Towards a geography of transnational spaces: Indian transnational communities in Australia

Global Networks 4, 1 (2004) 25–49. ISSN 1470–2266 © 2004 Blackwell Publishing Ltd & Global Networks Partnership 25

Towards a geography of transnational spaces:

Indian transnational communities in Australia

CARMEN VOIGT-GRAF

Abstract Few studies on migrant transnationalism have explicitly adopted a geographical perspective, despite the widespread use of spatial metaphors in the literature and the potential advantages that a geographical approach offers. In this article, the geography of the transnational spaces of Punjabis, Kannadigas and Indo-Fijians is analysed. Punjabis have constructed complex transnational spaces that are virtually global in scale. Kannadigas are engaged in transnational activities linking their places of residence with south India. Indo-Fijians have emerged as a regional transnational community stretching across the Pacific Ocean. On the basis of their experiences, a consistent terminology is suggested and a typology of different models of transnational spaces is developed. This typology provides a tool to compare different transnational communities beyond the Indian experience. It can be seen as a preliminary step in the direction of a more theoretical approach that links the geography of migrant transnational spaces with sociological debates on social space.

Scholars of migration and migrant adaptation have increasingly used the term ‘transnationalism’ to describe the experiences of international migrants in the last decade of the twentieth century (Glick Schiller et al. 1992; Guarnizo and Smith 1998). According to the three pioneers in transnationalism studies, Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton-Blanc, ‘transnationalism is a process by which migrants, through their daily life activities … create social fields that cross national boundaries’ (Basch et al. 1994: 22). In this article I attempt to fill a gap in the literature on migrant transnationalism by focusing on its geography.

There is hardly a text that does not emphasize that migrant transnationalism is a complex phenomenon, which varies from community to community and over time. Typologies of transnational flows (Itzigsohn et al. 1999; Landolt et al. 1999; Portes et al. 1999) and their regularity and intensity (Levitt 2001; Mahler 1998) provide tools to compare different transnational communities. In this article I argue that an understanding of the spatial organization of transnationalism provides another powerful tool for comparisons between different communities. The main aim is to develop a typology of transnational spaces on the basis of cartographic models that can elucidate the process of transnationalism in the cases studied and beyond. Since migrants and their non-migrant kin use, move through and create space in new and innovative ways, it is not surprising that the literature on transnationalism is sprinkled with spatial metaphors. They hint at a link between the construction of transnational

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spaces and the more general reorganization of space in the current era. The typology presented in this article is a preliminary move in the direction of developing a more theoretical understanding of the geography of transnationalism within the framework of sociological debates on social space.

This article is based on a research project in which the transnational experiences of three communities under the umbrella of the Indian diaspora – Punjabis from the north Indian state of Punjab, Kannadigas from the south Indian state of Karnataka and ‘twice migrant’1 Indo-Fijians – were studied (Voigt-Graf 2002). For studying migrant transnationalism, Indians are a compelling case study for several reasons. Indians have settled abroad permanently in considerable numbers since the nineteenth century as a result of indentured and free migration. Some 20 million people of Indian origin today live in all corners of the globe. The fact that many descendants of the nineteenth-century migrants have undertaken a second or third migration, not back to India but usually to industrialized countries, makes the Indian diaspora a very multi-faceted one. Previous research among Indians in Tanzania shows that many overseas Indians are linked not only bilaterally to India but also to several nodes of the Indian diaspora (Voigt-Graf 1998: 170–80). The migration of family members to different countries, as well as the considerable number of Indian twice migrants, have contributed to these complex patterns.

The level at which nodes in transnational spaces are constituted is not necessarily national. India as a whole is too diverse a country to act as a single node in migrant transnational networks; hence the two communities of India-direct migrants are defined by their state of origin, Punjab and Karnataka. Fiji on the other hand is a node in the transnational space of Indo-Fijians. The choice of the three communities was guided by considerations of exposing a wide variety of Indian transnational experiences in terms of the spatial organization of their networks. Punjabis were chosen due to the historical depth of their migration and the global extent of their networks. Kannadigas are recent migrants who have moved to a handful of industrialized countries. Indo-Fijians are the largest twice-migrant community of Indian origin in Australia. Their transnational networks are organized very differently than those of direct migrants.

Since research on migrant transnationalism cannot be conducted in fixed places or locations, an approach of ‘multi-sited fieldwork’ (Marcus 1999) was chosen by con-ducting research in multiple locations, added to ‘translocal fieldwork’ (Hannerz 1998), following the networks that constitute the transnational space of the Indian diaspora. The major country of fieldwork was Australia, which is home to a diverse Indian population of some 220,000 people. The core of the research consisted of in-depth semi-structured household interviews in Australia and of the kin of migrants in Punjab, Karnataka and Fiji.2 Between 1998 and 2000, 100 Indian households were interviewed in Australia (32 Punjabis, 20 Kannadigas, 20 Indo-Fijians and 28 Indians of other origins), 52 households in India (28 Punjabis and 24 Kannadigas) and 40 households in Fiji. The findings from the household interviews were complemented by other sources of information. These included participation in social activities in Indian households and communities, key informant interviews, expert interviews and the analysis of census data and other statistics. Four well-informed interview res-

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pondents in Australia became key informants who were met several times to discuss various issues arising from the research. Some 50 persons provided expert knowledge on a variety of aspects. They included academics, government officials, and religious and community leaders in all three countries.

