ticular significance to debates over national inte- to’s South Asian diaspora. In many respects, the gration in Canada, given that twenty per cent of the very term “South Asian” alludes to the multiple country’s population is foreign-born, and the coun- positioning of the national. The term consists of a try’s multi-national character has been a central state category that reduces national, linguistic, and element of government policy and nationalist dis- religious differences (Ghosh 2013). Yet the term course since at least Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s also signifies the historical and contemporary introduction of a multicultural policy within a bi- cross-national and anti-racist activism of people of lingual framework in 1971. With a population of Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani, and Sri Lankan ori- 1.56 million people, South Asians have been Can- gins in Canada. Their activities illustrate a diasporic ada’s largest “visible minority group” since 2006
URN:NBN:fi:tsv-oa46224 DOI: 10.11143/46224 FENNIA 193: 2 (2015) Replacing the nation in the age of migration 213 with just over half of all South Asians in Canada that would advance a hermetically sealed concep- residing in Toronto (Statistics Canada 2011). tion of culture, I have placed difference at the cen- The South Asian diaspora is composed of over- tre of my study. The narratives that frame this arti- lapping identities that span societies of origin and cle represent a subset of a total of 55 in-depth, in- settlement. These identities are situated in the city dividual, and focus group interviews conducted in and reveal the extent to which the global is routed Toronto from 2007 to 2009 that focused on the through the national. As a “visible minority” group complexities of diasporic identity in the city. Par- in Canada, South Asians are equated with the suc- ticipants were affiliated with multiple nations in- cess and failures of multiculturalism and national cluding India, Sri Lanka, Tamil Eelam, Pakistan, integration. For societies of origin, the South Asian Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan, as well as “twice diaspora’s transnational activity resists or enhanc- migrants” (Bhachu 1985) and the descendants of es the post-colonial nationalisms of South Asia. indentured and kangani labourers that have made For instance, the call for the homeland of Tamil their way to Canada from other sites in the South Eelam championed by many Sri Lankan Tamils is Asian diaspora. As I discovered during fieldwork, violently resisted by the Sri Lankan state, while more significant than locating national or regional much of the Indian diaspora, once a marginal and primary identities was to trace the various transna- at times threatening figure for the post-colonial tional routes and cross-national affiliations engen- state, is today reconnected to the homeland dered through migrancy. This strategy allows for through the figure of the “global Indian” (Dickin- both the uniqueness and shared patterns of migra- son & Bailey 2007; Varadarajan 2010). Toronto is tion experiences to be highlighted. I also sought to today a central node in this dispersed and intricate examine the multigenerational aspect of South diaspora that spans over one hundred countries Asian diasporic identity formation by interviewing (Maharaj 2003). Moreover, Toronto’s South Asians recent migrants, those that migrated decades ago encompass the various typologies of diaspora that with the liberalization of Canada’s immigration include refugees, labour, and trade (Cohen 1997). policies in the mid-1960s, to the 1.5 generation The complexities that constitute the South Asian and those born in Canada. diaspora in Toronto, therefore, enable an interro- Respondents active in the representation of dias- gation of the fraught status of the nation in its eve- pora, such as settlement workers, activists, stu- ryday manifestations in the city. dents, artists, were identified through my partici- The intersection of multiple national ideologies pant-observation in a number of South Asian events that shape the politics of the South Asian diaspora in the city that included multicultural celebrations, in Toronto prompt the need for an analysis attuned protests, town hall meetings, plays, and concerts. to the processes of cohesion and division pro- From there, I relied on snowball sampling for ad- duced by the multiple intersections of nationalism. ditional contacts. Equally important, however, I argue that the national contains a dual role in were the participants that came to centrally shape shaping the politics of belonging of the South my research through the prosaic encounters in the Asian diaspora. On the one hand, the national re- city that yielded brief conversations and follow up inforces geopolitical divides when nationalism is interviews. The serendipitous encounters and eve- directed towards incorporation in the host society. ryday experiences made possible by long-term eth- On the other, the national is remade through South nographic fieldwork enabled me to move beyond Asian cross-national solidarities in the diaspora. stakeholder interviews and to place the diversity The focus on the South Asian diaspora more and difference of Toronto’s South Asian communi- broadly exposes the moments of harmonious as ties at the centre of my research. well as dissonant articulations of belonging to The insistence on the diversity of respondents multiple communities that frame diasporic identi- was by design, for the questioning of the nation is ties and political projects. best achieved by looking beyond the categories Following Baumann’s (1996) deconstruction of that are purported to represent and contain the the perceived isomorphism between community practices and agency of people. Although this es- and culture, my fieldwork focused on the overlap- say analyses the ambivalence of multiple nations ping claims of belonging and affiliations that in shaping diasporic experiences, it disrupts the stretched across the bounded notions of commu- embedded epistemological framework of “meth- nity. Rather than confining my research to the odological nationalism” in the social sciences study of a particular national or regional group (Wimmer & Schiller 2002) that reify the national 214 Ishan Ashutosh FENNIA 193: 2 (2015) by viewing it as a priori and natural container for tury, we now must place at the centre of our anal- society. So long as the nation is assessed as a cohe- ysis the intersection of multiple nationalisms and sive entity that envelops all social phenomena, the competing pressures of integration that span scholars are bound to write nationalistic narra- multiple nation-states. tives, a point made abundantly clear in the title of The frequent pairing of the terms diaspora and Prasenjit Duara’s (1995) Rescuing history from the transnationalism stems from scholarship that criti- nation. Methodological nationalism has occluded cally