GLOBAL ASIA COLLOQUIUM
MARCH 8, 2024. 4-7PM, in 53 Washington Square South (KJCC) 701
Sangay Mishra
South Asian American Diaspora: Race, Religion, and Political Mobilization
Abstract:
Asian Americans of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and other South Asian ancestry are dramatically challenging the traditional mainstream view of who counts as Asian American. With their increasingly visible presence among Asian Americans, South Asians have started shaping the contours of Asian American politics and political mobilization in important ways. An important feature of South Asian American mobilization has been the presence of deep internal fractures within the community along the lines of religion, caste, class, and nation of origin among other things.These internal cleavages have a strong diasporic dimension and they have shaped the nature of community mobilizations in the post-9/11 period. At the same time, South Asians have been showing a relatively high level of uniformity in the context of American electoral politics in terms of their political preferences that are possibly shaped by how South Asians encounter and interpret race and racialization. It is important to underline these contradictory political impulses within South Asian communities to speculate about their future political trajectories as a diasporic community within the larger umbrella category of Asian American.
Desis Divided: The Political Lives of South Asian Americans
Sangay K Mishra is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Drew University. He specializes in immigrant political incorporation, transnationalism, diaspora, and racial and ethnic politics. His work engages with political participation of South Asian immigrants in the United States as well as countries of origin with a particular focus on immigrants from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. He has also been analyzing the experiences of Muslim American communities with law enforcement agencies. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He served as the co-chair of Asian and Pacific American Caucus of the American Political Science Association from 2014-2016. He also served as the chair of the Committee on the Status of Asian Pacific American of the Western Political Science Association.
His book, titled Desis Divided: The Political Lives of South Asian Americans was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2016 and Sage India in 2017. The book was awarded the best book on Asian America (2017) by the American Sociological Association’s section on Asia and Asian America. His current project looks at U.S.-born South Asians and the ways in which they engage with people of color identity.
March 8, 2024
Time: 4-7PM
Location: 53 Washington Square South (KJCC) 701