Conceptual framework

New understandings of space

Space is constituted out of social relations. Soja, for example, refers to socially produced spaces as ‘spatiality’ and argues that ‘the production of space [is] a social process rooted in the same problematic as the making of history’ (Soja 1989: 35). In that sense, the increasingly globalized capitalism of the late twentieth century has produced the space of flows with global cities as nodal points. The key point is that social relations and individual actions have a spatial expression and that the social and spatial are dialectically related. People produce space by their actions and space in turn rebounds back on social relations. Socially produced space assumes a relativist understanding of space in which the relative positions of actors matter.3

In recent decades, space in general and relativist understandings of space in particular have become important concepts in the social sciences beyond the discipline of geography and new relativist concepts of space have been developed (Faist forthcoming). For this article, the concept of a ‘space of flows’ is particularly important.

The term was coined because today ‘our societies are fundamentally made of flows exchanged through networks of organizations and institutions’ (Castells 1996: 29). Global cities are nodes in the global space of flows and the global networks of people, money and information. The concept of the ‘space of flows’ hints at the increased interconnectivity between places and a large number and density of global flows, and questions the importance of territorial boundaries such as those of nation-states (Faist forthcoming). This is also Massey’s argument:

If one moves in from the satellite towards the globe, holding all those networks of social relations and movements and communications in one’s head, then each ‘place’ can be seen as a particular, unique, point of intersection. It is, indeed, a meeting place. Instead then, of thinking of places as areas with boundaries around, they can be imagined as articulated moments in networks of social relations and understandings. … And this in turn allows a sense of place which is extroverted, which includes a consciousness of its links with the wider world, which integrates in a positive way the global and the local.

(Massey 1991: 28, emphasis in original)

Giddens regards place as being ‘increasingly phantasmagoric, that is to say locales are thoroughly penetrated by and shaped in terms of social influences quite distant from them’ (Giddens 1990: 18–19). Massey’s concept of power-geometry implies that different levels of power are associated with different places in this global space of flows (Massey 1993). While global cities are nodes in the space of flows at the macro

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level, the transnational spaces of migrants similarly consist of flows, nodes and positions in networks.

Migrant transnational spaces

Migration, as one of the most consequential spatial behaviours of individuals, pro-vides an excellent demonstration of the changing uses and the social constructions of space. In the past, migration was largely conceptualized as a bipolar relation between sending and receiving countries and the post-migration situation was perceived as being localized in the new country of residence. The existence of transnational communities however, implies that, after the initial movement, transnational spaces are created between migrants and their kin that transcend the boundaries of nation-states.

Various spatial metaphors refer to a situation in which two or more societies form a single arena of social action as a consequence of migration. The two most widely used spatial references are those of transnational social fields (Glick Schiller et al. 1992; Goldring 1998; Guarnizo and Smith 1998; Itzigsohn et al. 1999) and transnational social spaces (Faist 2000: 191; Pries 2001). Transnational social spaces are ‘configurations of social practices, artifacts and symbol systems [sic] that span different geographic spaces in at least two nation-states without constituting a new “deterritorialised” nation-state’ (Pries 2001: 18, emphasis added). In contrast to global processes that may indeed be detached from specific nation-states, transnational processes remain anchored in nation-states while spanning two or more of them (Al-Ali and Koser 2002: 2).

While spatial terms abound in the transnationalism literature, they are often simply used as metaphors without linking the social spaces to substantive geographical spaces or to new understandings of space as examined above. This is the reason why Vertovec (2001: 26) writes: ‘While we are coming to get a better sense of trans-nationalism through such spatial metaphors, they may not necessarily get us anywhere analytically.’ It is indeed time to take up the challenge to put substance to these spatial metaphors and to emphasize the link between the social and the spatial in regard to transnational spaces.

The transnational spaces created by migrants and their kin are physically manifest in geographic space. The definition of transnational spaces adopted in this article is largely consistent with that of networks in sociological theory (see Wasserman and Faust 1994). Migrant transnational spaces are constituted by nodes that are fixed or anchored places in networks and by flows between these nodes. The three main types of nodes are the cultural hearth, new centre and diasporic node (see Figure 1). In this regard, the concept of power-geometry refers to different degrees of power that individuals hold because they are differently placed in relation to flows and networks. Acknowledging that all transnational spaces are socially constructed, the ‘social’ is discarded from the expression ‘transnational social space’ and in the remainder of this article, the expression ‘transnational space’ is used.

On the basis of this terminology, in the remainder of this article I analyse the specific transnational spaces constructed by Punjabis, Kannadigas and Indo-Fijians before developing generalized cartographic models of transnational spaces.


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Figure 1. Terminology of a geography of transnationalism

The spatial components of a geography of transnationalism

Cultural hearth The country, region or place of origin of migrants and theirdescendants which often forms an important node in transnationalnetworks. Since this term is understood in a geographical sensereferring to the place where the culture of migrants originallydeveloped, it does not imply an essentialist understanding of culture.

New centre If personal links to the cultural hearth are lost, the country wheremigrants and their descendants have lived sufficiently long to regard itas their home can become the new centre of a transnationalcommunity.

Diasporic node A country, region or place where migrants have settled long enoughand in sufficiently large numbers to have created a permanent presenceas a community, even if individual migrants are merely passingthrough.

Node Countries, regions or places that are linked by flows. The culturalhearth (or new centre) and the diasporic nodes together make up thenodes of migrant transnational networks.

Flows Flows between nodes may include migration flows and flows ofpeople, products, money, ideas, cultural goods, and information. Theycan be one-way or two-way.

Offshore flows Flows between two diasporic nodes.

Transnational space The transnational space is the sum of the nodes and flows betweenthem. The emphasis is on the fact that it is shaped by social activitiesand in turn shapes them. The transnational space as a whole comprisesdifferent sub-spaces defined by the sphere of transnational activitiessuch as transnational economic spaces and transnational culturalspaces.