examined the limits of the nation and the from analysis both an adequate explanation for the emergence of new forms of political, social, and reproduction of nationalism and the new affilia- economic connectivity (Rouse 1991; Gilroy 1993; tions that have emerged in diaspora. Appadurai 1996; Sassen 1996). Membership, be- In the sections that follow, I investigate the nexus longing, and citizenship were extended through and disarticulations between the nation, state, and supranational entities (Soysal 1994) and in the con- migration in the formation of the identities, bor- text of post-colonial nation-states as the regimes of ders, and solidarities of the South Asian diaspora. I differentiated rights (Ong 1999). Nevertheless, begin by engaging with how the concept of the na- there is a tacit tension between diaspora as a for- tion has been scrutinized in scholarship on trans- mation through spatial dispersal outside the home- national migration and diaspora. I then turn to the land and transnationalism as a new unity and con- ways in which national inclusions/exclusions are nection between societies of origin and settlement created in the South Asian diaspora through dis- (Tololyan 1991; Clifford 1994). Unlike transnation- courses of integration that are informed by a trans- alism in which the migrant is reincorporated into national conception of belonging. The final section the nation, the multi-dimensional relation between engages with political actions in Toronto and New the nation and diaspora includes the desire and im- York City to illuminate a progressive and inclusive possibility of return, projects and actions towards form of cross-national solidarities that, in turn, re- transforming the homeland to a nation-state, and make the nation across distinct national contexts. the reproduction of the homeland outside its ori- gins. The diasporic reimagining of the nation has been well captured by Salman Rushdie’s (1991) Diasporic gatherings and the national argument that the diasporean desire to reclaim is imaginary bound to transform national fictions and myths. Rushdie’s emphasis on the activity and agency in reimagining the politics of belonging instigated The duality of the nation-migration dialectic most Homi Bhabha (1994: 170) to write “it is to the city expressly reveals Tom Nairn’s (1975) characteriza- that the migrants, the minorities, the diasporic tion of the national as “janus faced”. From one come to change the history of the nation”. This es- perspective, nationalism is filled with the poten- say places such sentiments under critical scrutiny tial to be “a morally and politically positive force” by examining the representation of migrants and (Nairn 1975: 5) as evinced by anti-colonial na- articulations of belonging by South Asian migrants tionalisms and contemporary social movements. in the city, the stage upon which for Bhabha (1994: As a progressive force, appeals to the national 170) the “emergent identifications and new social fight against the confines of the existing limits of movements of the people are played out”. Across membership as witnessed in the 2006 immigra- Toronto’s neighborhoods, in the spectacular and tion reform protests in the United States (Butler & banal experiences of migrants, the national is re- Spivak 2007). From the other perspective, the na- produced, contested, and remade. tion divides, excludes, and kills with a ferocity In the very act of movement beyond the territory that led Benedict Anderson (1991) to conjure of the nation-state, international migration exposes death as the more likely realization of the nation. the limits of national imaginaries, and entails a re- Given that diaspora politics embody this dual constitution and reworking of identities (Walton- character of the nation, our task remains on the Roberts & Pratt 2005). Yet, desires for return and very terrain laid out by Nairn that demands a con- demands for incorporation that encompass both frontation with both aspects of nationalism. Since sending and receiving societies place migrants as the national has not succumbed to globalization objects central to the delineation of the contours of and transnational connectivity as provocatively the nation. In the context of receiving society, the claimed in the final decade of the twentieth cen- South Asian diaspora serve as objects for narratives FENNIA 193: 2 (2015) Replacing the nation in the age of migration 215 of the just, equal, and inclusive nation. For sending These competing views on the national in rela- societies, diasporic long-distance nationalisms tion to migration and diaspora reveal a number of that operate beyond national territory are evaluat- salient features of the fraught relations between ed as both an incorporative strategy that span the nation, state, and migration. At its most funda- sending and receiving societies (Schiller & Fouron mental, extant scholarship has shown that the na- 2001) or as a “politics without responsibility or ac- tional form and constructions of community are countability” (Anderson 1992: 11). Diasporic na- activated through multiple movements, be it across tionalisms challenge the post-colonial state’s ex- spaces, domains, state inclusions/exclusions, and clusions, while eliciting a cohesive diasporic iden- the subject/object positions of national narratives. tity and form of belonging, as with Sri Lankan Tam- To put it another way, the national emerges through ils (Fuglerud 1999). In other cases, long-distance various mobilities that enable an analysis of the nationalism acts in collusion with the post-coloni- multiple and conflicted spaces and scales of na- al state, as seen in the Indian government’s estab- tionalism. The following sections provide a situat- lishment of new citizenship regimes and institu- ed analysis of the tension of diaspora between the tions aimed at reincorporating the elite segments reproduction of the national and the moments of of its diaspora (Varadarajan 2010). cross-national solidarities that reconfigure the na- Despite the rise of diasporean and transnational tional. In the next section, such understandings of discourses that illuminated the multi-stranded multiple identities are formulated through appeals economic, political, and social connections oper- to culture and the state that rest on the violent ex- ating across national territories, the national con- clusion of others that shape one virulent aspect of tinued to shape notions of belonging through its the contemporary nation in relation to migration. de-territorialization beyond state territory, and re- territorialization in the diasporic context (Basch et al. 1994). The relation between the nation and Bordering the national in urban space migration has been characterized as ‘ambiguous’ (Van der Veer 1995) and ‘ambivalent,’ which led This section is framed around the spatialization of to the examinations of new hybrid social identi- South Asian national divides that are reconstituted ties