Università degli Studi di Bergamo Scuola di Dottorato in Antropologia ed Epistemologia della Complessità Ciclo XXVII SOCIAL DIVIDES AND TRANSNATIONAL VALUES. EN-GENDERING HOMES IN THE INTERGENERATIONAL NARRATIVES OF PUNJABI DIASPORANS IN NORTHERN ITALY Coordinatore Candidata Chiar.mo Prof. Enrico Giannetto Sara Bonfanti Supervisore Chiar.mo Prof. Bruno Riccio Settore Scientifico-Disciplinare M-DEA/01 Anno Accademico 2014-2015 2 Tables of Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................................................... 6 Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................................................... 7 Acronyms and Glossary of recurrent Punjabi terms ...................................................................................... 8 Introduction: from personal friendship to authorship, getting into ethnographic design .............................11 PART I Research rationale and methods ....................................................................................................20 Ch. 1 Sensing life in an Italian Punjabi “transnational village” ......................................................................21 1.1 Concepts. Theories of mobility and inequalities .................................................................................22 1.1.1 Transnationalism and Diaspora studies .......................................................................................23 1.1.2 Migrations and multiculturalism .................................................................................................28 1.2 Frames. Cartographies of Indian regional Diasporas ..........................................................................31 1.2.1 South Asians overseas and the postcolonial UK reference model ................................................31 1.2.2 Punjabi settlements in eastern Lombardy beyond the “undisturbing turbans” ............................35 1.3 Issues. Towards an Inditian “domestic moral economy” ....................................................................39 1.3.1 From labor to family-driven migration ........................................................................................40 1.3.2 Homes and rightful shares ..........................................................................................................42 Ch. 2 Performing critical ethnography .........................................................................................................45 2.1 Doing multi-site research ..................................................................................................................45 2.1.1 Fieldwork settings and scale: participants and data construction ................................................45 2.1.2 Family and community narrative work: petits récits on transnational stages...............................49 2.2 Intersectional analysis .......................................................................................................................51 2.2.1 Diverse departures and arrivals: faith, class, caste and migration-led civic stratification .............51 2.2.2 Unraveling super-diversity through genders and generations .....................................................55 2.3 Ethics and on field identity politics ....................................................................................................58 2.3.1 Mutual situatedness: from feminist to participatory research? ...................................................58 2.3.2 Forms and dilemmas of engagement ..........................................................................................61 PART II Ethnographic Accounts...................................................................................................................65 Ch. 3 (Almost) Non-Resident Indians, bylaw moving matters ......................................................................67 3.1 Life worlds and life words of Italian Punjabi migrants ........................................................................67 3.1.1 NRI OCI PIO: the acronyms business in defining ethnic Indians overseas .....................................67 3.1.2 Global house holding and local home-making, lived experience through material culture...........69 3.1.3 Idioms of Punjabiyat: code mixing and switching; orality, textuality and translations ..................77 3.2 Praneet’s story: ego and kin relations, (dis)possessions and legal constraints ....................................83 3 Ch. 4 Dislocating Punjabiyat ........................................................................................................................89 4.1 Punjabi cultures of (e)migration ........................................................................................................90 4.1.1 Historicizing the Punjabi macro region, roots on routes ..............................................................90 4.1.2 Punjabi emigration versus Sikh Diaspora: a martial partition within global assemblages? ...........93 4.1.3 Contemporary e-diasporas: worldwide networks and imaginaries ..............................................95 4.2 Im-mobilities and boundaries ............................................................................................................97 4.2.1 Structures and agencies on the move .........................................................................................97 4.2.2 Tropes of remitting back and narratives of (un)success .............................................................101 4.2.3 Ideologies and enactments of upward social mobility ...............................................................104 4.3 Rajeev’s and Kanval’s stories, gender among first-time migrants .....................................................106 4.3.1 R.: kindred’s projects and transnational male breadwinners? ...................................................106 4.3.2 K.: women’s (in)dependency and family reunifications .............................................................111 Ch. 5 Re-producing Punjabiyat ..................................................................................................................118 5.1 The value question in private space-times, the role of emotions .....................................................120 5.1.1 Daily and ritual person-making: coming of age .........................................................................121 5.1.2 Embodying cultural genealogies: migration, reproduction, identity ..........................................124 5.1.3 Extended transnational families: morphogenesis and adaptive strategies .................................127 5.2 The value question in public space-times, the role of institutions ....................................................129 5.2.1 From home village to hosting neighborhood and back: changing glocal hierarchies ..................130 5.2.2 Work ethics and educational agencies ......................................................................................134 5.2.3 Aesthetics of remembrance and politics of religions .................................................................138 5.3 Asha’s and Gurinder’s stories, gender across migratory generations ...............................................142 5.3.1 Asha: revisiting migrants’ (dis)engagements .............................................................................143 5.3.2 G.: a moral career to diasporic leadership .................................................................................147 Ch. 6 Contesting Punjabiyat ......................................................................................................................153 6.1 Community cleavages .....................................................................................................................155 6.1.1 Ethnicity and alternative processes of parting and connecting ..................................................155 6.1.2 Minor utopias of Indian transnational middle class(es) .............................................................159 6.1.3 Punjabi “marriage markets” and the itinerant dowry system ....................................................162 6.2 Ethnic minority’s outer relations .....................................................................................................165 6.2.1 (Self)-arranging marriages: tempered endogamy and risky intimate border crossing ................166 6.2.2 “One model” among many other immigrant minorities ............................................................170 6.2.3 Media and cultural(ized) representations .................................................................................173 6.3 Veena’s and Sunny’s stories, gender among second-generation migrants .......................................177 6.3.1 V.: a personal path to challenging the status quo ......................................................................177 4 6.3.2 S.: a communal way to promote social justice ...........................................................................182 Ch. 7 (Almost) native Italians, through and beyond the citizenship issue ...................................................190 7.1 Inditian Diaspora: a chaordic place of home and belonging?............................................................191 7.1.1 From patronage and racism… to advocacy and civic citizenship ................................................194