Chronicling Kenyan Asian diasporic histories: ‘newcomers’, ‘established’ migrants, and the Post-Colonial practices of time-work
Chronicling Kenyan Asian diasporic histories: ‘newcomers’, ‘established’ migrants, and the Post-Colonial practices of time-work
Recent studies of international migration have observed its increasing complexity. Circular, return, and temporary migration between India and Kenya, arising from the economic and political multipolarities of increasing South-South partnerships, is one example of such complexity. These flows are distinct from the migration patterns of the longer-established Kenyan Asian diaspora, who settled under the auspices of the British Empire from the 1890s until the beginning of the 1960s. This paper explores how these transformations are negotiated through the dynamics of Kenyan Asians' ongoing post-colonial liminalities and ambiguities of citizenship, focusing in particular on the temporal production of distinctions between ‘newcomers’ and ‘established’ migrants, even when in practice these distinctions are much more fluid. This paper highlights the regulatory practices of ‘time-work’ that enfold the migratory chronologies of ‘established’ migrants into the time of the nation, whilst excluding those of ‘newcomers’. It explores the selective remembering, forgetting, and reworking of the colonial past, a process informed by the dynamics of modernity, diaspora, nation, and postcoloniality in contemporary Kenya. It argues that whilst distinctions between ‘established’ and ‘newcomer’ migrants might reflect different positionings in transnational social fields, differences are also negotiated in contradictions between the experiences, meanings, and understandings of time. This demonstrates how space on its own is itself a inadequate conceptual lens with which to examine relationships between ‘newcomers’ and ‘established’ migrants, and that further research is needed that attends to the temporal dynamics mediating the temporal dissonances of contemporary transnational social fields
736-749
Dickinson, Jen
11c18e3e-dad8-4bfc-91ee-9322fea472e5
1 November 2016
Dickinson, Jen
11c18e3e-dad8-4bfc-91ee-9322fea472e5
Dickinson, Jen
(2016)
Chronicling Kenyan Asian diasporic histories: ‘newcomers’, ‘established’ migrants, and the Post-Colonial practices of time-work.
Population, Space and Place, 22 (8), .
(doi:10.1002/psp.1951).
Abstract
Recent studies of international migration have observed its increasing complexity. Circular, return, and temporary migration between India and Kenya, arising from the economic and political multipolarities of increasing South-South partnerships, is one example of such complexity. These flows are distinct from the migration patterns of the longer-established Kenyan Asian diaspora, who settled under the auspices of the British Empire from the 1890s until the beginning of the 1960s. This paper explores how these transformations are negotiated through the dynamics of Kenyan Asians' ongoing post-colonial liminalities and ambiguities of citizenship, focusing in particular on the temporal production of distinctions between ‘newcomers’ and ‘established’ migrants, even when in practice these distinctions are much more fluid. This paper highlights the regulatory practices of ‘time-work’ that enfold the migratory chronologies of ‘established’ migrants into the time of the nation, whilst excluding those of ‘newcomers’. It explores the selective remembering, forgetting, and reworking of the colonial past, a process informed by the dynamics of modernity, diaspora, nation, and postcoloniality in contemporary Kenya. It argues that whilst distinctions between ‘established’ and ‘newcomer’ migrants might reflect different positionings in transnational social fields, differences are also negotiated in contradictions between the experiences, meanings, and understandings of time. This demonstrates how space on its own is itself a inadequate conceptual lens with which to examine relationships between ‘newcomers’ and ‘established’ migrants, and that further research is needed that attends to the temporal dynamics mediating the temporal dissonances of contemporary transnational social fields
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Published date: 1 November 2016
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Local EPrints ID: 471714
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/471714
ISSN: 1544-8444
PURE UUID: 4ee50501-4669-42e1-a7dd-d3c1c075e9e9
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Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 04:14
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