and national re-imaginings. Paul Gilroy’s in the diaspora through the intersection of multi- (1993: 2) provocations to imagine beyond the na- cultural and transnational politics. Canadian na- tion repositions hermetically sealed understand- tionalism in the form of multiculturalism establish- ing of community with the “more difficult option” es the hierarchies of incorporation that perpetuate of the transverse dynamics of community and the antagonisms not only between racialized im- identity that, akin to Bhabha (1994), lend them- migrants and settler descendent Canadians, but selves to “creolization, metissage, mestizaje, and also amongst Toronto’s South Asians. The re-bor- hybridity”. Yet hybridity as reflective of diasporic dering of the nation in the South Asian diaspora is identity (Bhabha 1994) is all too often removed not merely the outcome of post-colonial national- from the everyday realities and regimenting forces isms that have traveled with diaspora. Rather, they of the nation-state and capital, which, as we will point to the intersection of multiple nationalisms see in the following section, suggests that diaspo- that enable elite migrants and diasporic subjects to ra is not a ready source of progressive politics affirm their incorporation and belonging to Cana- (Mitchell 1997). Moreover, hybridity potentially da. Although it has been noted that multicultural- elides the ways that diaspora identity coheres with ism as a promotion of integration can generate consumerist multiculturalism in which ethnicity is antagonisms and suspicion due to competition promoted as a tradable commodity (Walton-Rob- over government funds (Buchignani 1980), in the erts 2011). Claire Dwyer (2002) makes an impor- banal reproduction of geopolitical divides the tant contribution by providing a situated and state and the discrimination of the host society are grounded analysis of the hybrid identities of Brit- frequently absolved. The findings in this essay par- ish Muslim women who reconstruct the contours allel Sarah Mahler’s (1995: 3) research on Salvado- of the national by refusing to ‘fix’ their identities in rian migrants in Long Island who resent one an- place. On the other hand, Sean Carter (2005) has other while “exonerating the greater society” as an examined the contexts in which diaspora repro- outcome of the imperatives of incorporation. duces the essentialized notions of community At times, immigrant integration relies on the en- along ethnic and national lines. actment of what Bonnie Honig (2001: 96) has 216 Ishan Ashutosh FENNIA 193: 2 (2015) called, the “supercitizen immigrant”. This typology aspora rather than ‘elsewhere’? In the daily lives of of the immigrant refers to the ways in which mi- South Asian diasporic subjects, the national be- grants embody the national through the promotion comes the critical dividing line amongst South of the ethical values associated with the nation, Asians in Toronto and generates a new animus in particularly Lockean liberalism and a protestant which some immigrants are convivially placed in work ethic that reinvigorates a consensual democ- relation to the nation at the expense of others. racy. The immigrant as supercitizen has been a Multiple national allegiances and how they can be characteristic discursive component in South used as symbolic capital towards integration be- Asian representation in the United States and Can- come the basis for differentiating between the so- ada since the mid-1960s. The success of this ste- called ‘good’ and ‘bad’ immigrants. reotype casts Asians as model minorities to be State border crossings symbolize both the tradi- used against other racialized groups (Prashad tional borders of the nation-state and the other 2000; Thobani 2007). In a 1992 article proclaim- scales at which borders operate, generating North ing Toronto’s cosmopolitanism, journalist Haroon America’s version of what Etienne Balibar (2004: Siddiqui extoled this super-citizen vision of South 1), writing in the context of the European Union, Asians in Canada. has described as new borders, dispersed “a little everywhere”. For an on duty Canadian Border Ser- “South Asians believe that education is the key to success. It is an ethos that lives in just about every vice Agent at Lewiston, New York and Queenston, home. At night, when most other Toronto kids are Ontario, Toronto’s ethno-cultural mosaic as en- playing the yard, these kids are sitting at the kitch- shrined in the city’s official motto “Diversity: Our en table doing their math or practicing on the pi- Strength” was composed instead of the rescaling of ano. They do this because they are not spoiled. national divides to urban space. While I was being They have a value system that puts great emphasis questioned about my research during one of my on the pursuit of knowledge and of excellence”. (Toronto Star 1992) many crossings while conducting fieldwork, the border official listed a number of immigrant groups As will be discussed below, there are contradic- living in Toronto: “the Chinese, Italians, Pakistanis, tory elements embedded within such model mi- Indians, Portuguese, and Somalis”. In a foreboding nority discourses, particularly in diasporic forms tone, the guard then ended his assessment of To- of belonging that Brian Keith Axel (2001) has per- ronto’s borders with, “it’s like Beirut!”. This view ceptively shown shift between a national threat renders the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) as com- and opportunity. posed of antagonistic tribalisms clearly demarcated Multicultural national belonging is predicated in city space. The guard’s view of the GTA as the on claims for recognition and representation made locus of unknown threats emanating from immi- by different groups in which, in theory, multiple grant neighborhoods recalls the tropes of balkani- national affiliations can overlap. Indeed, philoso- zation in which suspicion, violence, and segrega- pher Charles Taylor (1994: 63) argued that multi- tion are presented as the likely future of the nation culturalism is the inevitable future of the national (Ellis and Wright 1998). While Canada is often cel- as societies become increasingly ‘porous’ and in- ebrated for what Cole Harris (2001) has called habited by members who “live the life of diaspora, postmodern patriotism in which Canadian nation- whose center is elsewhere”. Will Kymlicka (1995), alism is predicated on difference between at least however, suggested that multiculturalism can be the English, French and First Nations people, it has used as an integrative ethic and distinguished the also been shown that this discourse of Canada’s claims of national minorities, such as the Quebe- lack of nationness in fact occludes domination and cois, and those of immigrant groups. While the oppression through multiculturalism (Teelucksingh claims of the former may lead to calls for a parallel 2006). Positioning the suburbs as antagonistic society, the latter wish