Life on the Outside

An ethnographic study of a postcolonial migrant community, looking at diasporas and migration, globalisation, identity and nationalism

This study of the Tamil diaspora is one of the first full ethnographic studies of a postcolonial migrant community, and a major contribution to the study of migration, globalisation, identity politics and ‘long distance’ nationalism from an anthropological perspective. Fuglerud’s study traces the history of Tamil migration, from the arrival of the economic migrants of the 1960s to the ‘asylum seekers’ of the mid 1980s onwards. He draws unnerving parallels between the status of the Tamil community in Sri Lanka, as a beleaguered and persecuted minority waging a war of liberation, and as a displaced, marginalised and excluded refugee community. Fuglerud argues that, in the process of displacement, particular aspects of Tamil culture – marriage, dowry, chastity and ritual – acquire a heightened significance. He examines the contradictions and inconsistencies which characterise the Tamil refugee communities, and the success of revolutionary Tamil nationalism in exile, highlighting the transnational nature of identity politics.