Introduction
Identity research has been of interest in the social sciences for a long time but has been studied mostly in terms of relatively stable group categories such as social class, gender, ethnicity, religion, and so on (Edwards Reference Edwards2009). It has become a more complex issue in recent years, however, mainly because of the ‘mobility and diversity that has arisen in the social worlds of the physical and digital due to the processes of globalization in late modernity’ (Preece Reference Preece2016:3). In fact, ‘the complexity embedded in identities in mobility… is unprecedented in its scale, multiplicity, and inherent contradictions [and]… people on the move have made it a prerequisite to see this level of complexity as the norm rather than an exception’ (Zhu Hua Reference Hua and Canagarajah2017:120). In this article, I contribute to the studies of identities-in-mobility, focusing on the diasporic identities of Sri Lankan Tamils (SLT), people with a long and changing history of migration.
Spatial images have traditionally defined many early works on identity and migration. Old certainties, such that there is an immutable link between cultures, people, or identities and specific places, still influence modern governing concepts of nations and cultures (Lavie & Swedenburg Reference Lavie and Swedenburg2001:1), but they need to be recognized as being essentialist, requiring ‘re-theorizations about the concepts of space and place and their relations with identities’ (De Fina Reference De Fina2016:165). In most applied linguistics research, the concepts of place and space are often conflated, but de Certeau (Reference de Certeau and Rendall1984) considers that there is an important difference between the two; a place is the result of physical considerations and institutional orders, while space is the ongoing construction of human activity and practices (Higgins Reference Higgins and Canagarajah2017:102–103). In other words, ‘space is a practiced place’ (de Certeau Reference de Certeau and Rendall1984:117). Higgins (Reference Higgins and Canagarajah2017:102) points out that this view has important implications for the study of migration and language because it questions the static view of spaces as inherently associated with languages and emphasises the need to study how spaces are produced through the intersection of human activity, ethnicities, religions, genders, and languages.
Such a dynamic interpretation of space is compatible with the recent shift of how identity is being conceptualised, with many studies currently adopting a social constructivist perspective, conceiving identity as being a discursive performance, constructed and negotiated through language interactions (Antaki & Widdicombe Reference Antaki and Widdicombe1998; De Fina, Schiffrin, & Bamberg Reference De Fina, Schiffrin, Bamberg, Fina, Schiffrin and Bamberg2006; Zhu Hua Reference Hua and Canagarajah2017:117). An approach to analysing identities-in-mobility that combines these two theorisations of space and identity allows us to examine how highly mobile populations such as the SLTs experience space—specifically, how they conceive of home-land and host-land spaces through language. This view thus eschews the idea that there is a territorial basis for diasporic identities and is compatible with the SLT diasporic condition.
The civil war in Sri Lanka led to the forcible mass migration of SLTs causing the formation of a diaspora of around one million people (Fuglerud Reference Fuglerud1999; Venugopal Reference Venugopal, FitzGerald, Stewart and Venugopal2006; David Reference David2012:377; Orjuela Reference Orjuela, Lyons and Mandaville2012). Issues of resettlement, relocation, and dislocation continue to feature powerfully in their lives. My ethnographic research carried out with SLTs in London tries to understand how their experiences have impacted on their identities, bearing in mind that many of them have had to relocate to multiple new homes as a part of their migration process.
In this article, I begin with a brief overview of the SLT migratory patterns to the UK, followed by a discussion of how the new focus on identities-in-mobility feeds into the wider debate surrounding how space and territory have been conceptualised within various definitions of diaspora. I also briefly describe how I carried out my fieldwork, before analysing the multi-layered ways in which the SLT diaspora in London identify with the notions of home-land and host-land. Crucially, I aim to show how home-land and host-land experiences, diasporic identities, and language practices shape one another and how their dynamic interaction brings new language ideologies and identities to the fore. By using such a theoretic lens, I hope to be able to denaturalise the stereotypical associations between a home-land or host-land, a particular population, and the languages they use (Rosa & Trivedi Reference Rosa, Trivedi and Canagarajah2017:332).
The Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora
SLTs have been migrating from Sri Lanka since the mid 1950s. Soon after Sri Lanka gained independence from the British in 1948, tensions between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority on the island began to grow. This led to the first wave of migration of SLTs to Britain, especially after 1956 when Sinhala was made the official language of Sri Lanka, a move that was opposed by the Tamil-speaking minority (David Reference David2012:376–77). These new settlers in Britain were high-caste student and professional migrants with proficient linguistic skills who came to take up university places or practice as doctors, accountants, or lawyers. However, migration to Britain in the late 1960s and early 1970s began to increase as discrimination against Tamils intensified, gradually leading to an established SLT community in Greater London. The 1977 riots in Sri Lanka contributed to the growing number of young men fleeing the country, but as their English-speaking skills and educational qualifications were not as advanced as their predecessors, they were not able to gain employment in Britain as easily (David Reference David2012:376–77). Overall, migration to the West was seen to be mostly voluntary pre-1983 and was due to the experience of institutionalised discrimination and denial of educational and professional opportunities in Sri Lanka, as a result of being ethnically Tamil (Daniel & Thangaraj Reference Daniel, Thangaraj, Valentine Daniel and Knudsen1995:241).
The most large-scale exodus of Tamils from Sri Lanka, however, was triggered by the onset of the civil war beginning in 1983. By then, the ethnic tensions between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority had escalated leading to the formation of the LTTE—the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (broadly known as the Tamil Tigers), who began a guerrilla campaign to try and achieve an independent Tamil state known as Tamil Eelam. The civil war lasted for more than a quarter of a century, ending in May 2009 when the Sri Lankan government armed forces declared the defeat of the Tamil Tigers (Canagarajah Reference Canagarajah2008:146; David Reference David2012:377). But ‘the grievances that led to this conflict remain unresolved, and Tamils continue to leave the country’ (Canagarajah Reference Canagarajah2013:133).