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Transnational spaces of the Indian diaspora

Transnational spaces of Punjabis

Punjabis have a one-and-a-half century long history of migration to Australia. In the nineteenth century Punjabi pioneers worked as agricultural labourers and as hawkers and pedlars. After the passing of the Immigration Restriction Act in 1901, which legally underpinned the ‘White Australia Policy’ until the early 1970s, new migration of non-Europeans became virtually impossible. However, some Punjabi sons joined their fathers in Australia, sometimes replacing the grandfather who would return to India for retirement. Many families kept their links with Australia for two or three generations before the first family member permanently settled there. Over time, descendants of the Punjabi pioneers have shifted the focus of their economic activities and the balance of their families to rural Australia.

Since the end of the White Australia Policy in the early 1970s, Punjabis of an urban professional background have arrived in Australia and have settled in cities. As many as 4107 of the 10,874 Punjabis in Australia in 1996 lived in Sydney (Australian Bureau of Statistics 1996); Sydney Punjabis are considerably more diverse in terms of religion, caste and country of birth than their rural counterparts, most of whom are Sikhs of the land-holding Jat caste from Doaba district. Substantial numbers of recent migrants came from other nodes of the Punjabi diaspora, particularly from Southeast Asia and the United Kingdom.

Due to its historical depth, the Punjabi diaspora lends itself to an observation of the gradual changes in the organization of its nodes and networks. When Punjabis started establishing themselves in Australia, they also ventured out to various other places. In the late nineteenth century their diaspora already included such diverse nodes as North America, Southeast Asia, East Africa, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. At that time, however, most Punjabi migrants were men of working age who were sojourning abroad while their families stayed in Punjab. Their transnational ties were linking them back to Punjab but without developing into more complex networks. Their marriages for example were arranged to spouses in Punjab. While it was possible that members of one family had gone to different countries, it was more common that chain migration paths led to a situation where relatives sojourned in the same diasporic node. Over time, their stay became more permanent and their trans-national networks became increasingly complex. Marriage arrangements have started to be made between spouses settled in different nodes, rather than exclusively with spouses from Punjab. In addition, many Punjabi families whose original migration routes had brought them to places in the so-called developed world have undertaken a secondary migration to metropolitan countries. In Australia, for instance, many twice migrant Punjabis have arrived from Southeast Asia. This has led to a situation today where their transnational networks have increasingly gone offshore in the sense that regular flows of people, goods and information link Punjabis in Australia with Singa-pore, the United States and other nodes.

The household interviews and related research show that Punjabis and the two other Indian communities under investigation construct their most important trans-national spaces along kinship lines. Transnational economic and cultural links for


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instance mostly occur between spatially dispersed kin and are to a large extent motivated by kinship solidarity (Voigt-Graf 2002). The regularity and strength of transnational flows in the various spheres of life is therefore determined by the presence of kin in various nodes. Since kinship is the underlying principle of trans-national organization in the case of the three Indian communities of this research, the further analysis of their transnational spaces focuses on the role of kinship in the migration process.

The dispersal of many Punjabi families across various countries is at the root of their complex transnational networks. This is partly a result of the comparatively large number of twice migrant Punjabis, which is obvious from the variety of birthplaces of Punjabis in Australia. This is far more diverse than the birthplaces of Kannadigas and Indo-Fijians (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Country of birth of Punjabis, Kannadigas and Indo-Fijians in Australia in 1996

The Punjabi diaspora as a whole has become increasingly organized along networks in which Punjab is one node, though, depending on the family’s spread, not necessarily the most important one. There are indications that the various nodes are ranked in a hierarchy of popularity. Discussions with Punjabi respondents in Australia and India revealed that the ranking of countries becomes apparent in the practice of marriage arrangements (Voigt-Graf 2002: 117–19). Sikhs follow the rules of caste endogamy and of gotra exogamy. This means that marriages are arranged between people of the same caste, for example Jats, but not of the same patrilineal descent group (gotra), nor from that of one’s mother or any of one’s grandmothers. In addition, the rule of patrilocality applies according to which couples take up residence at the place of the husband’s family. Since the range of prospective partners is wide and no particular obligations with respect to accepting or making offers of marriage alliances exist, marriage arrangements for offspring are often governed by the long-term interests of the family (Ballard 2001). For this reason marriage alliances can serve as strategic steps towards opening new migration routes.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90Percentage

Australia India Fiji Singapore Malaysia UnitedKingdom

NewZealand

Canada UnitedStates

Elsewhereoverseas

Country of Birth /

% Punjabis

% Kannadigas

% Indo-Fijians

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Taking Punjabis in the Australian rural town of Woolgoolga as an example, ever since they came to Australia they assumed that the appropriate place to recruit spouses for their offspring was from those families into which they would have married had they not moved abroad. Most marriages of Woolgoolga Sikhs are arranged with families in India. The traditional pattern of patrilocality has given way to a system whereby the spouse from India – male or female – migrates to Australia. Dharmbir Grewal was a respondent who had moved to Woolgoolga after his marriage:

My father had started looking for a wife for me in Punjab and informed our relatives about it. My father’s second cousin’s husband knew that his nephew in Australia was looking for a husband for his daughter. I didn’t really want to move abroad because all my family and friends are in Punjab. But my father wanted me to move because then I could maybe help my younger brother to migrate too. … I thought that Australia was not bad because at least there is land available. That was important for me because I am a farmer. I wouldn’t work in factories like most Punjabis in Britain. … My father-in-law visited us in Punjab and he and my father arranged the marriage. I never met my wife before our wedding in Punjab. After our marriage they sponsored my migration to Woolgoolga. For the first two years we stayed at my in-laws’ place, which was hard because I don’t get on with them.