to retain their “ethnic par- spaces that portend the city’s future have also con- ticularity” in voluntary organizations and in their stituted a key strategy in the city’s electoral politics family lives. Immigrant demands for recognition, that depict Toronto’s immigrant neighborhoods as therefore, do not run counter to national citizen- multicultural testing grounds, as spaces that con- ship and indeed, act as the basis for inclusion. But tain the objects to be incorporated. The city is at how do the calls for recognition as the basis for once an exceptional and an exemplary site in rela- inclusion elicit new rigidities along national lines tion to the nation. Toronto is distinct in terms of its that are more pronounced and enforced in the di- racial diversity and foreign-born population, but FENNIA 193: 2 (2015) Replacing the nation in the age of migration 217 also the city is the exemplary site for Canadian na- noburbs, spawned by immigration policies and tionalism in the form of multiculturalism. “tied together by bonds of national origin, culture, In the narratives below, the nation serves as a language, and religion”. central form of belonging, but also creates divides Within the municipality of Toronto, the neigh- in the form of inter- and intra-group hostilities borhoods of South Asian settlement lie on the amongst South Asians. Diasporic subjects that are fringes of the downtown core in the post-World able to convert both symbolic and financial capi- War II suburbs while the edge cities Brampton, tal in Canada use multiple national allegiances to Mississauga, and Markham are home to the major- exclude South Asians in the name of their own in- ity of the GTA’s South Asian population (Hiebert corporation in Canada. As a result, national dis- 2005; Siemiatycki 2012). The longitudinal studies tinctions amongst South Asians in Toronto are the of ethnic enclaves in metropolitan Toronto have outcome of the forces and desire for Canadian in- found South Asian ethnic enclave concentrations tegration as much as a desire to cling to the in- primarily in the eastern neighborhood of Scarbor- creasingly distant homeland. ough and in the west that today link previously For the first few months after migrating to To- isolated enclaves from Rexdale to Brampton (Qad- ronto in the summer of 2000, Viresh felt that “there eer et al. 2010). Among those born in South Asia, was something very strange about this place”. On those born in India constitute over fifty percent of a casual late-morning walk down Gerrard Street all South Asians in Toronto, followed by twenty later that fall he was reminded of the “old smells percent for those born in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and organized chaos of India”. At that moment, with five percent born in Bangladesh (Statistics Viresh’s settlement in Toronto was transformed to a Canada 2011). Hiebert (2005) finds that in the feeling of belonging. “It struck me that fine morn- three metropolitan areas of Montreal, Toronto, and ing when I saw Toronto as an Indian city with lots Vancouver, South Asians display high levels of of foreigners, non-Indians. I had lived in the U.S. residential concentration compared to the average for six years, but in Toronto I never felt homesick”. concentration patterns for visible minority groups. Toronto’s familiarity owed itself more to Gerrard According to Myles and Hou (2004), spatial con- Street, whose few blocks of Gerrard “India Bazaar” centration may only be temporary, as South Asians have since given way to expansive South Asian follow models of spatial assimilation in which they businesses in the suburbs. Viresh’s previous migra- initially move into an immigrant enclave and then tions before moving to Toronto, to London and move out of those neighborhoods as they socially then Dearborn, Michigan, were accompanied by a and economically integrate. search for home, but in Toronto, Viresh claims, he Although most South Asians reside in the GTA’s has found home, in no small part because of the middle-class suburbs, Eric Fong (2006: 63) notes way in which the familiar and banal signs of the that they tend to live in the economically deprived nation were reproduced. areas within these sites. Across these locales, Viresh gestured at a real estate advertisement South Asian settlement is differentiated along the with South Asian agents that monopolize Missis- intersections of nation, language, and religion. The sauga, Brampton and Scarborough. For elite Indi- all too popular mapping of the city’s ‘ethnoburbs’ an immigrants it is no longer about location, but as (Li 2009) from Brampton’s ‘Singhdale’ (Springdale) Viresh explains “is now about size. People are set- to Scarborough as ‘Scarlanka’ name the social dif- tling further and further away from the city”, be- ference and distance of South Asian neighbor- yond Peel and to the Halton Region in the West hoods from Canadian norms. and Pickering in the East. These migration trends Immigrant neighborhoods are represented as reflect what Robert Murdie (2008: 9) has described the litmus for national integration and constitute as an overall pattern of immigrant settlement that the multicultural version of what Timothy Mitchell has moved from the city’s downtown to the sub- (1988: 13) has described as “the world as exhibi- urbs, encompassing both lower income immigrant tion” in which the world is “conceived and grasped newcomers and Indian and Chinese migrants who as though it were an exhibition”. To treat the world “generally can afford homeownership in Toronto’s as exhibition means that social difference is re- newer suburbs”. Immigrant settlements in Toron- duced into an objectified spectacle. Contempo- to’s suburbs have transformed these once hinter- rary cities are frequently depicted through their lands of Toronto to what Mohammad Qadeer containing the world within its borders and are, (2003: 11) has characterized as Toronto’s eth- therefore, reflective of the world as exhibition. 218 Ishan Ashutosh FENNIA 193: 2 (2015)
