From Diasporic Migrant to Citizen Subjects

The (Indian) diaspora is arguably the most widespread on practically every continent. Three migrations include ancient trade, colonialization and post-independence flows. Indians in South Africa historically navigated inexorable human rights violations, made worse by the brutality of economic exploitation, political exclusion, racialized and gendered dissections. Yet, the diaspora has transmuted the sociological dangers of influx, cultural clash and threat to political hegemony into assimilation, exchange and participation. There is evidence globally that societies have been reconstructed and that new generations of the diaspora are mainstreamed and normalized.

Social and migration theories do not fully address this fantastic burst of human creativity amid othering, neo-pollutants and violence. Diasporic theory highlights inequality. Migration theory is about what motivates movements and flows. Sociological theories on migration underscore human circumstances impelling geographical movements. The absence of underlying intersecting forces that define, enable and capitalize on vulnerable transitory persons to diffuse xenophobic hostility is limited in a theoretical framework. A theoretical context constructed on building generational capability, for migrants to live in freedom, unencumbered by time and ontological baggage, is imperative.

The approach is to turn towards the east. Eastern notions bobbing across the oceans deliver the appreciation of ‘Chinese characteristics,’ i.e., the dialectical unity of scientific socialism and historical logic of social circumstances, characterizing the zeitgeist intrinsic and extrinsic to Chinese society. The Indian diaspora logic is framed in stages of human development and social developmental parallels that floresce as tolerance, positivity, humanism and determinism. The Chinese and Indian experience, the sine qua non of cultural flow creates innovative social organization.

This presentation interrogates Eastern cultural tenants for theorizing the dramatic shift from diasporic migrant to citizen subjects.