Dharmbir’s case demonstrates how the traditional rule of patrilocality was broken in order to open migration doors from India to Australia.

Respondents in India and Australia confirmed that husbands from India routinely join their wives abroad. Likewise, if a marriage is arranged between a man from a non-Western country such as Malaysia and a woman from a Western country such as Australia, the man usually moves to the woman’s place. Sometimes marriages between two Western countries result in breaking the patrilocality rule, as Prianka of Sydney explains:

My parents and brothers and sisters are all here in Sydney. Only one of my brothers moved to the US after he got married to a Punjabi girl there. He wanted to move to the US anyway because he thought he could find a better job there. So when my parents looked for a spouse for him, they specifically looked in the US. They contacted distant relatives of ours and they knew of a family that was looking for a husband for their daughter. That’s how my brother met his wife.

In the case of Prianka’s brother, a marriage was used strategically to open a migration door to a more attractive country. The breaking of the rule of patrilocality is an indication of the ranking of countries because, according to Punjabi respondents, husbands will only move to their wives’ place of residence if she lives in a country that is regarded as more attractive. Increasing numbers of marriages are of an offshore character, bringing together two partners of different diasporic nodes rather than one partner from India. Given their global diaspora, Punjabis are well positioned to


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arrange strategic transnational marriages with a view to opening migration routes. Some Punjabi families interviewed for this study have gradually relocated their mem-bers upward in the hierarchy of places, for example from Southeast Asia to Australia and later from Australia to the United States.

Another indication of the ranking of countries becomes apparent in marriage arrangement processes. This relates to the fact that the part of the family in the more highly ranked country can generally make more demands during marriage nego-tiations. Punjabi respondents in India agreed that a dowry paid for a daughter’s wedding to a Punjabi settled in the United States is, other conditions being equal, on average higher than that paid to an Australian Punjabi.

Countries change their rank over time (Voigt-Graf 2002: 117). While the United Kingdom was once the most popular settlement country, the United States has taken this rank, closely followed by Canada and, with a larger gap, by Australia. Punjabis are similar to Kannadiga respondents in India, most of whom also only consider Canada, the United States and Australia as potential resettlement countries. Non-English-speaking countries are rarely taken into account. The United Kingdom has ceased to be a favourite place of permanent settlement and most Indians are aware of past and present problems with racism in the UK. Instead, the multicultural societies of Canada, Australia and the United States appear most attractive. The United States is regarded as offering the best career opportunities where success is based on individual merit. In Australia, by comparison, migrant economic mobility is seen as somehow restricted. Canada is widely known as offering a higher living standard than Australia and visa procedures for skilled migrants are quicker and family sponsorship schemes more generous. Canada often serves as a stepping-stone to the United States. On the other hand, Australia’s climate is viewed as an advantage. Australia is geographically closer to India and cricket presents a major bond between the two Commonwealth nations, contributing to Australia’s popularity in the subcontinent and providing an important cultural link between Indian-Australians and Anglo-Australians.

In short, the Punjabi diaspora is a transnational community that is spread globally (see Figure 3). The direction of migration flows in Figure 3 suggests a hierarchical order of the nodes. The migration flow from Southeast Asia to Australia, without a migration flow in the opposite direction, for instance, indicates that Australia is a more popular settlement country than Malaysia or Singapore.

Transnational spaces of Kannadigas

The younger Kannadiga transnational community is a rather different case in a number of respects (Voigt-Graf 2002: 159–72). Migration from Karnataka is a product of the current age of globalization and is closely linked to the emergence of Bangalore as a high-tech city. Their urban professional background, with a leaning towards the new economy and the IT sector, has made Kannadiga migrants look for places where their skills are more highly valued than in India. Many work as engineers and IT specialists. Being motivated by economic opportunities wherever they emerge, their movements lead them mostly to global cities such as Sydney. At the turn of the millennium about 4000 Kannadigas lived in Australia, at least 1500 of them in Sydney. The vast majority were born in India, migrating to Australia along more or less direct routes (Figure 4).

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Figure 3: A model of the Punjabi transnational community

Cultural hearth of diaspora Migration flow

Node of diaspora Transnational space

Interviews with Kannadiga migrants in Australia and discussions with community leaders revealed that, with the bulk of their relatives remaining in South India, a considerable number of Kannadigas regard their stay in Australia as temporary. As wages and opportunities have improved in Karnataka, a growing number have already returned to embark on a career there in proximity to their extended families. Others have moved from Australia to the United States where job opportunities for pro-fessionals are considered to be the best in the world. Some Kannadigas also work temporarily in the United Kingdom and other European countries while less qualified Kannadigas sell their manual labour temporarily in the Middle East. Kannadigas resemble Punjabis in that the United States is their ultimate destination of their dreams. However, whereas Punjabis generally aim at permanently settling there and at sponsoring the relocation of other family members, many Kannadiga families remain transient regardless of their country of settlement.

Kannadiga migration is much more selective in terms of age and qualifications than Punjabi and Indo-Fijian migration. It comprises mostly young couples or families or unmarried men, who later sponsor the migration of their South Indian spouses. Few marriages of Australian Kannadigas are arranged with spouses living in other diasporic nodes. Coming from a region where there is little tradition of migration, most Kannadigas harbour a great fear of cultural loss in the diaspora – an issue that was brought up in most interviews in Australia and India. Paradoxically, Kannadigas are parochial metropolitans whose skills are sought after in global cities but who remain culturally encapsulated and conservative. Their migration may become more permanent over time, just as sojourning Punjabis in the nineteenth century also turned into permanent settlers over time. However, Kannadiga migrants

United Kingdom North America

Punjab

East Africa

Australia

Southeast Asia


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are a product of a very different era – the age of instant communication – and it is likely that they will follow a different path.

