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This paper is a study on structural distribution of lateral consonants in Bangla and Malayalam for identifying the nature of mother tongue interference in case of lateral approximants in Bengali diaspora in Kerala. In Malayalam, there are two lateral approximants, which are phonemic in nature, [l] and [?]. While in Bengali, there is one phoneme [l] having three realisations as [l], [?] and [l?] which are allophonic in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'reactive transnationalism hypothesis' posits a relationship between discrimination and transnational practice. The concept has generally been studied using quantitative methods, but a qualitative approach augments our understanding of two context‐specific dimensions: the nature of the discrimination involved, and the types of transnational behaviour that might be affected. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with Bangladesh‐origin Muslims in London, Luton and Birmingham, in the UK, we demonstrate how anti‐Asian and anti‐Muslim racism have been conflated with intensified anti‐migrant racism in the context of 'hostile environment' immigration policies and the EU referendum (Brexit), producing an amplification of racist discourses associated with purging the body politic of its non‐white bodies. The insecurity generated is altering some people's relationships to Bangladesh, incentivizing investment in land and property 'back home'. While this represents an example of 'reactive transnationalism', we argue that 'protective transnationalism' might be a more appropriate way of describing the processes at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses how the modern Indian diasporic novels reflect the life of the marginalized both in India and abroad. Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss is selected for this purpose. Desai's novel provides the picture of illegitimate immigrants like Biju in America and at the same time, the parallel story in India provides the picture of the marginalized communities i.e. women, the minority Anglo-Indian Communities, the Ghorkha community and the poor class workers like the cook. The novel makes the readers feel that the freedom we inherited at midnight has become nothing but a loss. This paper also analyses the way the marginalized communities are represented in the diasporic novels namely Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Amitav Ghosh's The Calcutta Chromosome, V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas, Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has become a theoretical truism that diaspora encompasses both mobility and settlement, change and continuity, roots and routes. Nevertheless, sociological accounts of diaspora identities have been largely focused on diaspora identities as part of a process of placemaking and claims-staking in the place of arrival. Such accounts have largely downplayed questions of origin, continuity and connection, and of the role of history and structure in shaping diasporic cultures 'on the ground'. Focusing on the annual Boishakhi Mela in East London, this article explores some of the tensions and ambiguities of diaspora spaces and cultural practices. It empirically examines the encounter between 'authentic' and 'commodified' cultures and the contested faultlines around gender, generation and religion that are played out in this public spectacle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The desolation or spread of any people from their original homeland across the globe and efferent their culture as they go is known as Diaspora. Diaspora has been now given the nod as a key factor influencing social and economic development of society. Diaspora also abundantly impacts upon linguistic behavior of the society at multiple levels. This study aims to coordinate the relationship between society and the language in a multilingual scenario where each state has its own ethnic group and language. The motive of sociolinguistic study of Diaspora is to sketch the interaction of language and society, i.e. how language relates to social categories and cultural aspects of various kinds such as class, age, gender, etc. The study here focuses on few aspects of linguistic behavior of Bengali Diaspora in Kerala as the Bengalis in Kerala consists of 0.01% of total population, according to 2001 census report. The study will scrutinize how the Diaspora people maintain their language and other cultural entities in their day-to-day life. The research is based on a sociolinguistic survey, conducted among these people to understand how far the Diaspora has affected upon their linguistic behavior and to see the variations prevalent among different strata of Diaspora. Findings suggest that along with extensive codes switching it encompasses slowly emerging changes in the culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this short reflection, I revisit Rogers Brubaker’s influential 2005 article on “The ‘diaspora’ diaspora”. I consider the key arguments of this important intervention, before addressing three key conceptual issues in diaspora studies: (i) the role of place, origin and scale; (ii) diaspora, race and difference; (iii) sociological and historical approaches to diaspora. In the concluding section, I briefly consider some new directions in diaspora studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this short rejoinder, we respond to some of the main critiques raised by the symposium contributors. We focus on four areas: (a) the place of theory; (b) the issue of scale; (c) the role of "the Muslim" and Islam; and (d) the significance of "mobility capital" to theories of diaspora and migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different branches of anthropological inquiry that have focused on Muslim populations in the Global South, have tended to treat Islam as something like an independent variable. This is true of both those concerned with social structure and those which focused on social signs - each has often treated Muslims as either derivative of a monolithic Islam or as the sites of readable gestures. In The Bengal Diaspora: Rethinking Muslim Migration, the authors move us on from these tendencies through multidisciplinary and historical inquiry, in ways that always grasp the real life embodiments through which Muslim diasporas are forged and re-forged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a chronicler of cultural interface, in Jhumpa Lahiri's debut collection of short stories,Interpreter of Maladies, food paradoxically establishes intertextuality, humanity, otherness, negotiation as well as respect, albeit in different contexts. This article tries to highlight how the highly acclaimed writer constantly underscores the politics of Bengali diaspora identity in her stories through multiple nuances of the food metaphor, highlighting the specificity of Bengali cuisine and eating etiquettes, by creating a subtle dialogue between the second and the sixth story of the collection. It intends to explore how the journey of the food metaphor from ‘When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine’ to ‘Mrs. Sen's’ works in a typical pattern of the deconstruction of hegemonic discourses, in the critique of the plight of Bengali diaspora women, in the reinterpretation of difference and, thereby, in the development of their Bengali immigrant identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to illuminate patterns of refugee settlement in the Bengali Muslim diaspora since 1947, which replicate global trends identified by Aristide Zolberg in new nation-states. Based on historical research and oral testimony gathered from over two hundred migrants in different settings in India, Bangladesh, and Britain, it suggests why some Muslims crossed borders after India's partition and others did not; why most moved only short distances within the delta; and why so many huddled in the shadow of the new national borders and so few traveled to the West. I uncover the subtle interplay between migrants' agency and structures of coercion, and between histories of mobility and of affect, in the shaping of migration choices, and explain how the recurrent patterns identified by Zolberg were produced in a regional context of critical but unexplored significance. The essay explores the impact of nation-state formation on older forms of mobility in the region, and the continuing interconnections between local micro-mobilities and regional, national, international, and trans-oceanic migrations. I suggest that the concept of "mobility capital" can help to explain not only patterns of migration, but also patterns of staying on. I conclude by questioning "cumulative causation theory," which has inadvertently lent credence to fears that the developed countries of the West will be "swamped" by immigrants drawn from ever-expanding migratory networks based in the "third world." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]