The Indian Diaspora in Transnational Context: Social Relations and Cultural Identities of Immigrants to New York City

This paper applies the emerging construct of transnationalism to a detailed exploration of cultural identity and social relationships in the life stories of Indian immigrants to New York City (NYC). NYC is home to one of the most rapidly growing Indian diaspora communities in the USA. The participants’ social relations with family, peers and ethnic community were explored through individual interviews. Their pre-immigration expectations of life in the USA and their actual post-immigration experiences were compared and contrasted. The study found that India's hierarchal social class system was present in NYC's diaspora community, despite the widespread stereotype in the USA of its Asian Indian population as uniformly composed of affluent professionals. The participants articulated and stressed a difference between two types of identity, that is, their personal identity as Indian and as members of the Indian diaspora community in NYC. The implications for ethnic and cultural identity issues among US-born Indian Americans (“American-born desis”) in the transnational contexts of their lives are presented.