During the forced migration period between 1983–1991, approximately 200,000 SLTs fled to Western Europe, including 17,000 to Britain (McDowell Reference McDowell1996). More recently it has been estimated that the SLT community in the UK numbers around 180,000 (International Crisis Group 2010; Orjuela Reference Orjuela, Lyons and Mandaville2012). But, as Britain's immigration laws became gradually stricter, there were changes to SLT migration patterns. There seems to have been a decline in asylum migration but an increase in the regrouping and relocating of family groups, particularly of SLTs from Europe to Britain (David Reference David2012:377–78). This has been mainly motivated by the desire of SLT parents in Europe to give their children an English language education. The support of a well-established, significant British-based Tamil community, as well as the introduction of UK's ‘open-borders’ policy to the EU in 2004, further facilitated this ‘secondary’ migration (David Reference David2012:377–78).
The SLTs in the UK are thus socially diverse, with professionals long established in the UK, refugees, and secondary migrants from Europe all intermingled within the British diaspora. They are divided by differences of caste, class, village of origin, education, religion, date of migration, reason for migration, legal status in the countries of destination, and so on (Burgio Reference Burgio2016:113). In terms of language, the community's social diversity is reflected inter alia in standard British, educated Sri Lankan English, vernacular London English, and second language learner styles, with the advent of adults and children from mainland Europe introducing languages like Dutch, French, and German as well. Tamil varieties such as Jaffna Tamil, Colombo Tamil, and Batticaloa Tamil are well recognized by first-generation migrants, whereas their children speak Tamil varieties that are more hybrid (Canagarajah Reference Canagarajah2013).
Given that the social positioning and communicative repertoires of British SLTs are complex, dynamic, and unevenly spread across generations and migration histories, it seems a very apposite group for the investigation of diasporic identities in increasing conditions of superdiversity (Blommaert & Rampton Reference Blommaert and Rampton2011:14). However, so far there has been very little research on the sociolinguistic practices and language attitudes that emerge here.
The conception of space and territory in the theorization of diasporic identities
Political scientist William Safran (Reference Safran1991:83–84) offers a definition of diaspora where they or their ancestors have been dispersed from a specific original ‘centre’ to foreign regions. In other words, diasporas are comprised of migrants and their descendants who share a common history or collective memory of an actual or mythological home-land to which they aspire to return, due to discrimination and persecution experienced in the host society. They share a commitment to the maintenance/restoration of their home-land and their continued ties to this home-land contributes to an ethnocommunal consciousness amongst them. Safran'sFootnote 1 definition thus importantly links diasporas to the home-land as well as to host-lands, emphasising the diaspora's relationship to particular territories. This definition, however, has been criticised for essentialising identities as placeFootnote 2-bounded, encouraging conceptions of exclusivist and homogeneous communities, which neglects to take into account ambivalences about return and attachment to the land, as well as hybridities (Clifford Reference Clifford1997:247).
Alternative theorizations contextualise diaspora within postmodernity and argue for diaspora being a sociocultural process with a focus on identity formations. In this approach, diasporic identities can be fluid, hybrid, or ‘creolized’ (Hall Reference Hall and Rutherford1990; Clifford Reference Clifford1994; Gilroy Reference Gilroy and Woodward1997), emphasizing that diasporic identities go through a process of continual identification and differentiation (Hall Reference Hall and Rutherford1990; Gilroy Reference Gilroy1991; Clifford Reference Clifford1997). They are formed negatively through differentiation towards the countries of settlement and positively through identification with the home-lands, but these identities can be internally heterogeneous and divided along lines of class, gender, sexuality, age, and so on. Thus, each of these categories and each individual in the diaspora are said to negotiate their relationship to the majority of society differently (Hall Reference Hall and Rutherford1990:228; Alinia Reference Alinia2004:104) where, for instance, they ‘maintain identifications outside the national time/space in order to live inside, with a difference’ (Clifford Reference Clifford1997:251). Gilroy calls this double consciousness, which flows from ‘being both inside and outside the West’ (1991:4). He describes space as not being territorial, but that which is ‘beyond the imaginaryFootnote 3 of the nation, of the territory with frontiers’ (Gilroy Reference Gilroy, Braziel and Mannur2003:50). These theorizations of diasporic identity strongly oppose essentialist notions of culture and identity that naturalise the relations between identity and territory. Rather than considering identity to be a fixed essence as described in Safran's (Reference Safran1991) and Cohen's (Reference Cohen1997/2008) definitions, identity should perhaps be seen as a process of becoming, incorporating mobility and movement.
In this article, I use this latter definition of diasporic identity to explore the SLT diaspora's relationship to the home-land and host-land, demonstrating that it is necessarily complex and contradictory.
Fieldwork
Drawing from my own long-standing involvement in the SLT community, I carried out my fieldwork with participants who were mostly from the London boroughs of Harrow, Ealing, Redbridge, and Kingston-upon-Thames where there are concentrated Tamil populations. Participants were selected through snowball sampling, as many of the early participants belonged to my own family and friendship networks. It was possible for me to avoid ‘going native’Footnote 4 (Gold Reference Gold1958:220), however, as although I speak Tamil,Footnote 5 I am not a member of the SLT community.
My fieldwork was carried out within a two-year period, between October 2015–2017, where I carried out semistructured interviews and oral questionnaires in English and/or Tamil with forty-two participants. I also gave out audio recorders to selected participants to record themselves interacting in various contexts. In addition, I participated in and carried out ethnographic observations in various family, community, and university Tamil-society events.
Fieldwork participants represented a range of migration histories (as spouses, students, refugees, elderly parents; arriving solo or with family from Sri Lanka and Europe). They also varied in terms of their length of stay in the UK, that is, newcomers who had lived in the UK for less than ten years, first generation SLTs who had been living in the UK for at least twenty-five years, and second generation Tamils who had either been born in the UK or who had arrived as children.
During the semistructured interviews, I included topics such as biographies, aspirations, routines, beliefs, experiences as newcomers to the UK/Europe, language ideologies, and civil war experiences. The oral questionnaires involved asking participants about their language practices and linguistic repertoires in both face-to-face and mediated communication, their local and transnational networks, media preferences, as well as new media experiences.
