Labour Diaspora Research Articles

Chinese Indenture in the Interwar Netherlands East Indies and the ‘Coolie Ordinance’

ABSTRACT Formal indenture became widespread in the Chinese labour diaspora on Dutch-ruled Sumatra later than in the British Empire and ended later than anywhere else, apart from in some small and isolated settings. It also took a different form and was differently named as ‘the penal sanction’. Despite attempts by reformists in the East Indies and the Hague to phase it out, the penal sanction survived into the inter-war years because of resistance from vested conservative interests in both places. It was finally wound up as a result of a combination of international pressures from several sides and socioeconomic changes in the colony itself.

The Reterritorialisation of Pontic Greeks in Germany and the Modernisation of Tradition

Greeks have a long diasporic history that demonstrates significant examples of all major diaspora classifications. Pontic Greeks of the Black Sea in particular, represent an excellent example of non-static diasporic typology. Starting as an imperial diaspora they were transformed to a victim diaspora, when forcefully expelled from their native lands in north-eastern Anatolia, seeking refuge in Greece and in areas of central Asia that were later annexed by the Soviet Union. Greece’s socioeconomic environment, during the better part of the twentieth century, was proven insufficient to support the full integration of refugees, while those Pontic Greeks who found themselves behind the Iron Curtain, were subjected to further victimization. In 1960 Greece signed a bilateral agreement with West Germany, allowing its citizens to seek Gastarbeiter employment, resulting in the formation of a Greek labour diaspora in the country, of which an estimated one third self-identifies as culturally Pontic. After Greece’s induction in the European Communities, but especially in the post-Maastricht era, the migratory regime for Greeks in Germany changed to that of European-expatriation, therefore progressively transforming their labour diaspora to a cultural one. From imperial, to victim, to labour, to cultural, Pontic Diaspora underwent a long process of reterritorialisation, in their journey from Anatolia to Germany.

Negotiating Minority Identities in Europe Through Cultural Preservation: Music as Heritage among the Dutch Hindustani Diaspora in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT Twice-migrant and descended from the colonial labour diaspora, the Dutch Hindustanis in the Netherlands are one of the most assimilated, socially integrated and upwardly mobile minority diaspora groups in the Netherlands. The group also remains the repository of the early vestiges of Hindi film music as well as traditional music from the Northern Indian plains, thereby making it a fascinating case study for cultural preservation. This paper undertakes to take a close look at the modes and methods employed by the Dutch Hindustanis to preserve their musical heritage and argues that it has emerged as one of the primary nodes of diasporic identity formation for the group.

Migration, debt, and transnational livelihood: Indian labour diasporas in the GCC states amid the pandemic

ABSTRACT South Asian labour migration to the GCC States is a debt-financed migration in which labour diasporas mobilise resources from a variety of sources, often at exorbitant interest rates, to cover migration costs. In the event of the COVID pandemic, job losses and involuntary returns compound the problem of debt-financed migration, affecting the transnational livelihood of migrant families. This paper explores how the debt-financed migration shapes the transnational livelihood of Gulf labour diasporas amid the pandemic. Empirically, this paper draws on the experiences of 60 Gulf migrants from the Indian state of Bihar. This study reports that the families diversify their labour resources by joining Gulf labour market and migration generates remittances that provide improved livelihood for their families. Although unforeseen events such as the pandemic may delay migration episodes and thus mount the debt burden on migrants, migrants nevertheless find ways to join the Gulf labour market and erk out a trananational livelihood.

Photography and diaspora

This essay utilizes the rich photographic collections of the Herrnhut Archive, Rijksmuseum and Tropenmuseum to explore alternative ways of understanding the colonial Indian labour diaspora, to infuse new meanings into old pictures and to draw upon the reinterpretation of historical images to reframe personal female migration stories from an artistic perspective. This essay presents an overview of the photography of colonial subjects in India and of her diaspora, and discusses the symbolism and representations of selected case studies of individuals and groups in the Dutch colonial territory of Surinam. From this analysis, the author presents the significance of her findings for the evolution of her own work as an Indian woman of diaspora heritage exploring new ways of articulating complex personal and group identities through the medium of exhibitions and installations.

My Qoolitude is of whale bone

In this hybrid work of prose and poetry I consider the limits of Marina Carter’s and Khal Torabully’s concept of Coolitude and reflect how I have thought about it and how it affects my own thinking as a poet. I draw from the recent scholarship of Ryan Persadie to show how queerness (a curious silence in the original text of Coolitude: An Anthology of the Indian Labour Diaspora) can erupt through juxtaposing lyric flight with narrative prose.

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The role of satisfaction in labor diaspora dynamics: An analysis of BREXIT effects

AbstractIn diaspora research, people's international mobility is often understood as a response to pull‐push forces on an economic macro‐level or as part of diasporic waves. However, labor diaspora formations are also influenced by micro‐level (i.e., individual perceptions) drivers related to work per se, such as satisfaction. This explorative qualitative study takes a novel angle and focuses on the role of Portuguese nurses’ satisfaction with the evaluation of the Brexit scenario and its effects on this labor diaspora's mobility and stability. The findings illustrate that satisfaction, although affected by uncertainty, mainly relates to perceived working conditions and legislation and the possibilities to communicate with locals and other diasporans. This paper provides suggestions for future research and contributes to the development of theory on staying and human stickiness, explaining the dynamics of exit and entry in (re‐)migration decision making.