To sum up, Kannadigas are a transient global city diaspora that have passed through various nodes of the global economy (Figure 4). Their transnational activities link them back to Karnataka without having reached the quality of networks. Moving around in nuclear family units while their other relatives remain in South India makes them flexible enough to relocate to places where opportunities are more attractive. A decision to migrate from Australia to North America therefore does not change their kinship networks as much as is the case for some Punjabi families who, when leaving Australia, also leave behind many relatives settled in Australia.

Figure 4: A model of the Kannadiga transnational community



Transnational spaces of Indo-Fijians

At around the same time that Punjabi pioneers started arriving in Australia, Indians from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu were brought to Fiji as indentured labourers for the colonial economy (Lal 1998). The circumstances of their relocation

United Kingdom / Europe

Australia (Sydney)

United States (Silicon Valley)

Karnataka (Bangalore)

Middle East

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were such that most of them lost all personal links to their kin in India on the day they embarked on their ship voyage. India lived on in their memories but was of little practical relevance in their day-to-day lives (Voigt-Graf 2003). Free migrants from Gujarat who came to Fiji as traders on the other hand have always kept contacts to their kin in Gujarat. Due to the lack of personal ties, Indo-Fijians of indentured origin nowadays visit India as tourists or on organized temple tours. These visits have rarely resulted in any meaningful re-linking, instead simply satisfying a desire to see the place from where their ancestors came. Indeed, according to the interviews, the experiences of some Indo-Fijians during their visits to India have reaffirmed their sense of estrangement.

Similarly, the encounter of Indo-Fijians and Indian Indians in Sydney confirms that Indo-Fijians are too far removed in time and space to link back into the networks of Indian Indians (Voigt-Graf 2002: 241–50). After several generations in the Pacific, Indo-Fijian culture has changed as a result of its contact with other cultures. Most Indians regard their authentic culture as being based on the classical arts and religious orthodoxy with which Indo-Fijians are all but out of touch.

Postcolonial politics and economics have turned Fiji into the most problematic node of the Indian diaspora at present (Bedford 1989; Lal 1990; Voigt-Graf 2003). As a consequence, many families have undertaken a secondary migration to the metro-politan countries of the Pacific Rim, the number of emigrants sharply rising in the wake of the 1987 military coups in Fiji. Australia hosts the largest overseas community of Indo-Fijians, estimated at 40,000 at the turn of the millennium (Voigt-Graf 2003). Following their secondary migration, Fiji has emerged as an important marker of Indo-Fijian self-perceptions and identity and many Indo-Fijians reported a strong homing desire for Fiji. This is typical of a community that perceives itself as being in exile with no possibility of return. Their nostalgia for Fiji has contributed to the emergence of their sense of being one community that transcends religious, linguistic and other differences.

Meanwhile, Indo-Fijians have established a permanent presence in Australia and they have little intention to leave their new home. In contrast with Punjabis, whose main aim is progressively to relocate their extended families in more attractive places of residence, and with Kannadigas, who move through global cities in order to sell their skills more expensively, Indo-Fijians aim at progressively relocating as a community to safe places close to Fiji, Australia being their preferred destination.

Indo-Fijians in Fiji are part of the Indian diaspora in the sense that they are connected to a vague notion of India through their sentiments and memories and as the original source of their culture while they have few personal ties to the subcontinent. Instead of moving back to India they established nodes in the Pacific Rim. They have evolved as a Pacific transnational community including Australia, New Zealand, North America and Fiji based on their kinship networks (Figure 5). In cases where a family has no close relatives left in Fiji, Fiji ceases to be a node in the kinship networks. In conclusion, an Indo-Fijian transnational community has emerged with Fiji as the new centre while India is largely irrelevant due to the absence of kinship ties.


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Figure 5: A model of the Indo-Fijian transnational community



In the next section, generalized cartographic models of transnational spaces are developed based on the analysis of the three Indian communities discussed above.

A geography of transnationalism

Models of transnational spaces

For the purposes of developing models of transnational spaces, the type and intensity of the flows are secondary. Rather, the focus is on the spatial dimensions of transnational activities. The spatial models presented here should not be inter-preted as a rigid and functionalist framework or some kind of necessary historical sequence. Individuals create the transnational spaces and they always remain dynamic. It remains open how the geography of transnationalism evolves over time. Some transnational spaces discontinue altogether after some time. In others, new nodes are added by virtue of migration to new places while other nodes are cut off.

North America India

New Zealand Australia

Fiji

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Transnational links between diasporic nodes that used to be only linked to the cultural hearth can develop by virtue of families dispersed in several nodes. As such, the primary characteristic of transnational spaces is that they are dynamic. The com-parison of three Indian communities seems to suggest that transnational spaces tend to become more complex over time. The transnational space constructed by Punjabis for instance includes a larger number of nodes and more complex migration and trans-national flows than the transnational space constructed by Kannadigas. It is likely that time has played a role in this increasing complexity.

The models developed below are based on reflecting on the Indian case studies analysed above, supplemented by reflections on the Indian diaspora in East Africa (Voigt-Graf 1998) and elsewhere. The models were developed in a gradual process in which they were constantly tested against new evidence arising from the empirical fieldwork findings. Political borders are disregarded in the models despite the impor-tant role of nation-states in regulating people’s movements and imposing regulations affecting transnational flows. At this stage, this is justified because territorial boun-daries can change over time and because the nodes of transnational networks do not always coincide with territorial boundaries. On the basis of these simplified models, more complex spatial models can be developed that take political boundaries into account.