The data thus included semistructured interviews, questionnaires, self-recorded data, and participant observation, but only the interview data was coded using the NVivo software programme according to the following broad themes: community inclusion and insecurity within the UK, the revivification of Sri Lankan experience and heritage, plans to sojourn or to settle, changes in economic position/class/caste status resulting from migration, and the different kinds of relationships that newcomers build with first, second, and third generation SLTs in Britain. In the following sections, I bring the fieldwork data into dialogue with potentially new ways of conceptualising home-land and host-land identities.
Home-land identities
The notion of home-land features in various definitions of diasporic identity. The following sections discuss how it is conceived by diasporic SLTs to reveal its multi-layered complexity.
Home-land: Tamil Eelam
For many, ‘home’ is Tamil Eelam; areas in the north and east of Sri Lanka that represent the imaginary and utopian Tamil home-land, the independent Tamil state that was the object of Tamil insurgency. Eelam was originally used to refer to a prehistoric Dravidian home-land, which, based on vague textual references and controversial archaeological evidence, is thought to date to the sixth century BCE, prior to Sinhalese-Buddhist migration from North India (Arudpragasam Reference Arudpragasam1996).
Sri Lankan Tamil nationalists argue that the remnants of Eelam's ancient glory lies in the purity of the Tamil language, which has been preserved in the northern Jaffna province from ancient times to the present (Das Reference Das2016:179–80). In their search for a realistic home-land with verifiable boundaries in the present day, the prosperous medieval Hindu Kingdom of Jaffna, demonstrating resilience in having survived multiple military assaults between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, admirably suited the purpose. SLT nationalist discourse thus began constructing a chronotope,Footnote 6 challenging scientific conceptions of time and space, linking the people and languages of prehistoric Eelam with medieval Jaffna, contemporary Jaffna, and the future sovereign territory of Eelam (Das Reference Das2016:179–80).
Due to the defeat of the LTTE in 2009, Eelam was never realized in geospatial terms, but wartime Sri Lanka had instead validated the existence of a sovereign Eelam state by arguing for the territory's antiquity and its inhabitants’ linguistic and racial purity (Das Reference Das2016:46). Many second-generation Tamils growing up in the West, who have never even visited Sri Lanka, hold on to this concept of ‘home’ (O'Neill Reference O'Neill2015:128). Cohen (Reference Cohen1997/2008) refers to this ‘home’ as an ‘imagined home-land’, a powerful conceptualization that has the potential to unite transnational Tamil diaspora living around the world and influences their linguistic, cultural, and political practices.
Below are extracts taken from the participant data, showing how some of my informants orient to Eelam as ‘home’. Ram (19yrs, male) and Girija (19yrs, female) were both born in France and moved to London when they were between ten and eleven years old. Avneet (26yrs, male) came to London from Sri Lanka when he was an infant. He and his cousin, Anush (24yrs, male), whom he talks about in extract (3) grew up together in the same London neighbourhood.
(1) It's the same goal… people still want Tamil Eelam (Ram)
(2) I always tell my mum like I would always (xxx).. I would only go back when Tamil Eelam has been established. I'm not going back. (Girija)
(3) Anush's team, I don't know if he told you about this, so he plays for a football team. They called (TET) Tamil Eelam Team and they play with the kit. Their kit is.. um so think of the map of Sri Lanka.. what is highlighted are the Tamil states. So like in the north they will have that and that is what is on their t-shirt. (Avneet)
The data above can be analysed using the notion of chronotope, which has been developed by Blommaert & De Fina (Reference Blommaert and De Fina2016) to better understand narratives of migration. It also links with Das's (Reference Das2016:179–80) chronotopic interpretation of SLT nationalist discourse (see above) in that it illustrates how SLT migrants navigate multiple spaces (Blommaert Reference Blommaert2016:2). Mobility reconfigures the participants’ views of Tamil Eelam, and we observe the shift between time—the past, present, and future—and between spaces—the home-land and host-land.
Home-land: Conta ür ‘ancestral village’
Daniel & Thangaraj (Reference Daniel, Thangaraj, Valentine Daniel and Knudsen1995:63, cited in Das Reference Das2016:147) posits that ‘one of the most important relationships to a Tamil is that which exists between a person and the soil of his ür’. To many Tamils, ‘home’ is that of their conta ür, loosely translated as ‘ancestral or native village’ (Daniel & Thangaraj Reference Daniel, Thangaraj, Valentine Daniel and Knudsen1995:63, cited in Das Reference Das2016:147), a place that is primordial and that was home to their ancestors (Daniel Reference Daniel1987:67).
The term ür is, in fact, a multivalent concept that can be defined as ‘a named territory that is (a) inhabited by human beings who are believed to share in the substance of the soil of that territory; and (b) a territory to which a Tamil cognitively orients himself at any given time’ (Daniel & Thangaraj Reference Daniel, Thangaraj, Valentine Daniel and Knudsen1995:63, cited in Das Reference Das2016:147). However, the ür's character is said to be determined not only by the soil's composition, but also by local caste hierarchies where ‘social relations of dominance are embedded in the spatial rendering of the ür’ (Das Reference Das2016:148). Going by the latter description, it follows that the ür is not just a spatioterritorial concept but also represents a ‘person-centric view of reality’ mediated by the material properties of both human and nonhuman inhabitants (Daniel Reference Daniel1987:70).
Thirangama (Reference Thiranagama2011), however, cautions against relying on too abstract notions of the ür (Das Reference Das2016:148) and recommends paying attention to ideas of ‘“home-town” in the context of practical life as an everyday language of love, affection, sentiment and memory’ (Thirangama Reference Thiranagama2011:19). She proposes that to the SLT diaspora, their conta ür represents a social and spatial identification that was their original ‘home’ where they grew up and enjoyed social relationships (Thiranagama Reference Thiranagama2011:8).
