Indian Diasporic Communities: Exploring Belonging, Marginality and Transnationalism

Indian diaspora across the globe comprising approximately 20-25 million over the past few decades entails new belongings as well as marginalities. Scandinavia is a region where Indians, mostly high skilled are being invited in the labour market primarily in the last few decades. In 2013, PIO (people of Indian origin) constitute 49490 persons here out of a total population of approximately 20 million, numbers have increased in the last years. The theoretical frameworks includes subjective processes of dispersal, connectedness (Dufoix, 2008, Vertovec, 2000) and inclusion/ exclusion and ambivalences in the notion of belonging especially in the country of settlement (Kalra et al. 2005) along with the recent postmodern celebration of ‘mixed races’ emphasising simultaneous membership and multiple fluid identities. The Scandinavian “benign colonialism” is also included in the framework (Poddar, 2013). Mixed- method study of the Indian diaspora in Denmark- both in endogamous marriages and in exogamous marriages with Danish spouses (Singla, 2008 & 2015). A comparative perspective is added through a qualitative study (Sriram, 2015) of Indians in the United States of America as the largest growing socially, politically and economically powerful minority group. The results indicate differential belonging to both ‘her’ and ‘there’, depending on aspects such as life’ course positioning, gender, socio- economic position and the years of residence in Denmark and USA. Intertwining of the micro and macro levels through transforming belongings such as current trends of PIO (people of Indian origin) status being transformed to OCI (overseas citizen of India) are also delineated.