1st Edition
Asian Women, Identity and Migration Experiences of Transnational Women of Indian Origin/Heritage
This book explores the influence which education and migration experiences have on women of Indian origin in Australia and the United Kingdom when (re)negotiating their identities.
The intersections of migration and transnationalism are critically examined through multiple theoretical lenses across three thematic domains encompassing socio-historical discourses, postcolonial theory, theories on intersectionality and interceptionality, emotional reflexivity and affects. In doing so, the book highlights the ambiguities around gendered access and equity to education, migration experiences, the acculturation process, dilemmas surrounding transnationality and negotiation of identities, belonging and struggles inherent in simultaneously maintaining ties with home and new social fields. Chapters highlight the practical, methodological, and substantive aspects of affective dimensions and voice with a critical understanding of different tensions, challenges, complexities and conflicts underlining the stories. The book raises the question of voice and agency in advocating emotion-based writing in recalibrating conditions representing gendered subjective multivocality of women in breaking silences.
Presenting non-Western perspectives through fragmented and often marginalised accounts within transnational and global spaces, this book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of Sociology, Gender Studies, Migration, Transnational and Diaspora studies, Sociology of Education, Feminist Studies, Cultural Studies, Literature and Cultural Geographies.
Introduction
Reshmi Lahiri-Roy and Nish Belford
1. "Listen and You’ll Hear": Autoethnography and Educational Desire
Reshmi Lahiri-Roy
2. Autoethnographic Stories in Academia from Two Women of Diasporas
Mehreen Mirza and Barbara Mitra
3. Melbourne Musings: On Narrative Mediation
Michelle Cahill
4. The interplay of acculturation attitudes, cultural beliefs and educational values in negotiating my identity as an Indo-Australian academic
Sarika Kewalramani
5. Narrative of Multiculturalism: aptly describing where I am today as an early childhood educator
Vijaya Tatineni
6. The dilemma of being seen and unseen: my dark skin amongst the white walls . . .
Dawn Joseph
7. The colonisation of spiritual identity: Implications for belonging, social cohesion and wellbeing in Australian Catholic Education
Marian de Souza
8. Transnational women of Indian origin: intra-hybridity shifts and the continual topos of ‘being’
Margaret Kumar
9. Reflections through the Looking Glass: Voices from Strong Women of Urban Pakistan
Venesser Fernandes
10. Renegotiation of identity in Australia through the Reunionese art form: Maloya
Muriel Hillion Toulcanon
11. In Conversation: Suneeta Peres da Costa & Roanna Gonsalves
Suneeta Peres da Costa and Roanna Gonsalves
12. The ‘emotional and affective labour’ as a transnational woman in negotiating intimacies with cultural ‘others’ and homeland friends
Nish Belford
13. Transient Temples’: How do I pray to my old Gods on these new lands, in this new home?
Anindita Banerjee
14. Everyday Objects and Conversations: Experiencing ‘Self’ in the Transnational Space of the United Kingdom
Arunima Bhattacharya
15. Between Hypervisible and Invisible: Modi, Marriage and Migrant Women in Australian Media
Nisha Thapliyal
Biography
Nish Belford is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Australia. Her current research interests include migration and transnational studies with a particular focus on women migrants’ challenges with education, homing, family, cultural beliefs, diasporic identities and their gendered subjectivities.
Reshmi Lahiri-Roy is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University, Australia. Her current research interests include issues of identity and belonging in relation to diasporas with special focus on women migrants within the spaces of education, sociology and cultural studies.