(4) But I'll miss that community relationship… which we had… was very extremely nice environment. Say like if you having a function… two weeks, three weeks before everyone started to come to our house… around two o'clock to three er- around two o'clock three o'clock.. the house started to get.. very.. you know loud sounds and everything because everyone comes and talk and they help each other, they start to make er snacks and that sort of things. So that kind of environment you are not going to have it here. So.. I miss that relationship. You know, you are having money here… I'm not denying that. Yes, you are getting whatever you want to get but you are not getting the love. (Sinthu)
Sinthu (46yrs, female) arrived in London when she was twenty-one years old as an asylum seeker. Her conception of home in (4) and (5) is also in a sense ‘imagined’ in that it conjures up a feeling of nostalgia for a time when home was experienced through occasions of familial conviviality.
(5) But still now in our village no one is there, everyone is displaced. Everyone is displaced. So if they can put the same situation back, if they can bring all my cousins back.. exactly the same and if you ask me whether I want to stay here or go back.. no question. I'll be back.. I will go back. Because the lo- happiness I had.. I'm feeling very sorry for my children, they are not having it. (Sinthu)
According to Hall (Reference Hall and Rutherford1990:236), sentiments such as Sinthu's recreate ‘the endless desire to return to “lost origins”, to be one again with the mother, to go back to the beginning’ and is a recurrent way of reaffirming identity and a sense of belonging. It mobilises the fact of being ‘home-less’ to garner the idea of community (Alinia Reference Alinia2004:119). Participants referring to this concept of ‘home’ are aware that neither they nor their children are ever likely to visit or experience their conta ür again because it has ceased to exist.
One could argue, however, that the notion of ür could be expanded if we consider SLT migrants who, through leaving their conta ür, build imitations of them in their western host-lands. Burgio describes this as the creation of ‘Tamil districts’ within countries of destination (Burgio Reference Burgio2016:112) where the ‘“Tamilization” of the urban environment produces a little Eelam’. Burgio analyses these ‘Little Eelam’ districts as a ‘sort of decompression chamber, an intersection between Sri Lanka and host-lands, where some of the social characteristics of the motherland are played out’ (Burgio Reference Burgio2016:113).
Social relations in the ür of the host-land have always drawn on transnational migrant networks of patrilineal kin and caste members. SLTs migrating abroad rely on familial, caste, and other social networks to check the compatibility between caste and their final destinations (Das Reference Das2016:149). Daniel explains that ‘this attempt to locate one's own people in a new ür is not motivated by any desire to establish ties of friendship or even acquaintance with [their] people. Rather, it is based on the assumption that if the new ür is compatible with one of one's own, there is a good chance that it will also be compatible with oneself’ (Daniel Reference Daniel1987:82). Ravi's comment below highlights the relationship between Tamil people and their ür, and how such a relationship is not easily renounced even with migration. Ravi (68yrs, male) arrived in the UK in his mid-thirties, before the outbreak of the civil war, to further his professional qualifications.
(6) I'm talking about the parents and grand-parents and great-grandparents. They've brought their mentality, their ways of life, their habits along with them. And they will never change. It is known- the famous word in Tamil is mann vaasanai. Mann vaasanai means.. I can't literally- I can't translate properly.. this is er.. this is er.. ‘ways of the land’. For centuries they have been like this.. they have grown up like that. They will never change. (Ravi)
Home-land: Ever-changing landscapes
In example (6), Ravi describes the transposition of the conta ür onto host-land cities, positing that people's way of life will remain the same in their new migrant locations. Landscapes and demographics, however, are ever-changing, whether in the home-land or host-land. In the home-land, people's conta ür have been under siege by the Sri Lankan army for decades, and their churches, temples, shrines, and memorials are still being destroyed (Das Reference Das2016:175). Thus, diasporic Tamils who visit ‘home’ can observe the borders of their villages/towns being encroached upon by the Sinhalese armed forces and witness the gradual Sinhalization of their village/town landscapes (conversation with Dr. FriedmanFootnote 7). They take back a very different image of ‘home’ when they return to their host-countries, so you could argue that the home that they imagine is more susceptible to change and is a less stable concept than for their diasporic counterparts who cannot visitFootnote 8 Sri Lanka or who have not been back in a long time.
(7)
The exchange in (7) provides an example of how Tamil areas are becoming Sinhalesized through changes in sign-posting. Rather than being identified by their original names in the Tamil language, area names have been translated or transliterated into Sinhalese and English, with the Tamil name being designated as the least important in the hierarchy of signs. This illustrates how the ür can be understood as a living sign where, through written signage, the ür can ‘speak’ to proclaim its greater compatibility with a particular social group (Daniel Reference Daniel1987:190; Das Reference Das2016:148–49).
Home-land; Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu state in South India has always been connected to Sri Lanka through sharing a common literary heritage and even a common territory. Tamilagam, the ‘Land of Tamils’, was a territory inherited by the Pandyan, Chola, and Chera empires ruling South India and Sri Lanka from the third Tamil Sangam period (ca. 100 BCE–CE 300) to the fifteenth century (Das Reference Das2016:179). In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Tamil nationalists circulated cartographic images of Tamilagam to legitimate the idea of a sovereign nation that was Dravida Nadu ‘Dravidian country’, suggesting that prehistoric Tamilagam extended from Tirupathi Hills in the north all the way south to Sri Lanka. Thus, there is already a pre-existing discourse that establishes Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu as a unified Tamil territory. Conveniently, ‘Tamilagam's hazy boundaries allowed for this home-land to grow or shrink in scale, unconstrained by actual geographical factors and geopolitical limits, to suit the imagination’ (Das Reference Das2016:179), making it clear that this home-land territory lacks specific boundaries.
The links between Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka are also characterised through Tamil cultural elements, that is, literature, cinema, dance, music, and the Tamil language. According to Burgio (Reference Burgio2016:108–10), these cultural elements were born in Tamil Nadu and characterise a global Tamil identity that the SLT diaspora orient to at different levels of identification. This is illustrated in example (8) below.
