Desis divided : the political lives of South Asian Americans / Sangay K. Mishra.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mishra, Sangay K., 1968- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

South Asian Americans--Politics and government.

South Asian Americans--Cultural assimilation.

South Asian Americans--Ethnic identity.

Transnationalism--Political aspects--United States.

Emigration and immigration.

Transnationalism.

South Asian Americans.

Assimilation (Sociology).

Politics and government.

United States--Emigration and immigration--Political aspects.

South Asia--Emigration and immigration--Political aspects.

South Asia.

United States.

Physical Description:

ix, 276 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2016]

Summary:

For immigrants to America in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, gaining social and political ground has generally been an exercise in ethnic and racial solidarity. The experience of South Asian Americans, one of the fastest-growing immigrant populations in recent years, tells a different story of inclusion-one in which distinctions within a group are significant. Focusing on Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi American communities, Sangay K. Mishra analyzes mobilization through class, religion, nation of origin, language, caste, gender, and sexuality. He shows how these internal characteristics lead to multiple paths of political inclusion, defying a unified group experience. How, for instance, has religion shaped the fractured political response to intensified discrimination against South Asians-Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs-in the post-9/11 period? How have class and home country concerns influenced strategies for achieving political power? And how do the political engagements of professional and entrepreneurial segments of the community challenge the idea of a unified diaspora? Mishra argues that, while ethnoracial mobilization remains important to the South Asian American experience, ethnoracial identity is deployed differently by particular sectors of the South Asian population to produce specific mobilizing and organizational infrastructures. Exploring these distinctions is critical to understanding the changing nature of the politics of immigrant inclusion-and difference itself-in America. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 South Asian Americans and Immigration Regimes: Exclusion, Ghadar Rebellion, and Silicon Valley 19

2 Political Incorporation and New Immigrants: Beyond Racial Solidarity 49

3 Race, Religion, and Communities: South Asians in the Post-9/11 United States 71

4 Mapping the Modes of Mobilization 105

5 Transnationalism and Political Participation: The Challenges of "In-Between" Americans 155

6 Diasporic Nationalism and Fragments Within 173.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780816681150

0816681155

9780816681167

0816681163

OCLC:

921240083