Indian Transnationalism Online ─ New Perspectives on Diaspora

Present-day migration takes place in a world characterized by the compression of time and space, with cheaper air travel and the existence of new communication technologies - the internet in particular - making it easier to stay in contact with the places, people and cultures that one has left. This book investigates the online organization of, and exchanges within, the global Indian diaspora. Bringing together research from around the world and presenting studies drawn from the US, Europe and India, it engages with theoretical and methodological debates concerning the shaping and transformation of migrant culture in emerging sites of sociality, and explores issues such as religion, citizenship, nationalism, region and caste as they relate to Indian identity in global, transnational contexts. With detailed empirical case studies showing both how members of the Indian diaspora connect with one other and a€?life at homea€? and how institutions in India maintain such links, Indian Transnationalism Online sheds light on the ways in which information and communication technology functions as both a catalyst and indicator of contemporary socio-cultural change. As such it will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists and studies of cultural studies working in the areas of migration, transnationalism and ethnic studies.

Ajaya Kumar Sahoo is the Director of the Centre for Study of Indian Diaspora at the University of Hyderabad, India. He is the co-editor of Indian Diaspora and Transnationalism, Transnational Migrations: The Indian Diaspora, Sociology of Ageing: A Reader, Tracing an Indian Diaspora: Contexts, Memories, Representations, and Sociology of Diaspora: A Reader. Johannes G. de Kruijf is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University, the Netherlands and author of Guyana Junction: Globalisation, Localisation, and the Production of East Indianness.