(8) But I think now we are more connected to South India, we are getting more connection with South India.. we are more tend to follow the South Indian culture than.. Sri Lankan culture because.. that is our main hold… that is.. Tamil. That- that- that is our main-land anyway.. main hold. So we tend to go to India a lot rather than Sri Lanka a lot… So we tend to follow that culture because what we are seeing on the television only we are trying to follow.. (Sinthu)
It may also be possible that Sri Lanka is gradually being replaced by Tamil Nadu as ‘home’, especially by SLTs who cannot or do not return to their original birthplace.
(9) I love my language and heritage and culture. I don't know why. Maybe it's one of the oldest languages in the world. There's so much, thousands and thousands of years. So I travel in Tamil Nadu extensively.. wherever you spea- go in Tamil Nadu they speak my language. And you feel happy. And I feel that I belong.. to… that part. (Ravi)
In these examples, it is clear that the desire for ‘home’ is conflated with the desire for a home-land. Territoriality and return are notions associated with home-land, but often for diasporic SLTs abroad, returning to Sri Lanka is not always an option. For some, this is because of the traumatic memories conjured up by the civil war. Girija, for instance claims:
(10) For me, going back to Sri Lanka is just..for me it's not good like, it's just going to bring back like my mum's memories, my grandma's memories, my family's memories, like the things I saw on TV. That's all I see.. for me. (Girija)
For such members of the diaspora, the home-land concept is connected with feelings of home-lessness and trauma, so much so that it acquires meaning beyond just a territorial place. The SLT experience of home-land in the context of politics and the civil war is so significant that it has dominated SLT diasporic research agendas to date (Jones Reference Jones2013). Historian Wickramasinghe, in her account of the contested identities of SLTs in the diaspora, states that ‘in fashioning a Tamilness in the diaspora, history and collective memory play a crucial role. The dominant separatist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), has succeeded in its objectives of radicalising the Sri Lankan Tamils overseas’ (Wickramasinghe Reference Wickramasinghe2006:266). Her analysis may largely account for why the concept of home-land is so cherished by the SLT diaspora.
Host-land identities
Canagarajah & Silberstein (Reference Canagarajah and Silberstein2012:81) suggest that it is unlikely that ‘all diaspora subjects always held a return to their home-land as their ultimate goal’. In light of this statement, it is therefore important to examine the diaspora's relationship with their host-lands, which is what the following sections do.
Host-land, country of destination, and/or country of settlement
In the literature (e.g. Burgio Reference Burgio2016), host-land is often used interchangeably with terms such as countries of destination or countries of settlement. This can be problematic as each of these terms raises different empirical issues. The term country of destination, for instance, needs to take into account the fact that many SLTs escaping from Sri Lanka had to take long and convoluted migratory routes to reach a place where they were finally granted asylum. Some had to sojourn in different countries along the way (e.g. Saudi Arabia, East Germany, West Germany, France, etc.) and took years before arriving finally at their ‘country of destination’. In the event that they would have had to live in a particular country for a period of time before continuing on their way, that country would have become their ‘country of settlement’. In other words, the term country of destination has connotations of a ‘goal to reach’ whereas country of settlement seems to refer to either a temporary or permanent residence. Interestingly, nearly half of the participants in my study (20/42) sojourned in a country for a duration of a few months to several years before migrating to the UK. Some of them say that they may not even settle permanently in the UK either, but may return to the country that that they had previously been living in. In the extract below, for instance, Ayappa (26yrs, male) talks about how he hopes to move back to Germany, where he was born.
(11) I loved it. I loved living in Germany. One of my dreams, when I did move down here was always to go back to Germany once I finished my studies. The dream's still there. I do travel there every year. I go.. I go once or twice a year. I got family members, I got friends there. I got.. quite a lot of people that I know come from Berlin basically.. I got family all over. But being- being a Sri Lankan Tamil you tend to have.. family all over the world. I've got- half my family live in Berlin though. (Ayappa)
In the example above, Ayappa relates to Germany as a place which he feels strongly attached to, where he still has friends and family members whom he communicates with and visits regularly. His dream to return to Germany one day supports the description of the diasporic condition of wanting to return ‘home’ when conditions are appropriate (Safran Reference Safran1991:83–84). Whether Germany is the home-land or host-land in Ayappa's case is hard to identify, however. In addition, terms such as host-country and country of settlement are rather ambiguous. As mentioned earlier, the term settlement could refer to either temporary or permanent occupancy. The term host country is therefore more accurately used in this instance as a country is ‘host’ to a migrant as long as they reside in it and make use of its facilities. We therefore need to be careful when using the terms country of destination and country of settlement as they are much more difficult to delineate.
Living-in-mobility
Ayappa's narrative in (11) highlights how living in a place, does not necessarily imply stativity. The reality for most SLT migrants living in the diaspora is quite the opposite, one of constant mobility. Burgio's depiction of SLTs as transnational migrants constantly ‘living-in-mobility’ (Goreau-Poncheaud Reference Goreau-Poncheaud2012:27, cited in Burgio Reference Burgio2016:111) and who occupy the space between the home-land and host-land poles (Burgio Reference Burgio2016:120) chimes with this reality of SLTs. In fact, during the course of my fieldwork, I've come across anecdotes of SLTs who cannot even claim association with any particular ‘host’ country because they are living between countries to gain benefit money from different sources. The following vignette is from Thevarasa (65yrs, male) who confirms this practice.
(12) So that's what they do. They go country to country, register themself, hang around there for a little while to collect pensions… benefits and the same thing with my… brother-in-law's people, they were taking benefits in Germany plus take benefits here. (Thevarasa)
Another participant, Vasuki (49yrs, female), describes how complex her lived experience is, travelling between London and France so regularly that it is difficult to be certain as to which to call her host-country. Vasuki came as a refugee to France when she was twenty-two years old and lived there for sixteen years. She acquired French citizenship and soon after, when she was thirty-eight, relocated to London. She visits France almost every week to visit her mother, but also to attend various functions that are held by her relatives.