From this perspective, the city is not depicted as people together, indeed, even transforming the the site of new collectivities that challenge the ex- supposed “budding terrorist threat”. Other exam- clusions of the nation. Rather the city is carved ples from popular media execrate South Asians as into neighborhoods and communities along na- threats to the nation. The 2007 murder of Missis- tional lines that are in turn hierarchically placed in sauga teenager Aqsa Parvez was transformed into relation to national incorporations. Writing in the debates over “honour killings” and the failures of aftermath of the 1992 Yonge Street riot, Bhausaheb multicultural integration (Haque 2010). The refer- Ubale, the first Race Relations Commissioner of ences to honor killings that emerged in the wake of Ontario and author of a 1977 report that docu- Parvez’s murder in particular resuscitated debates mented racism against South Asians in Toronto, over using Sharia for family arbitration disputes decried precisely this exoticism of multicultural- (Razack 2007), and the 2006 arrest of the “Toronto ism in practice. Ubale (1992: 220) lamented that 18”, in which the dominant media led the outcry “multiculturalism has further divided ethnocultur- over the perceived radicalization of Muslims in al communities from the mainstream as well as Canada (Miller & Sack 2010). Another representa- from each other”. Canadian nationalism, while tion that portrays South Asians for their multiple often assessed as inclusive of difference (Harris allegiances has been on the support and presence 2001), insists on the displays of tolerance that ob- of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Toronto jectify immigrants and minorities as potential chal- (Human Rights Watch 2006). In the range of these lenges. In conflicts over urban space, from the examples of what becomes clear is that South “monster house” controversy in Vancouver (Ley Asians are frequently depicted and tested through 2010) to suburban Toronto’s “Asian theme malls” the notions of loyalty and Canadian norms with (Preston & Lo 2000), immigrants and the spaces reference to the projections of social disintegration where they reside are discursively constructed as and national fragmentation that position the im- foreign objects that constitute a threat to the norms migrant against the nation (Ellis & Wright 1998). of Canadian nationalism. In Toronto, national differences are spatialized through representations of neighborhoods of National incorporations and divides South Asian settlement in a pattern akin to Kay Anderson’s (1995) influential analysis of Vancou- In many interviews with South Asians in Toronto, ver’s Chinatown. Anderson argued that China- multiculturalism would often be positively evalu- town existed as a spatial form of orientalism based ated for providing a sense of belonging and in ref- on an irreconcilably different and inferior Chi- erence to the ethno-cultural diversity of Toronto. neseness and a civilized English Canadian nation- Yet elite South Asians frequently saw both immi- al identity. The media coverage of South Asians in gration and multicultural policies in terms of the Toronto has repeatedly depicted migrants as fracturing of society and undermining the authori- trapped by tradition and whose transnational ties ty of the state in what has been described as the to the homeland imperil national cohesion. These “multicultural backlash” (Joppke 2004; Vertovec & threats emerge from the suburbs that threaten the Wessendorf 2010). In the desire to distinguish metropolitan center. John Barber and Tenille themselves from immigrants who have been de- Bonoguore of the Globe and Mail encapsulated picted for their inability to integrate as discussed in this view of the migrant as an object for integra- the previous section, the new divides of nation tion in a 2007 op-ed: and religion intersected with class to produce new antagonisms amongst Toronto’s South Asians. “As the 2006 census data showed this week, To- ronto is a multitude of mini-states where the word Popular nationalistic discourses shape the con- ‘minority’ will one day have no meaning. As the tours of belonging that reveal the ways in which suburbs of Paris blaze and Londonistan spreads the nation integrates and divides people in every- fear across the globe, will Toronto start seeing a day life (Edensor 2002). Swati, an engineer who budding terrorist threat in every immigrant?... No, lives and works in a western suburb of Toronto ar- our centre of tolerance will hold”. (Barber & gued that her Indian heritage enabled her to be- Bonoguore 2007: M1) long to Canada. After her parents migrated from Gujarat in 1974, Swati grew up in Oakville, On- This statement advances the notions of Canadi- tario and extoled the benefits of multiculturalism an tolerance as being a binding force that brings through references to a particular kind of diversity FENNIA 193: 2 (2015) Replacing the nation in the age of migration 219
associated with the rise of Mandirs in the GTA sub- the migrant and should not guide state policies and urbs, the one closest to her own home also the site programs, she felt. In such statements about multi- where her 10-year-old son had enrolled in Guja- culturalism, immigrant success depends on where rati classes. This transformation of urban space they place themselves vis-à-vis other immigrants. provides a sense of belonging for Swati and her The settlement worker’s remarks resonate with family that is simultaneously Indian and Canadian. Sharmila Rudrappa’s (2004) findings on Chicago’s Echoing popular discourse, however, Swati feels Indo-American Center, a settlement agency which that multiculturalism now threatens to undermine promotes immigrant incorporation that reinforces the national community by a naïve promotion of divides between immigrants and Americans. More- heritage that in fact produces division. Swati refers over, as Rudrappa claims, if “ethnic roots allow us to the adjacent former municipality of Scarbor- to become American” (Rudrappa 2004: 146), the ough as a space that has led to ghettos that, she critiques of ethnic concentration and difference aid stressed, are “far worse than in the United States”. in the integration of select ‘others’ into the norms Despite the number of studies have shown that of Canadian society (Thobani 2007). Incorporation levels of segregation in Canada are lower than and national belonging is performed through the those in the United States (Ley & Smith 1997; repetition of claims that express not only adher- White et al. 2003), Swati was hardly alone in mak- ence to multiculturalism, but rather, a concern for ing this statement. Such positions reflect the inter- the future of the national community. section of nation, religion, and class that divide in Gopal grew up in Toronto and supplies audio the South Asians as they seek to distinguish them- and video equipment for Indian events. Similar to selves in order to incorporate and embody the ide- Swati’s assessment of immigrants and the impera- als of the multicultural nation. tives of the state, Gopal argues that immigrant seg- Particularly in the suburbs of Toronto, elite regation occurs throughout the city and in particu- members of the Indian diaspora would invoke dis- lar in the city’s inner and outer suburbs that are courses of Islamophobia that shape contemporary symbols of ethno-cultural diversity: Canadian and American nationalisms. Statements “I am not a big proponent of multiculturalism any- that ranged from the fears of growing radicaliza- more… Because it fosters an exclusive mentality. tion or “home grown” terrorism, however, were In trying to preserve different systems, we are in- informed by nationalistic discourses that also op- evitably fostering segregated communities. Some erate in India and therefore, reveal a correspond- of these Indian centers, in parts of Brampton, peo- ence of otherwise