Reconstructing the ‘Plural Society’: Asian Migration Between Empire and Nation, 1940–19481.

The article discusses efforts implemented during and after World War Two that were intended to reconstruct and reorient patterns of inter-Asian migration. It is attested that Japanese conquests and the collapse of European imperialism transformed the political and social histories of many parts of Asia, thereby interrupting the mass migration of men from southern China and south India to the frontier regions of South East Asia. The paper urges that one of the central tenets in the process of nation-building that took place during the post-war reconstruction process posited that it was difficult to foster ethical citizenship within cultural plurality. This allegedly diminished Asia’s trend of migration until it resumed in the 1990s.