Generally speaking, transnational spaces are created when migrants remain substantively connected to their cultural hearth (Figure 6). In the initial stages of the formation of transnational spaces, it is likely that transnational flows are established only between each particular node and the cultural hearth. This was the case with nineteenth-century Punjabis in Australia who were linked back to Punjab but not to the other nodes of what was a global diaspora. It is to an extent the case with Kannadigas today, most of whom are linked to South India while few links have emerged between, for instance, Kannadigas in Australia and Kannadigas in the United States.

Figure 6: Transnational spaces after initial migration and transnational links to cultural hearth

Cultural hearth Diasporic Node Migration flow

Transnational flow


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Often, the migrant population gradually increases in number in the diasporic nodes and subsequent migration flows may lead to a situation where kin are dispersed in various diasporic nodes. Transnational networks are then established that link not only the cultural hearth to each of the diasporic nodes but also the nodes with each other by visits, remittances, marriages and other flows (Figure 7). This is the present situation of the Punjabi transnational community. Links between two diasporic nodes may be termed offshore links.

Figure 7: Transnational spaces linking cultural hearth and diasporic nodes

Often there is a hierarchy of nodes in terms of the extent of the diasporic population in the nodes as well as in terms of their popularity. The hierarchical order is most obvious when analysing migration flows. Flows to more popular nodes are larger than flows in the opposite direction. In the Punjabi case, secondary migrations are undertaken, for example from Singapore to Australia or from Australia to the United States but rarely in the opposite direction. Some individuals and families move progressively upwards in the hierarchy of nodes (Figure 8, note the one-way migration flow between the diasporic nodes). The Punjabi situation also shows that the geometry of the networks can change over time. While the United Kingdom was the most popular destination country until the 1960s, it has since been perceived as less popular than the United States, Canada and Australia.

Another scenario is for a transnational community to emerge despite the non-existence of transnational links to the cultural hearth. This can happen, as the Indo-Fijian case illustrates, as a result of secondary migration and the former diasporic node taking the role of a new centre for the emerging transnational community. The nodes of this transnational community are then organized around the new centre in a similar way as the nodes of other transnational communities are organized around the cultural hearth (Figure 9). The cultural hearth as the original source of the culture retains a symbolic importance while having no relevance in day-to-day transnational activities. The situation of Indo-Fijians is similar to that of other twice-migrant groups of Indian-indentured origin, such as Indo-Trinidadians and Indo-Guyanese.


Transnational flow

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Figure 8: Transnational spaces linking cultural hearth and diasporic nodes with a hierarchical order4

Figure 9: Transnational spaces around a new centre and excluding the cultural hearth

The case is again different for twice migrant groups that have never lost their kinship ties to the cultural hearth, such as Gujaratis in Fiji. Following their secondary migration, their transnational spaces include both the cultural hearth and the new centre. Gujaratis who left Fiji and settled in Australia and New Zealand are linked to India and Fiji and possibly to other diasporic nodes (Figure 10). The case is similar to that of Indians in East Africa, the majority of whom are Gujaratis. Many East African Indians have transferred part of their economic assets to safer havens in Western and Middle Eastern countries (Voigt-Graf 1998: 117–19). When they left East Africa in substantial numbers, they mostly resettled in the United Kingdom. East African Indians in the UK are linked by kinship and daily transnational activities to Gujarat and to East Africa.


Transnational flow

Cultural hearth Diasporic Node New Centre Migration flow

Transnational flow


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Figure 10: Transnational spaces including the cultural hearth and a new centre

Yet another scenario emerges when twice migrants undertake a third migration, bringing another country into their transnational spaces. Some East African Indians in the United Kingdom have undertaken a third migration to the United States, Canada and Australia, without losing their kinship links to India, East Africa and the UK (Figure 11).

Figure 11: Transnational spaces following a third migration

Cultural hearth Diasporic Node New Centre Migration flow

Transnational flow

Cultural hearth Migration flow Diasporic Node Transnational flow New Centre

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The scenario presented in Figure 9 could be complicated further since some migrants have directly migrated from the cultural hearth to the destination countries of the third migration. Some Gujaratis for example have migrated to Australia from Gujarat, others are twice migrants who have arrived from Fiji and East Africa and yet others came to Australia in a third migration via East Africa and the United Kingdom.

So far the possibility of transnational communities being organized around a cultural hearth or a new centre and several diasporic nodes has been considered. In these cases, it can be assumed that the cultural hearth or new centre has a special role that differs from the role of the diasporic nodes. The new centre usually has a bigger population base and better-established cultural and religious institutions and is the place that many migrants remember sentimentally. It is therefore likely that the transnational flows to and from the cultural hearth or new centre are more substantial than those between diasporic nodes.

In the scenario of a transnational space being constructed between a new centre and diasporic nodes, it is possible that the relevance and special role of the new centre gradually diminishes, given that it is not the original cultural hearth. This is a possibility in relation to future developments within the Indo-Fijian transnational community. With a growing number of second- and third-generation Indo-Fijians in Australia and New Zealand, who have never lived in Fiji, it is possible that Fiji will ultimately be remembered as a country in which the family lived for some gener-ations. Not being the cultural hearth, however, it might not retain a symbolic relevance, which India will always retain. In this sense, a transnational community would emerge incorporating several diasporic nodes, one of which is Fiji (Figure 12). The only difference between what used to be the new centre and the other nodes is that it is unlikely that migration flows will be directed back to what was the centre.

Figure 12: Transnational spaces following a secondary migration without a new centre

Another important implication of having studied three communities under the umbrella of the Indian diaspora is that the paths of the three communities cross in some diasporic nodes such as Australia but their transnational networks are not interconnected. They are agents in distinct networks. Since, in the Indian case, the


Transnational flow


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underlying principle of transnational networks is kinship and Punjabis, Kannadigas and Indo-Fijians are not related to each other, their respective transnational networks exist side-by-side without merging into more comprehensive networks.