Trust in the Indian Labour Diaspora

Abstract This paper investigates the role of trust relationships through a re-examination of the activities of intermediaries (recruiters) in the Indian indentured labour system of the Indian Ocean in the colonial era. A review of the utilisation of trust in development discourse and its applicability to the literature of colonial subaltern migration and to a specific historical context is undertaken. The paper demonstrates that informal trust networks are critical to an understanding of the operation of indenture, that the appraisal of their functioning and effectiveness necessitates the construction of a counter narrative to the ‘official’ archive, and suggests a new means of adapting the trust discourse to this field of study through an assessment of how these knowledge and information networks were disseminated and by whom.

Home cooking and identity formation in migrant Filipino families in Hong Kong

AbstractThis paper draws from ethnographic fieldwork conducted among Filipino migrant families in Hong Kong and explores the various ways that Filipino parents instil a sense of Filipino identity in their children. I argue that for these families, the home is the primary environment in which the children learn about their ethnic heritage, in turn strengthening their sense of Filipino identity. I present three activities that strengthen Filipino consciousness in the home: speaking Filipino, visiting the Philippines frequently, and cooking Filipino food at home. I argue that these activities evoke an imagined, remembered, and reconstructed notion of the Philippines. Specifically, the paper adds to the discourse on the experience of migrant Filipino families and the development of a Filipino identity among second‐generation Filipinos in Hong Kong. In addition, it helps fill the gap in the literature relating to migrant Filipinos in Hong Kong, as most of the literature is focused on the labour diaspora of Filipina domestic helpers.

The queer promise of pageantry: queering feminized migration and the labor of care in Sunday Beauty Queen (2016)

ABSTRACT This article examines Baby Ruth Villarama’s Sunday Beauty Queen to explore representations that unsettle heteronormative ideas around Filipina domestic workers’ bodies and labor. First, I analyze the aesthetics of pageantry in Villarama’s camerawork to argue that the film, in visually queering straight cisgender Filipina bodies, challenges scripts of heteropatriarchal portrayal of care labor. By using cinematic “queer time,” the documentary troubles the “straight time” of care work as linear flow from left-behind families at homeland to host families at destination countries and back. This dovetails to a discussion of how the labor of care is queered within the homosocial community of migrant Filipina women abroad through the conception of community of care. By queering the labor of care, I unveil forms of queer intimacies and practices that reveal how pageantry and community building produce spaces for non-normative and nonbiological affinities for alternative modalities of care exchange. By looking at the intersections of queer and migration studies, I explore how Villarama’s documentary represents spaces and social practices that offer alternative imaginaries of care that exceeds naturalized and normalized understanding of feminized labor diaspora.

Chronic Illness in a Pakistani Labour Diaspora by Kaveri Qureshi

Chronic Illness in a Pakistani Labour Diaspora by Kaveri Qureshi

Book Review: Kaveri Qureshi, Chronic Illness in a Pakistani Labour Diaspora

Book Review: Kaveri Qureshi, <i>Chronic Illness in a Pakistani Labour Diaspora</i>

Fighting for Migrant Workers in Hong Kong

The precarious state of migrant workers has become a major area of concern for the contemporary global economy. In Southeast Asian regions in particular, the number of migrant workers has spiked since the 1990s. In the city of Hong Kong, domestic migrant workers, predominantly Filipino and Indonesian women, now make up around a tenth of the total working population. Since the beginning of Southeast Asia's labor diaspora, activists have been fiercely organizing against the rampant exploitation and abuse of migrant workers.

When Is a Temporary Migrant Not a Temporary Migrant? Patrick Manning’s Relational World History Approach Applied to Interwar British Malaya

Abstract Discussion of Patrick Manning’s legacy as a world historian must include the way he taught us to write historical narratives that not only shift between the perspectives of diverse individuals and interest groups, but also bring those perspectives into conversation with each other. This relational world history-writing methodology requires analysis of both local, transregional, and global historical forces and the experiences of people who tried to deploy or resist those forces. In the spirit of Manning’s approach, this article highlights how competing narratives about emigration from Britain and the Indian subcontinent to British Malaya from the 1920s until 1940 can be understood more clearly by demonstrating how three interest groups defined their relationship to the colony’s Malayan Indian population. Analyzing this contested discourse among British civil servants, Indian immigrant community representatives, and individuals trying to rally the Indians Overseas labor diaspora illustrates the kinds of circumstances that had the potential to promote or constrain meaningful social change for Indian-born and Indian-descended settlers in Malaya.

