Locating the community in a study on immigrant context: The case of Sri Lankan Sinhalese immigrants in Australia

Abstract

Capturing the sense of community in an immigrant context is an arduous task, as it is visually absent, yet ideologically present. Consequently, it is represented in text as absence presence and its meaning is concealed unless the focus is community. Thus, the researcher’s challenge is not only collecting data but also reflecting and writing upon that data. In other words, it is about constructing our analysis, in terms of locating, experiencing, and narrating the meaning of ‘community’ in an anthropological pursuit. Based on two years of fieldwork with Sri Lankan Sinhalese transnational immigrants in Darwin Australia, the paper argues that the sense of community is an experiential entity for the researcher and informants. Also, it is imagined and fragmented yet subject to reproduction.