(13) amma inga thaan irunthaanga. Enguuda thaan iruppaanga. Six month-kku orukka anga poy visa-vai eduthuttu varuvaanga… engalukku thaan [French] citizen avangalukku French- refugee passport amma. Appo avangalukku six month thaan inge stay pannalaam.. thiruppi poy visa eduthuttu thiruppi varuvaanga. Appadi thaan ippo oru nine years-aa irunthaanga. Inga thaan irunthaanga, enguuda.. intha viitile thaan. Ippo avangalukku konja kaal ellaam nadakkamaattaanga, eyilaameirunthuttu. Appo antha government- antha passport thaanemaa, appo ange irukkiruaanga. Enga therinja oru family viitille irukkiraanga. Avanga paarthikkuraanga. Poona vaaram- appadi naa- vaaram vaaram poovom.. husband orukka poovaaru, brother poovar. Poona vaaram cousin-da mahallukku registration. Approm ellarum poy vanthom. Next week naan pooven-ma. Ivangallukku holiday vanthavudanai naan poyduven. Approm two- two days, three days appadi poyttu poy ammavai paarthuttu varen. (Vasuki)
‘Mother used to stay here [with her in London] only. She used to stay with us only. Every six months she would go there [France], get the visa and return. Only we are French citizens. Mother has a French refugee passport, which means she can only stay with us for six months. Then she would go, get her visa and come back again. That's how she has been for the past nine years. She used to stay only here, with me, in this house only. Now her legs are [bad].. she doesn't walk. She doesn't feel well. Since she belongs to that government and has their passport, she stays there now. She is living in a house belonging to a family known to us. They are looking after her. Last week- we go regularly every week- my husband goes sometimes, my brother goes. Last week was my cousin's daughter's registration. So, we all went and came back. I'll be going next week. As soon as they [her children] begin their holidays I will be going. I will go for two to three days, see my mother and return.’
SLTs like Vasuki who engage in regular crossings between the UK and Europe would be hard-pressed to identify whether the UK or France is their host-land. Her experience would thus challenge the traditionally conceived concept of host-land.
Changing identification with the host-lands
If SLTs are indeed transnational and ‘living-in-mobility’ as Burgio states (2016:118–20) and my data suggests, then surely the home-land/host-land distinction becomes less distinct? What about when there is a blurring of boundaries between the two for migrants who have lived so long in their host-countries, that it ceases to be a ‘foreign’ region (Safran Reference Safran1991:83–84). In the example below, for instance, Omila (23yrs, female), a second-generation Tamil, talks about how the notion of ‘home’ has undergone a change for her mother.
(14) No, I think their [my parents’] understanding of home is very different. It's like.. it's just really um.. I think they're very nostalgic about like Jaffna and all that kind of stuff but like it's not- that's not where home is. My mum would be like- oh she'll never move back, she prefers here.. she's like her life's here. (Omila)
Omila's mother in (14) no longer relates to Jaffna as ‘home’ as she might have once done. This speaks back to Hall's (Reference Hall and Rutherford1990) point about how the boundaries that constitute diasporic identities are continually being repositioned in relation to different points of reference. It is not the case, therefore, that diasporic identities are always formed positively through identification with the home-lands and negatively through differentiation towards the host-countries. The creation of ‘home-like’ Tamil districts within the host-land, drawing on Burgio's description of Little Eelam territories, and Das's (Reference Das2016) analysis of Sri Lankan Tamil neighbourhoods in Montréal, further supports the idea that the concept of ‘home’ does not necessarily refer to a territorial ‘home’ and that a ‘home-coming’ does not necessarily mean returning to a territorial place. The concept of ‘home’ can refer to a sense of total identification with and belongingness to a space or a community in the host-land, or to sometimes even to both.
This echoes De Fina & Perrino's (Reference De Fina and Perrino2013:512) questioning the practice of describing identities-in-mobility in terms of binary dichotomies such as ‘the national and the transnational, the rooted and the routed, the territorial and the deterritorialised’. Equally problematic are other dichotomies; ‘minority vs. majority, immigrant vs. local, outsider vs. insider’ (Zhu Hua Reference Hua and Canagarajah2017:120). Perhaps we now ought to include the home-land vs. host-land dichotomy to this list.
To summarise, the participant data make it clear that the notions of home-land and host-land go beyond territorial locations. Land is no longer seen as central to diasporic identities and the concepts of home-land and host-land are more appropriately associated with multi-faceted symbolic references, rather than being seen as dichotomous. Further, in a world that is becoming more and more diasporic (Burgio Reference Burgio2016:121), it is imperative that any analysis of diasporic identities should focus on the ‘situatedness’ of diasporas (Brah Reference Brah1996:182)—the people, their movements, and their particular historicities.
In the following sections, I demonstrate how SLT diasporic identities are shaped by language practices, but also how language practices themselves are influenced by SLT diasporic experiences of the home-land and host-land.
The interaction between language and diasporic identities
As discussed above, nonessentialised views of diasporic identities are more compellingly analysed by poststructuralist and social constructivist theoretical perspectives (Preece Reference Preece2016:3), which involve a rethinking of terms like home-land and host-land. Work on identity has also led to an interest in looking at the relationship identity has with language (Preece Reference Preece2016:4), and the paradigm shift away from an essentialist position coincides with a move away from reifying named languages as constituting separate entities that mark the ethnic, cultural, and/or national identities of particular groups of people to viewing language as part of a repertoire consisting of linguistic and other multimodal resources for communicative and identity work (Blommaert & Backus Reference Blommaert and Backus2011; Preece Reference Preece2016:5). Identities-in-mobility research, therefore, emphasises that people use and acquire various language resources along their migratory journeys and construct identities through interaction. Mobility does not just refer to the movement of people, but also to the movement of languages (Blommaert Reference Blommaert2010). The interaction between mobile language resources and people's experiences of mobility, reconfigures language ideologies from the home-land and host-land, creating new diasporic identities in the process.