autochthonous nationalisms ple don’t speak English. I am not talking about the that encompassed multiple nation-states and with elderly, I am talking about the young! That is un- acceptable. We are not contributing to the coun- it, multiple sites of belonging predicated on exclu- try as a whole when we do that. At the same time, sions (Grewal 2005). National divides, and the ac- we demand more resources and rights to protect companying categories of race, religion, and lan- these cultures. It doesn’t make any sense. You are guage, are not merely transplanted from societies coming into a new country; you are supposed to of origin and settlement, but are utilized in order integrate into the system”. (personal interview to make claims towards incorporation. The nation- with author) al, to put it another way, mediates how transna- tional affiliations are translated into multicultural Gopal evaluates multiculturalism as a practice incorporations. of preservation and not, as Kymlicka (1995) ar- A settlement worker living and working in gued, as a means to integration. Brampton, who grew up in Amritsar and migrated The immigrant second generation is made to to Toronto from Dubai echoed a remark by Cana- represent the future of multiculturalism and the dian Prime Minister Mackenzie King from over anxieties of fading connections to the diasporic sixty years earlier that was used to exclude Indian elsewhere. As the baseball fields in Toronto’s parks migrations, in which immigration to Canada should are repurposed as cricket pitches, the immigrant not alter the national ‘character’. Such sentiments second generation are evaluated in terms of what need to be placed within the context of the termi- one respondent who migrated from Punjab as a nation of federal government funding for many im- child sarcastically called “Molson Canadian” migrant settlement services in the GTA, prompting norms of national identity. Like the commercials the closure of the South Asian Women’s Centre in that depict a hockey-loving, beer-guzzling white 2011. The burden of belonging is in the hands of Canadian, these norms of national identity fix the 220 Ishan Ashutosh FENNIA 193: 2 (2015) nation-space of Canada to a settler society and way to hostility as recognition served as a remind- constitute the grounds of participation and belong- er of difference and the distance from incorpora- ing. In a 2007 Globe and Mail article, Marina tion. Jimenez placed the suburbs and the immigrant “There is a common anti-brown thing that would second generation through the prism of Anglo- happen. If I was walking down the street and I saw conformity. another South Asian guy across the road and I would be with my group of friends who would be “Multiculturalism isn’t working that well for visi- predominantly Chinese, or white, and he would ble minorities. [. . .] They are less likely to iden- be with his friends. We would look at each other tify as ‘Canadian’ and report more incidents of across the street as dogs look at each other”. (per- discrimination. Lovedeep Padda, who works with sonal interview with author). his father in the Indian Punjabi Bazaar at Bramp- ton’s Plaza McLaughlin Village, says he never ex- perienced discrimination for the simple reason The state or gaze that Rajiv described speaks to that he has grown up surrounded almost exclu- sively by other Sikh Canadians. The Canadian- an antagonism that is borne out of the politics of born son of Sikh immigrants, he has also never incorporation. been to summer camp, taken in a Blue Jays or Ma- The narratives above do not necessarily eschew ple Leafs game or a rock concert”. (Jimenez 2007: a commitment to multiculturalism, but as Mary A8). Thomas (2011) has shown in her analysis of inter- ethnic and cross-racial interactions in a Los Ange- The hegemonic constructions of integration are les high school, they instead reflect a banal multi- predicated on the ability of immigrants and their culturalism that touts a simplistic respect for the children to “converge to the average performance difference blocks meaningful engagement and of native-born Canadians and their normative and working with difference. David Ley (2007: 14) has behavioural standards” (Li 2003: 315). As Amita argued that discourses that critique multicultural- Handa (2003) has shown, the Canadian-born chil- ism are often the result of imputed meanings of dren of South Asian immigrants are cast as sym- multiculturalism, rather than recognition of its di- bols of tradition and modernity, and inhabit a limi- verse practices and aims over almost forty years as nal space between two seemingly irreconcilable Canadian national discourse. In particular, in the cultures. Popular slang used across national con- tenuous links made between segregation and mul- texts – the ABCD or American-born confused Desi, ticulturalism, Ley contends, “multiculturalism is replaced by the ‘coconut’ in Canada and Britain – inflated to a size where it becomes the only target typecast the diasporic experience of the “immi- that is visible”. The veracity of their claims regard- grant second generation” through conflicted racial ing the levels of segregation in Canada is not the identities and national loyalties. Sunaina Maira issue. With each repetition, such statements can- (2002) has argued that the anxieties and ambiva- not be readily dismissed. lences of belonging by the immigrant first genera- The creation and enforcement of geopolitical tion are transferred onto their children who then divisions block the formation of South Asian soli- ‘remix’ culture in the quintessential position of di- darities that have the potential to reimagine the aspora, third space. While I turn to the ways in contours of belonging within, across, and beyond which the depictions of confusion and loss have the national. Long-distance nationalism, advanced been actively resisted by the second generation by by select diasporic subjects adhere to the scripts of placing new claims and demands on the national national incorporation that foment new divisions in the next section, opinions that stressed the fail- in the diaspora. During interviews and conversa- ures of integration and of multicultural segregation tions I conducted, desires to transform and alter were repeatedly expressed. the national instead more frequently expressed a Rajiv expressed a hostility and antagonism desire for its preservation, and in which the role of among “South Asians”. He contrasted his politics the migrant and the diasporic is to act as national of belonging with what he described as his par- gatekeepers using their cultural capital and experi- ents’ “essentialist need” to associate with Indians. ences gathered through their unique mobility and He noted that though his parents are not religious, transnational ties. Their role was one of instructing they began religiously attending temple events to the nation when its imaginings for inclusivity meet with friends. By contrast, in