Hybridity and Gender in Transnational Migration: A Study of Gurinder Chadha’s Bhaji on the Beach
Author Name
Mr. Nitesh Narnolia & Ms. Mousam
Author Address
Research Scholars
[email protected] Center for Study & Research in Diaspora,
Central University of Gujarat
Gandhinagar – 382030
Keywords
Gender, Hybrid Identity, Transnational Space, Transmigrants.
Abstract
We currently live in a transnational world where someone or other is a migrant and leading a life of hybrid identity. Transmigrants suffer from identity issues, especially women transmigrants. Being the immigrants and ‘other’ at destination place, to consider themselves a part of the society, transmigrants have to transform themselves into the culture of the host country. As women are considered the bearers of traditions and culture, they are supposed to carry on the traditions and culture of their homelands, as well as to maintain the social status in the host land and to be a part of that society they have to transform themselves as per the demand of time and situation.
At this contemporary stage, this paper attempts to give voice to the artist from the South Asian Diaspora in UK, Gurinder Chadha, the female filmmaker who depicts the dual and hybrid identities of gender in transnational communities through the study of the film Bhaji on the Beach. The film is an attempt to question the role of gender in transnational communities. The film tries to define the space for gender in transnational communities. All the characters of this film lead hybrid or dual identities. Most of them have constructed traditional identities in the boundaries of home and in their transnational community, but in the outer world or in their unconscious self, they are something different or dream to be something different from their constructed ‘desi’ identities.
The aim of the paper is to look at how transmigrant women’s experiences are able to become representations in films, through characters that experience such kind of dispersal and fragmentation. The major objective of the present paper is to examine how and why gender relations are negotiated in transnational migrants and how gender organises them.
Conference
International Conference on "Global Migration: Rethinking Skills, Knowledge and Culture"