An Upheaval Down Under: Making Sense of the Self During the Attacks Against Indian Students in Melbourne, 2009
Abstrakt
In the contemporary world characterised by increased movement questions surrounding the issues of migration, displacement and the rise of transnational communities have been ascribed great significance. This study takes a similar direction as it attempts to deepen the existing anthropological knowledge of transmigrants' understandings of the self and the individual experiences of migration.
The focus of this paper lies on a community of transmigrants of prevailingly Indian origin, who came to Melbourne, Australia on overseas student visas in order to pursue a university education and settle down in this new place. This study examines the negotiations of both public and private identities of these young skilled transmigrants during the attacks against the Indian students in Australia in 2009 (pejoratively referred to as 'curry bashing').
Even though none of these transmigrants were directly subjected to acts of violence, I suggest that these events challenged their comprehensions of their selves. Three different perspectives of this event constitute the main interest of this paper: individual struggles of identity of young transmigrants within the context of acts of violence and xenophobia against their countrymen, the analysis of the event in its relation to media (which played a crucial role in the processes of disseminating the fear), and the further representation of this event in terms of India's pop culture using the example of the Bollywood film Crook (2010).