Rajiv’s experi- threaten to undermine the notion of community. ence, association with other South Asians gave The narratives above reflect an internalization of FENNIA 193: 2 (2015) Replacing the nation in the age of migration 221 the exclusions of nationalism. The distinctions alism, also reflect a diversity of the South Asian made by diasporic subjects in relation to national diaspora whose history and complex patterns of belonging and the norms of integration are an ar- migration, settlement, and interaction have only ticulation of the fact that Whiteness provides the recently become the subject of scholarly attention “point of departure for multiculture” (Bannerji (Bald 2013). In the discussion on South Asian 2000: 110). Immigrants are assessed in terms of cross-national solidarities, I turn to practices in To- their contributions and liabilities, always having to ronto and New York City. By engaging with these prove their worth to the nation (Dunn & Mahtani two cities I suggest that transformations of the na- 2001). The battle lines of multiculturalism are tional and the formation of new diasporic identi- drawn around the immigrant neighbourhoods that ties have been occurring across national contexts. in popular discourse separate national communi- Second generation South Asians have generated ties and the central national community from each diasporic collectivities that stressed the multiple other. Though the narratives above are filled with and shifting identities that moved across nations factual inaccuracies, and (trans-)nationalistic elit- and thereby further pluralized the content of the ism, they reflect a geo-political discourse that re- national community (Das Gupta 1997). South volves around the constructions of an ‘us’ and Asian cultural and art festivals, such as Toronto’s ‘them’ in which immigrants position themselves now defunct Desh Pardesh (Home Away from against other immigrants in the name of incorpora- Home), New York’s Diasporadics and transnation- tion. Such processes expose how the national in- al festivals such as Engendered, and regular Bolly- terpellates migrants as national subjects. wood and Bhangra themed dance events overtly espouse a plural and heterogeneous understand- ing of community. These renderings simultane- Replacing the nation with cross ously locate South Asians within the histories of national solidarities migration and diversity in the United States and Canada as well as a critical placement of South Asia as a region and identity (Mani 2012). The ex- In contrast to the attitudes expressed above, multi- pression of South Asian identities and solidarities culturalism and national belonging were imagined found their initial articulations in the anti-racist in more productive, inclusive, and creative ways work in the late-1970s. Today, these solidarities are with other participants. Multiculturalism and the expressed through organizations such as the Coun- national remained a powerful idea in describing cil of Agencies Serving South Asians, though rele- people’s everyday lives and interactions in Toron- gating the cross-national emergence of diasporic to. Though Canada’s national narrative, multicul- identities to organizations obfuscates the everyday turalism was taken down other paths and linked to projects that transform the history of the nation. other national histories and experiences that echo For instance, the resuscitation of histories of the Yasmeen Abu-Laban’s (2002) emphasis on the de- 1914 journey of the Komagata Maru, the ship car- essentialization of multiculturalism that neither rying over 300 passengers from India that was fixes the nation or cultural identities. From this barred from docking at Vancouver’s port, has be- perspective, the national enables the interaction come an important lineage for the contemporary and engagement in new social and political move- relation between the South Asian diaspora and ments and diasporic identities. In this section, I Canada, but as a means for creating new solidari- provide a tracing of South Asian solidarities and ties, as made clear in the website for the Brown diasporic identities through the mundane interac- Canada project. tions that take place in across city spaces consist- “As we reflect and remember, we must resist the ing of business districts, school, and residential urge to only look back in sorrow. Marginalized neighbourhoods. In these everyday encounters the communities, including South Asian communi- dissonant utterances of national membership and ties, have resisted and mobilized in astounding belonging provide the terrains for new imaginaries and inspiring ways. They did so in 1914, they con- that deploy the language of the national commu- tinue to do so”. (Brown Canada) nity, but in which the boundaries of national mem- bership are transgressed and reconstituted. The Such discourses and practices do not merely very neighbourhoods and business districts, which undo the national, but rather seek to illuminate the are represented as the litmus tests for multicultur- lineages of contemporary experiences of belong- 222 Ishan Ashutosh FENNIA 193: 2 (2015) ing, exclusion, and the occluded circuits of previ- Puar and Amit Rai (2004: 87) searched for new ous waves of transnational solidarities. ways of understanding transnational solidarities In the aftermath of 11 September, longstanding and social movements across racialized groups forms of immigrant, racial, and ethnic exclusion when they asked: “how do we make sense of these became the contours of nationalism in both the moments of a solidarity blocked or, better, a solidar- United States and Canada. For their prominent dif- ity haunted, inhabited, exceeded by non-synthesiz- ferences in nationalistic discourses that have been able singularities?”. Embedded within this question traditionally and popularly located in the distinc- is the importance of recognizing the contingencies tions between an official multicultural nationalism of cross-class and cross-cultural solidarities that, as of Canada and an assimilationist United States, the has been shown, have emerged in a transnational parallels, both before and after-September 11th field and therefore, challenged national exclusions were often in lockstep. South Asian immigrants be- and essentialized notions of identity and commu- came the targets of anti-immigrant discourse that nity in both ‘home’ and ‘host’ societies. became the grounds of national cohesion. Post- Prior to September 11th, a number of organiza- 9/11 exclusions in the United States and Canada tions in both New York City and Toronto combated were not unique. Indeed, its lineages could be racism, gender and sexual violence, and immigrant found in the previous waves of anti-immigrant dis- exclusions through cross-national coalitions. In To- course and state policies that go back to the very ronto, the Association for South Asian Aids Preven- founding of the United States, such as the Alien tion was formed in 