Save Mary Jane Veloso: Solidarity and Global Migrant Activism in the Filipino Labor Diaspora

Abstract On April 29, 2015, Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina migrant worker who was sentenced to death in Indonesia for trafficking heroin into the country, was granted a stay of execution by Indonesian President Joko Widodo. In this article, I argue that transnational networks activated by this case exemplify the power of systematic migrant worker organizing both in Filipino diasporic sites where Filipinos migrant use ongoing local campaign work against precarity to create migrant class consciousness in critique of neoliberalism and the Philippine state.

Sirdars as Intermediaries in Nineteenth-century Indian Ocean Indentured Labour Migration*

AbstractThe sirdar (also termed sardar and jobber in Indian historiography)—foreman, recruiter, at once a labour leader and an important intermediary figure for the employers of labour both in India and in the sugar colonies—is reassessed in this article. Tithankar Roy's thoughtful 2007 article looked at how the sirdars’ multiple roles represent an incorporation of traditional authority in a modern setting, giving rise to certain contradictions. In 2010 Samita Sen, conversely, developed Rajnarayan Chandavarkar's argument about the use of labour intermediaries in colonial India to reveal how, in the case of the Assam tea plantations, the nexus between contractors and sirdars belies the ‘benign’ role often accorded to the intermediary within narratives from the tea industry. This article provides examples from the overseas labour destinations in the Indian Ocean region, particularly Mauritius, to further develop and nuance the debate, through an assessment of the complexity of sirdari roles in the colonial Indian labour diaspora.

Pulled through Time: Art and the Indian Labour Migrant

This paper discusses the processes through which historical research, visual archives, and artistic production have interacted to produce a series of original artworks capturing some of the complexities of Indian indentured migrants’ experiences and identities. The images from the ‘Coolitude’ series by award-winning artist Danny Flynn apply modern screen-printing techniques to archival photographs of Indian indentured labourers. The artistic reimagining of these historical images was inspired by the ideas of Mauritian poet Khal Torabully and the work of the historical research project, ‘Becoming Coolies: Rethinking the Origins of the Indian Ocean Labour Diaspora’. The latter attempts to reinterpret the colonial Indian labour diaspora by drawing upon accounts of migrants themselves to reassess the mechanisms of migration and reassign subjectivity and agency to Indian labour migrants’ experiences. The artworks themselves seek to interrogate and challenge the stereotypical image of the so-called ‘coolie’, presenting a more nuanced view of the Indian labour migrant. This paper discusses the creation of the visual archive from which the original images are drawn, as well as the conceptual and creative processes that underpin their reimagining as original works of art.

Some Thoughts on the Representation and Misrepresentation of the Colonial South Asian Labour Diaspora

This paper explores the representation and misrepresentation of indentured Indian labour migration in the colonial archive and subsequent historiography, and offers some suggestions for alternate ways of viewing the origins of the South Asian labour diaspora. Drawing on ongoing research, it emphasises the need to move away from well-worn dichotomies of ‘slavery’ and ‘free labour’ and instead to re-centre the role of human agency and creativity, even in the face of structural opposition. By reflecting on the limitations of the colonial archive, and emphasising the role of pre-existing networks, returnees and recruiters in facilitating and informing patterns of migration, it suggests ways to move beyond the persistent popular misrepresentations of this process, and find alternative, subaltern perspectives on the indentured labour experience.

Contextualizing Complex Social Contact: Mauritius, a Microcosm of Global Diaspora

This article supplements current dialogue on the archaeology of slavery, offering an Indian Ocean counterpoint to a topic that has largely focused on the Atlantic world. It also delves into the essentially uncharted domain of the archaeology of indentured labour. New plural societies, characterized by cultural hybridity, were created around the world as a consequence of labour diasporas in the late historic period. What do these societies look like during the process of nation building and after independence? Can we study this development through archaeology? Focusing on Mauritius, this paper discusses the complexities of the island, and how it can be representative of similar newly formed plural societies in the Indian Ocean. During French and British imperial rule, the island served as an important trading post for a range of European imperial powers. These varied groups initiated the movement and settlement of African, Indian and Chinese transplanted communities. By exploring the dynamic nature of inter-group interaction on Mauritius, this paper emphasizes the nuanced nature of how different peoples arrived and made the island their home. Mauritius played a vital role in the transportation of forced and free labour, both within and beyond this oceanic world, and offers an important viewpoint from which to survey the ways in which historical archaeology can improve our understanding of the broader archaeo-historical processes of which these diasporas were an integral feature. The paper focuses on the outcomes of settlement, as viewed through the complex practices that underpin local food culture, the use and development of language and the way materials are employed for the expression of identity. The article also traces the roots of contemporary cultural retention for indentured labourers to administrative decisions made by the British, and ultimately explores how heritage and language can provide a powerful lens on mechanisms of cultural expression. In addition to illustrating the nuanced and multifaceted nature of group interaction on Mauritius itself, this article raises an issue of broader relevance—the need for historical archaeologists to give greater consideration to the Indian Ocean, rather than focusing on the Atlantic world. This would allow us to achieve a more informed understanding of European slave trading and associated systems of labour migration within a more global framework.