The representativeness of the spatial models

The spatial models developed above are based on the case of the Indian diaspora. While a final evaluation of their representativeness will have to await future com-parative research, some comments on the models’ typicality can be made. Given the historical depth and diversity that exists under the umbrella of the Indian diaspora, it is not surprising that Indian migrants and their kin have constructed a variety of different transnational spaces. With some exceptions, such as the Chinese and Jewish diasporas, it cannot be expected that many other migrant communities have estab-lished such a diversity of transnational spaces. However, the experiences of other communities are likely to fit one or the other of the above models. For instance, the model of the initial stage of transnational spaces in which diasporic nodes are connected to the cultural hearth but not to each other is transferable to other migrant groups that have predominantly migrated to only one country, such as Mexican migrants in the United States (see Figure 6). Similarly, the model where diasporic nodes are also connected to each other fits the case of other diaspora communities, such as overseas Chinese, Jews in the diaspora and many Pacific Islander com-munities in the Pacific Rim countries (see Figures 7 and 8).

Whether or not the more complex models developed on the basis of the Indian diaspora are transferable to other diasporic communities has to be determined by future research. As the case of Indo-Fijians shows, the emotional and cultural attachment of the Indian diaspora to India lives on even in the third generation and beyond. As a consequence, it is likely that a separate cultural identity is preserved for several generations and that a diaspora continues to exist without assimilating into the mainstream culture. Since not all diasporas display such a strong and long lasting attachment to their cultural hearth, the models’ comparability may be limited. Another Indian peculiarity is that the majority of Indian families who have undertaken a second or third migration have moved to industrialized countries while few have returned to India. The historical depth of the diaspora, the continued existence of the diaspora after several generations and the undertaking of a second or third migration to other diasporic nodes lie at the root of the complex models of transnational spaces developed above (see Figures 9 to 12). Comparative research will have to determine whether these complex models are applicable to other transnational communities or whether the Indian case is special.

The question of scale

Individuals and families in the cultural hearth and the diasporic nodes are the most important agents of migrant transnational activities. Diasporic nodes are established when migration occurs from the ancestral homeland and is sustained over a long enough period to allow migrants to establish themselves as a permanent community. Given the presence of a disproportionate share of the world’s migrants and given their

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role as important transport and communication hubs and as articulated moments in the networks of economic organization, global cities are important nodes in diasporic networks and are the sites where migrant transnational activities are most accentuated. Some migrant groups, like Kannadigas, hardly move beyond global cities. Kannadigas and Indo-Fijians in Australia are concentrated in the urban centres and above all in Sydney, whereas the Australian node of the Punjabi diaspora has both urban and rural areas. In the Punjabi case, New South Wales or Australia would be more appropriate scales to delimit their diasporic node. A diasporic node can therefore be a city, a region within a state, or an entire nation-state, and its geographical extent may change over time. Similarly, the cultural hearth can be a nation-state, especially in cases of relatively small and culturally homogeneous nation-states. In the case of India-direct migrants, the state level – Punjab and Karnataka – is the most appropriate scale to define the respective cultural hearths of the Kannadiga and Punjabi transnational com-munities because they have developed a sense of community based on state origin. India as a whole is the cultural hearth only for Indo-Fijians, who were drawn from various regions of the subcontinent and often retain only vague memories of the place from where their ancestors came. Likewise, the country of Fiji as a whole is the new centre of the Indo-Fijian transnational community because Indo-Fijians have not formed regionally specific sub-communities.

In other words, the cultural hearth, as well as the diasporic nodes, can refer to different geographic scales. The scale can change over time. For instance, migrants might initially concentrate in a particular town or global city, which would then be the appropriate scale to delimit the diasporic node at this point in time. Over time, they might spread out to other regions of the country, so that the diasporic node increases in geographic extent to include other towns, regions or even an entire nation-state. It is one of the most important properties of nodes, as of transnational spaces in general, that they are dynamic. The boundaries of the nodes are constantly reshaped through the agency of people.

The social and the spatial in migrant transnationalism

Transnational spaces are constructed through the agency of migrants and their kin. In turn, transnational spaces affect people’s lives. Distance is important. Social relations between members of a transnational community in two neighbouring countries tend to be closer than between those living in different continents. However, the relativity of distance means that transnational links are not stronger between Australia and Fiji than between Australia and India, even though the former are closer. Other factors have to be considered including access to technologies, economic means of migrants and their kin, and the need for particular kinds of contacts. Thus, relative distance within transnational spaces shapes social relations.

Another example illustrating how transnational spaces shape social relations is the manner in which differences in rank within the hierarchy of diasporic nodes translate into power differences between people who are associated with these nodes. In marriage negotiations within the Punjabi community, for example, North American Punjabis are more likely to have the upper hand and be able to make more demands than Australian Punjabis because North America ranks above Australia in the


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hierarchy of nodes. An Indian bride in North America can expect her husband to move to her place of residence rather than having her settle at or near her husband’s family’s residence. This shows that Massey’s concept of power geometry (Massey 1993), whereby the power of individuals is dependent on their place in relation to flows and networks, is transferable to transnational spaces.

These few examples demonstrate that the social and the spatial must be considered together in the study of transnational phenomena. Geographers have long insisted on a socio-spatial dialectic according to which space is socially constructed and in turn shapes social relations (Soja 1989). This also provides an answer to Vertovec’s question as to ‘what, by way of spatial metaphors, can be applied to data to suggest patterns of relationship’ (2001: 26–7).