1989 through the activities of and Sedition Acts of 1798 that allowed for the de- the queer South Asian organization, Khush. A dec- portation and imprisonment of aliens, to the “Hin- ade later, the South Asian Legal Clinic was estab- du Menace” and Continuous Journey stipulation of lished to provide legal services to low income the early 20th centuries. Anti-Asian racism in both South Asians in Toronto. Similar coalitions that the United States and Canada led to the exclusion adopted a diasporic optic of cross-national solidar- of Asian migrations through unique policies that ities also emerged in New York, with The New York employed the geographical mappings of race and Taxi Workers Alliance that built a coalition across national origins to exclude the migration of Asians national, religious, racial, and linguistic divides that would not be reversed until the liberalization that was powerfully expressed during the May of immigration policies in both countries in the 1998 strike initiated by taxi drivers against the se- mid-1960s. The work of South Asian community vere measures initiated by the New York Taxi and activist groups in New York City, Chicago, Toronto, Limousine Commission (Mathew 2005). South and other major population centres across North Asian labor, queer, and women organizations also America placed their contemporary struggles and drew their strength by negotiating national differ- exclusions within the context of this until then mar- ences in what Monisha Das Gupta (2006) has ginalized history and as a result, transformed not termed “the transnational complex of rights” in only the imaginings of the nation, but shed light on which rights claims struggle with the exclusionary the exclusionary policies of the state as well. policies of the state and limits of membership of the Furthermore, the aftermath of 11 September pro- nation. In Toronto, South Asian community organ- jected the securitized immigration regime that had izing in the 1970s responded to racism that led to become a cornerstone of American immigration the development of anti-racist organizations that policy particularly since Operation Gatekeeper in work alongside and with difference. Activist and 1994 onto South Asians and Arabs. Post-9/11 na- researcher Uzma Shakir (2011: 185) called for tionalism most clearly highlighted the ease in which open and broad conversations amongst Canada’s the violence that shifts immigrants from that of ex- diverse ethno-racial communities. It is the process alted status to a threatening outsider is predicated of working and building new communities that on an originary otherness in the first instance. As Shakir described as “the most enlightening ele- news of deportations, detention, and the special ments of my experience in Canada: building a registration of non-immigrant visa holders from se- sense of solidarity with people I might not have met lect countries swept across cities in the United or worked with otherwise. That is the most wonder- States and Canada, new forms of political identity ful and unexpected benefit of being in Canada”. In that negotiated the differences and diversity of the creation of cross-national organizations, inclu- South Asian identities emerged (Ashutosh 2008). sive political solidarities challenge the national di- Writing in the aftermath of September 11th, Jasbir vides that dominated the narratives in the previous FENNIA 193: 2 (2015) Replacing the nation in the age of migration 223 sections. These institutions disrupt the agonistic re- focused on how national membership and be- lations within South Asian communities and across longing and its limits are lived and challenged by ethnic and racial groups in which the nation and its migrancy. The nation, therefore, divides as it in- constitutive elements of race and religion continue corporates, and the diverse practices that fall un- to provide the national as a site of division and ex- der its name reflect both a consonance and dis- clusion, as discussed in the previous section. sonance towards its narratives. The political actions and solidarities of the More broadly, the analysis provided here asks to South Asian diasporas in the United States and what extent should scholarship invest in the na- Canada remain the most successful when they ap- tional as an analytic for understanding, and in- peal to national membership and affiliation. It deed re-inscribing, difference? The precise way in would be a mistake, however, to readily equate which the nation is reimagined remains an open the placement of the national in immigrant politics question. It, of course, involves political action. and even independence day parades or cultural However, it also depends on the development of festivals as nationalist. As Sandhya Shukla has epistemologies that hinge on a multi-scalar ap- shown in her analysis of Indian festivals in London proach to the national. How the global, national, and New York City, nationalism “is not the primary and local are imbricated in the constitution of sub- consequence of complex forms of identification” jects, and how do these subjects, in turn, make (Shukla 2003: 13). Instead, these moments are the and remake these structures? What is certain, very grounds for a questioning, interrogation, and however, is that globalization discourses that once reconstitution of the national. For instance, pro- proclaimed the end of the nation-state were pre- tests led by the Sri Lankan Tamil community in To- mature. The rise of transnational capital and the ronto against the civil war in Sri Lanka made new international division of labour that structures claims for the national recognition of Tamil Eelam, global migrations have not led to the wholesale but also grounded these claims through appeals to withering away from the nation-state. Similar to multiculturalism and the Canadian Charter of the analyses on the rescaling of the state (Brenner Rights and Freedoms. These protests, which in- 2004), I have, in this paper, called for a reener- cluded participation beyond that of one national gized focus on the rescaling and diverse uses of group, also criticized the limits of contemporary the nation through grounded, empirical work in national membership and state exclusions. The cities. This renewed emphasis on the national protests, moreover, attempted to disentangle na- avoids the methodological nationalism by focus- tional recognition and community from the vio- ing instead on the slippage of categories produced lence of the state and are an instance in which in the ever-shifting grounds of the nation’s people. new understandings and a re-signification of the Rather than placing the relation between the na- national becomes possible. tional belonging/global migrations as a categorical proposition, this paper has engaged with the myr- iad of ways in which the nation is reproduced and Conclusions engenders overlapping forms of belonging.
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