Tamil popular media as a resource for identity
Canagarajah's (Reference Canagarajah2012, Reference Canagarajah2013) analysis of SLT diasporic youth language practices re-evaluates the relationship language has with identity. He proposes that ‘resources from diverse languages are able to index new values and represent new identities in mobility’ (Canagarajah Reference Canagarajah2013:148). One important resource that has not been considered by Canagarajah, however, is Tamil popular media. Tamil cinema has only recently recognised the potential offered by markets outside South AsiaFootnote 10 and has become ‘highly significant in the reproduction of culture, tradition and identity in the context of diaspora’ (Velayutham Reference Velayutham and Velayutham2008:173–84). The vast majority of Tamil films are produced in the Tamil ‘Kollywood’Footnote 11 film industry in Tamil Nadu. These films have an Indian setting and protagonists which enable a ‘vision of a Tamil home-land’ to be depicted through a ‘Tamil Nadu version of Tamilness’ (Jones Reference Jones2013:44; Velayutham Reference Velayutham and Velayutham2008:184–85). Tamil films are distributed world-wide through official and informal networks and are consumed globally, being easily accessed through satellite television, the proliferation of digital affordances, and various online platforms such as YouTube. Tamil cinema provides a rich resource for language practices in the SLT diaspora, and SLTs who are familiar with Kollywood films draw on their insider knowledge to stylise and construct new diasporic identities. Below are examples from my data that illustrate the kinds of practices observed amongst the SLT diasporic youth when they engage with Tamil cinema.
(15)
In example (15) Dinesh (25yrs, male) and Akshaya (30yrs, female) differentiate the youth way of speaking Tamil from the older generation's, claiming that SLT youth tend to mix English with SLT varieties, while sometimes also borrowing language resources from Kollywood cinema. They characterise this style of speaking as ‘swag’ or ‘slang’, depicting it as being more informal than the older generation's Tamil. Example (16) supports the points made in (15), but also illustrates how SLT youth incorporate Tamil cinema quotes into their interactions.
(16) I don't, but I do hear my friends have it yeah um.. it's just things like from movies and they would just like repeat like some dialogues… Sometimes I just look at them like “what are you talking about” cos I'm not in sync with them. But er yeah they do things like- they would say something and then they would- I think that- that dialogue was in a movie and they would just kind of continue with it and they just have banter.. they are really up-to-date with recent movies. (Girjia)
Crucially, the examples highlight how the use of Tamil is evolving where migration creates different kinds of Tamil identifications within diasporic inter-generational contexts. Shanker (Reference Shankar2004:313) argues that ‘connections between media and diaspora focus on imagination, nostalgia, nationalism and connections to the home-land’. This reminds us that diasporic identities are constructed not just through home-land and host-land language influences, but also through resources found in the intersection between them, which are ‘no longer located in a definable territory, but in the deterritorialized world of late modern communication’ (Jacquemet Reference Jacquemet2005:5). By drawing on the voices of characters in Tamil popular media, diasporic SLTs are thus able to produce deterritorialized identities, rooted in modern communication and technology (Rosa & Trivedi Reference Rosa, Trivedi and Canagarajah2017:334).
Secondary migration and language practices
New patterns of migration complicate the traditional ways in which we analyse diasporic identities because no longer is diasporic identity based on a reference to just one home-land or host-land. Amongst my forty-two research participants, twelve are secondary migrants and of the twelve, four were previously living in Tamil Nadu while the remaining eight were previously living in mainland Europe. Another five research participants, whom I have not included in my count of secondary migrants,Footnote 12 are also from Europe. They belong to the second generation and grew up in Europe before migrating to the UK. Migrants from Europe are a significant group because they have changed the profile of SLTs in the UK and have introduced a variety of new language resources that are currently being used in everyday communication. Their communicative practices in the UK context have not been analysed thus far in any study.
In the following example, Ayappa (26yrs, male) talks about how he communicates with his family. He came to London from Germany when he was seven years old and mixes three language resources when interacting, which supports the argument that it is problematic to portray languages as separate entities (Preece Reference Preece2016:5).
(17) If you- If you- If you see at home, I speak Tamil to my mum.. German to my dad.. and in English to my brother and sister… and if we're all having conversations we.. we tend to change languages all the time. (Ayappa)
In example (18), Karthik (30yrs, male) discusses how he values being able to communicate in Danish. Having spent nearly all his life in Denmark, he moved to London just a year ago and currently lives with his British Tamil spouse and parents in London. He treats language as a multi-modal resource and tries to teach Danish, accompanied by gestures, to his wife who has been brought up in London.
(18) She- [spouse's name] has.. she has some skills like she.. based on my.. gestures and topics and stuff erm she picks it up somehow. She picks it up somehow so that's what I notice and that's why I sometimes force her.. just switch over to Danish and keep talking talking talking. And she knows.. even though as a subject I could have taught in.. while like doing the dishes or something I er I ask her to get me a glass or something whatever, she knows by the body language what I'm meaning, so I know she can pick that up.. so I said “ah ok, she picks that up so why not just speak in Danish” and then she can associate the different words with what I act- ask her to do and then.. somehow, she might learn. (Karthik)
Examples (17) and (18) clearly show how different resources are being used in everyday communicative practices. But migrants from mainland Europe such as Ayappa and Karthik maintain their linguistic competence in German or Danish also because they visit Germany/ Denmark regularly. Their frequent travel highlights the transnational nature of their existence. Furthermore, Ayappa talks about how his cousins from Germany are mostly responsible for his Tamil language maintenance and for improving his knowledge of Tamil popular culture by introducing him to the latest Tamil film songs and teaching him kuuthu Footnote 13 dance moves.
(19) When my cousins- they showed me what kuuthu dance is, I really liked it cos it's a lot of energy and a lot of.. my cousins from Berlin.. every time they- yeah that's the thing.. every time they do come back that's when they introduce me to new Tamil songs which I've never heard of in my life which maybe five years old but it's brand new to me… They always introduce the culture to me. (Ayappa)
Canagarajah's (Reference Canagarajah2008:171) claim that ‘diaspora communities not only negotiate home and migrant locations, but lateral relationship[s] with Tamils in other migrant locations’, chimes with evidence from my fieldwork. Such transnational negotiations generate new language ideologies that promote heritage language maintenance and European language learning, constantly renegotiating SLT identities whilst doing so.