Conclusion and challenges for further research

Studies of transnationalism make the important claim that migrants’ lives must be understood in terms of a transnational, not national or even bi-national, frame. The Indian population in Australia or anywhere else has to be conceived as part of a collection of dispersed but connected migrant communities. This means that in order to understand what happens to Punjabis in Australia, it is important to consider not only the situation in Punjab and Australia but also in California, Southeast Asia and British Columbia. While a transnational perspective is needed to study migration and migrant adaptation adequately, this research suggests that an understanding of the spatial dimension of transnationalism provides an important tool for comparing different communities and for developing a typology of transnational spaces.

In this article, different types of transnational spaces were identified using the sociological network concept. They were based on the analysis of the transnational spaces created by Punjabis, Kannadigas and Indo-Fijians. The three case studies were carefully chosen to expose a wide variety of experiences under the umbrella of the wider Indian diaspora. Punjabi transnational spaces have had 150 years to evolve into today’s complex networks. The transnational spaces of Kannadigas are a recent phenomenon, consisting primarily of bilateral links between global cities in the developed world and South India. Being a twice-migrant group, the transnational spaces of Indo-Fijians are again organized very differently.

The main characteristic of transnational spaces is that they are dynamic. A node, for instance, can increase its importance in the transnational networks of a particular migrant community if the community increases in number or wealth, both of which will result in increased links between this particular node and other nodes. A node can cease to exist when most members of the transnational community have left or when they are no longer engaged in transnational activities. Nodes are ranked in a hierarchy of popu-larity with nodes changing their rank over time. Moreover, nodes can refer to different geographical scales and have to be defined for each transnational community. It is impossible to suggest a historical sequence of how transnational spaces develop over time.

The findings of this research highlight the need for further research on a number of issues. Generally, while the representativeness of the models was discussed above, comparative studies are needed to determine which models are applicable to specific transnational communities and possibly to add further models to the typology. Some

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specific issues also require further research. First, while transnationalism primarily emphasizes geography and the spatial dimension of networks and nodes, the importance of the time factor in shaping these spaces should not be underestimated. There is no historical determinism as to how networks evolve over time. The only certain assumption is that most transnational spaces start off with two-country flows between the cultural hearth and a diasporic node. However, more empirical studies might reveal common patterns of how the geography of transnational spaces evolves and changes over time. It is likely that the complexity of transnational spaces will increase over time and that for instance the two-country transnational spaces of Kannadigas will increasingly evolve into networks linking several diasporic nodes. Transnational communities with a long history of migration to various nodes and including direct and twice migrants such as overseas Indians, overseas Chinese and Jews in the diaspora are particularly well suited for the study of the changing geographical dimensions of transnational spaces. The typology suggested in this article may be used to compare and contrast the transnational spaces constructed by different communities as well as by one community at different points in time.

Second, most studies of transnational communities have been undertaken in a con-text in which migration is ongoing. Comparative research on declining nodes (such as Fiji for the Indian diaspora) where immigration ceased long ago and where emigration outweighs immigration is required to determine common patterns of transnationalism under such circumstances. The question may be addressed whether and under what circumstances such long-established diasporas have included the cultural hearth in their transnational spaces. The transnational experiences of Lebanese communities in West Africa or Chinese communities in Southeast Asia might help answer some questions about this particular transnational experience.

Third, with an increasing complexity in migration biographies and with the trans-national spread of some families, research on migrant transnationalism between two diasporic nodes seems particularly promising. Rather than looking at the transnational spaces constructed by Indians between India and Australia, research could focus on the transnational spaces constructed by Indians between New Zealand and Australia.

The typology of transnational spaces is seen as a preliminary move in the direction of a more theoretical approach that will have to be attentive of debates on social space and will explore the links between transnational spaces and theoretical debates on social space. Space is increasingly understood as a ‘space of flows’ in which places are interconnected and shaped by external links. The argument presented here moves beyond the spatial metaphors that abound in the transnationalism literature and adds some substance to them by providing empirical examples. According to the socio-spatial dialectic, migrants and their kin construct transnational spaces. In turn, these spaces rebound back on social relations between migrants. The socio-spatial dialectic is apparent in the power differential of families in the diaspora depending on their place of residence. The concepts of the socio-spatial dialectic and of ‘space of flows’ may be explored further in the context of transnational spaces.

Carmen Voigt-Graf is at the Australian Centre for Population Research, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.


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Acknowledgements

This article is based on findings of a Ph.D. research project undertaken at the University of Sydney. I would like to express my gratitude to my two supervisors Eric Waddell and John Connell for guiding me in this research and to the two anonymous referees and the editor whose comments on an earlier draft were extremely helpful in finalizing this article. I would also like to thank my newborn baby girl Sarah Malaika for allowing me the occasional hour to finalize this article.

Notes

1. Bhachu (1985), who was referring to East African Sikh migrants in the United Kingdom, coined the term ‘twice migrant’. It does not imply that individual members of the community have undertaken two migrations in their lifetime. The secondary migration can occur a few generations after the first.

2. Sydney was the main field site in Australia. Since an exclusive focus on Sydney would have overlooked the experiences of the old Punjabi communities who continue to live in rural Australia, interviews were also conducted in the small town of Woolgoolga in northern New South Wales where many Punjabis work as banana farmers.

3. In contrast to relativist understandings of space, absolutist concepts of space assume a dualism between space and social life in which space is a contextual background condition that is independent of social actions and relations (Faist forthcoming).

4. The hierarchical order in this and in subsequent models is evident from the one-way migration flow between the diasporic nodes. A one-way migration flow from ‘A’ to ‘B’ means that ‘B’ is more popular than ‘A’. Transnational flows on the other hand are generally two-way. They do not indicate ranking.

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Towards a geography of transnational spaces: Indian transnational communities in Australia

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