Moral economies of a translocal village: obligation and shame among South Indian transnational migrants

Velayutham, Selvaraj; Wise, Amanda

doi:10.1111/j.1471-0374.2005.00106.x

Cited by 107 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…7. Compared with hometown associations and other community oriented activities described in the literature on transnationalism (Basch et al 1994;Goldring 1998;Velayutham and Wise 2005), there is little by way of formal or communal acknowledgements of an obligation to the Orange Valley community. However, transnational relatives and remittances do make a large impact.…”

Section: Transnational Communication: Blessing or Burden?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The blessings and burdens of communication: cell phones in Jamaican transnational social fields

2006

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While increasing attention has been given to the role of the Internet and transnational cultural flows (Appadurai 1996), only recently have we turned our thoughts to how often ubiquitous new communication technologies are utilized within transnational social fields (Mahler 2001;Richman 2005). In an article that traces the rise in global phonecard usage, Steven Vertovec (2004) highlights the significant role that mundane objects like phonecards have played over the last decade, particularly in the lives of non-elite transnational migrants. While noting that the use of phonecards has started to decline in North America, he suggests that 'a broadening of the global telephone network -especially driven by wireless technologies surrounding both telephone and Internet services -is continuing apace' in developing countries where telecommunications infrastructure has traditionally remained uneven (Vertovec 2004: 223). Jamaica is one such country.

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Section: Transnational Communication: Blessing or Burden?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The blessings and burdens of communication: cell phones in Jamaican transnational social fields

2006

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“…More recently, there has been a growing interest in the various types of transnational linkages that Indian migrants maintain with their home regions. These studies explore how the economic, social and cultural ties between the migrants and the members of the home community in India are characterised by both closeness and tension (Kapur 2010;Taylor, Singh and Booth 2007;Velayutham and Wise 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Middling Migration: Contradictory Mobility Experiences of Indian Youth in London

Rutten¹,

Verstappen²

2013

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

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In this paper we examine the contradictory migration experiences of Indian youngsters who recently moved to Britain on a student or temporary work visa. All of them lived in London at the time of the interview, and are from middle class families in Gujarat. Like many of their peers in developing countries, they dreamed of going to the West to earn money, to study and to get experience in a foreign country to improve their prospects at home. Once in London, however, they ended up in low-status, semi-skilled jobs to cover their expenses, and lived in small guesthouses crammed with newly arrived migrants.Why did these youngsters leave India and go to London, and what do they get by moving abroad? Based on long-term research in London and Gujarat, our findings show that the decision to migrate is shaped by a combination of individual and social motivations of both the young migrants and their families in India. Several youngsters moved to London not only to earn money and gain new experiences, but also to escape family pressures and obligations by living away from their parents. Their parents encourage them, and even support them, though they are aware of the difficulties their children face in London. They regard the migration as a temporary, but requisite precautionary strategy to maintain their status as middle class families in present-day India, thereby safeguarding the next generation's future prospects.

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“…The socio-political structure of the village is therefore replicated in the migrant population in Singapore, and events and rites of passage in the village are also commemorated in Singapore. In this light, "the social field of the trans-local village is reproduced as much through the trans-localizing of affective regimes emerging from the village, while (rituals, sentiments and affect are means of inscribing locality onto bodies, creating a sense of boundary across extended space" [36]. This dovetails with Wood's conceptualization of the rural as a multi-dimensional concept which shapes the social and economic structure of rural localities and the everyday lives of people, who live, work or play in rural areas [16].…”

Section: Religious Syncretismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It represents a troublesome delineation of cultural areas and the homogenization of cultural identities. But local/so-called rural peoples are hooked up to the outside world through the phenomenon of migration and the ideas and influences acquired transform both urban and rural spaces in migrant's lives [16,35,36]. Although people migrate, they remain carriers of their culture.…”

Section: Urban-rural Reconceptualizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a Reconceptualization of the ?Urban? and ?Rural? as Conceptual and Analytical Categories in the Social Sciences

Pemunta¹,

Obara²

2012

Arts and Social Sciences Journal

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Globalization implies a general shift in spatio-temporal relations and the simultaneous deterritorialization of cultural phenomena orchestrated by the multiple global flows of people, ideas, and fashions. Within the context of globalization, it is troublesome for social scientists to continue using the "urban-rural" dichotomy as distinctive analytical and methodological categories because it tends to suggest a contingency in the pattern and character of social phenomena. This article sets out to theoretically rethink this conceptualization because of the multi-stranded and culturally embedded nature of human behavior in both space and time which has led to difficulties in delineating rigid subject boundaries today unlike in the past. Drawing on empirical data from diverse social phenomena, but particularly from the urban procurement and consumption of medicinal plant recipes, "dualistic" religious inclination and urban agriculture, we demonstrate that the geographic, spatio-temporal conceptualization of distinctive urban and rural phenomena are problematic. We suggest the notions of "urban-ruralism" and "rural-urbanism" as theoretical and methodological reconceptualizations to capture multiple embedded processes and to show that there exists a type of behavioral continuum/consistency because individuals have adopted hyphenated identities.Keywords: Globalization; hyphenated identities; multi-stranded field; spatio-temporal relations; urban; rural; urbanruralism; rural-urbanism. IntroductionThe continuous deployment of the notion of "rural" and "urban" as distinctive analytical and methodological categories, suggesting the fixity of people and of cultures is out of touch with social reality, because both spaces are characterized by hybridity. This explains the weariness among contemporary sociologists and anthropologists of the "locality obsessed tradition" of research [1] implicit in the rural-urban dichotomy. In fact, rootedness in either a rural or an urban locality is no longer the vogue because of the subversion of ruralurban spaces by global ethnoscapes. The methodological catch phrases of global ethnography and multi-locale ethnography that faithfully capture the "complexity of the phenomenon of mobility, migration, and multiple belonging, rather than sedentarism" has replaced the "natural order of things" paradigm -the habit of viewing the world as portioned out into nation-states, and the cross-border movement of citizens as a secondary phenomenon [1]. In this light, even ethnography has been transformed from research within bounded geographical spaces into a travelling encounter characterized by multiple, repeated, short-term dwellings, for "… a viable representation of social life" [1], independent of place. This subversion of the "national order of things" [1] implies that social reality is no longer bounded and frozen in time and space in both rural and urban settings because of multiple flows of ideas, images, and fashions.Rather, culture is fluid and deterritorialized, as captured by Ayse Ca...

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Moral economies of a translocal village: obligation and shame among South Indian transnational migrants

Cited by 107 publications

References 15 publications

The blessings and burdens of communication: cell phones in Jamaican transnational social fields

The blessings and burdens of communication: cell phones in Jamaican transnational social fields

Middling Migration: Contradictory Mobility Experiences of Indian Youth in London

Toward a Reconceptualization of the ?Urban? and ?Rural? as Conceptual and Analytical Categories in the Social Sciences

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