Reconfiguring home-land and host-land language ideologies
If mobility involves the movement of people and languages, it also follows that it involves the movement of language ideologies. During the civil war in Sri Lanka, the Tamil areas developed Tamil Only and Pure Tamil ideologies in reaction to Sinhalese nationalism and to demonstrate support for the LTTE (Canagarajah Reference Canagarajah2012:269–70). However, SLT nationalists also ranked the different Tamil vernaculars spoken on the island and considered the Jaffna Tamil variety as being the purest and most ancient of Tamil varieties, because Jaffna symbolises the heart and soul of the Tamil Eelam nation. For SLT asylum seekers searching for a safe and secure home-land abroad, the purist virtues and classical provenance of Jaffna Tamil helped reinforce the primordialist version of Tamil Eelam (Das Reference Das2016:44–45, 206). This language ideology, exported from the home-land, is pervasive even today.
Within the host-land (UK in this instance), British public concern about language, culture, and global mobility manifests itself by propagating a monolingualist discourse where multilingualism is often seen as a ‘problem’ (Hogan-Brun, Mar-Molinero, & Stevenson Reference Hogan-Brun, Mar-Molinero and Stevenson2009). This ideological stance is evident in debates ranging across a range of issues, including immigration policy (Maryns Reference Maryns2006). Although the world is obviously not divided up into monolingual states (Blommaert Reference Blommaert and Ricento2006), the modernist dogma of ‘one nation one language’ persists across Western governments (Cooke & Simpson Reference Cooke, Simpson, Martin-Jones, Blackledge and Creese2012:120). This ideology seems to have filtered down to the SLT diaspora and is demonstrated in SLT youth discourse. Currently there seems to be a conflict between the host-land English monolingual ideology and the home-land ideology of speaking ‘Pure Tamil/Only Tamil’ and is made evident in the way SLT diasporic youth link language use with a ‘freshie’ or ‘coconut’ diasporic identity.
Being ‘fresh’/’fresh off the boat’/‘FOB’ is a term widely used in Asian diasporas (especially in the context of post 1965 Asian migration) to differentiate new arrivals from those who have learned the requisite cultural and linguistic codes (Chiang-Hom Reference Chiang-Hom, Zhou and Lee2004; Shanker Reference Shankar2008). This term has been circulating in the South Asian diaspora for at least thirty years. In the following extract, Nithya (20yrs, female, second generation), who was born and brought up in London, talks about how she is called ‘fresh’ by her peers when she speaks Tamil.
(20)
Such examples show that SLT diasporic youth feel that their language practices and identities are being evaluated in monolingual terms, where speaking Tamil implies that you must not therefore be able to speak English. Since English is the dominant language in Britain as well as the language that has higher prestige, being called a ‘freshie’ is perceived as an insult.
On the other side of the coin, being called a ‘coconut’, that is, ‘being brown on the outside and white on the inside’ (as one of my younger SLT participants colourfully put it), is also not very complimentary. The term refers to anyone who tries to fit in with western culture and who does not engage with their own heritage language/culture. In example (21), Belan (B; 40yrs, male, second generation), who was born and brought up in London, discusses his sister, who has married a white Englishman, with his wife Susheela (S; 43yrs, female).
(21)
Being a ‘coconut’ implies that not only are you a monolingual English speaker, but that your English-speaking skills are so honed that you are able to fit into the British class system, which, traditionally, migrants are excluded from. Interestingly, the terms ‘freshie’ and ‘coconut’, like home-land and host-land, seem to be constructed in opposition to each other when actually, many SLT youth feel that they do not slot neatly into one category or another. The example below demonstrates this clearly.
(22)
Here, Omila (23yrs, female, second generation) expresses irritation at being simultaneously judged based on the two opposing language ideologies of the home-land and host-land. According to the host-land ‘monolingual English’ ideology, she is considered a ‘freshie’ for being able to speak Tamil. However, going by the home-land Tamil only/Pure Tamil ideology, she is considered a ‘coconut’ as she not only speaks English well, but is able to speak it in a ‘posh’ manner, demonstrating that she has the linguistic competence to be able to claim a position in the British class hierarchy. Examples (20)–(22) emphasise the extent to which home-land and host-land language ideologies are in tension with each other in diasporic spaces, giving rise to complex identities such as ‘freshie’ and ‘coconut’.
Conclusion
In this article, I analyse how SLT diasporic identities are being constructed in our current epoch of hypermobility. Using data from my fieldwork, I have demonstrated that an empirical approach facilitates the recognition that home-land and host-land concepts are not rigid and static, marking particular territories, but are fluid and multiple. Understanding the relationship that diaspora has with the home-land/host-land is crucial in studying the complexity of their identities. But, to achieve a multi-layered analysis, we need to push the notions of home-land and host-land beyond purely spatial interpretations.
This points to a general shift towards anti-essentialism not only in the understanding of space, but in the theorization that diasporic identities should be conceived as a sociocultural process. Such a shift also corresponds with a move away from the idea that there is a one-to-one connection between language and identity. Language is now increasingly being viewed as part of a repertoire of various communicative resources, and I argue that the interaction between communicative resources and how the SLT diaspora identifies with the home-land and host-land is mutually shaping. To demonstrate this, I discuss how (i) Tamil popular media is being exported to the rest of the world via the ‘Kollywood’ film industry and is exploited as a communicative resource to construct new identities; (ii) secondary migration from Europe has led to an increase in the number and type language resources used amongst the SLT diaspora to give rise to new ideologies of language maintenance and learning; and (iii) home-land and host-land language ideologies get reconfigured through diasporic language practices to produce complex ‘freshie’ and ‘coconut’ identities.
In summary, examining the interaction between language and diasporic identity is a useful way toward ‘denaturalizing stereotypes that equate linguistic patterns, social categories, and geographical contexts’ (Rosa & Trivedi Reference Rosa, Trivedi and Canagarajah2017:341). Given that multiple migration is increasingly becoming common in globalization processes, the recent change in the SLT migratory trend is important for the theorizing of factors related to how diasporic communities provide cultural and linguistic resources to help shape transnational identities.
