Migration and negotiating Identities: Understanding everyday life of Northeast people in global cities
Author Name
Ringmichon Keishing
Author Address
Ringmichon Keishing, PhD. Scholar Research, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru Universities, New Delhi, India
Keywords
Migration and Northeast of India
Abstract
Globalization and the transformation of urban spaces has opened the door of opportunities for the whole world and it has attracted the Northeast people, also motivated the Northeast migrants to move away from their origin of place into the mega cities. The population of Northeast people living in global cities has become increasingly visible.
Migration of Northeast people into many parts of the global cities has been increasing tremendously and many youth’s are among them. Every year thousand of Northeast people migrate for further education, job opportunities and for better livelihood. Sundari defined “Migration as a necessarily pre-emptive move; it is the survival instinct that drives humans to seek better prospects” (Sundari, 2005:2295).
One of the impact of migration could be discrimination. Much debate has been taken place on racial discrimination of Northeast people and the simplest definition of racial discrimination can be defined as the unequal treatment of persons or groups on the basis of their race or ethnicity.
There is a distinction made between us and them when people from different cultures and ethnic diversities come into contact with each other. This leads to acts of labeling to the migrants such as outsiders, strangers, and encroachers often leads to physical violence by the host society towards the Northeast people. Every ethnic group or society all over the globe struggles with the social or racial biases and the stigma or prejudice or discrimination against certain group is not new and it is encountered on a daily basis.
Majority of the Northeast people is inhabited by people of South-east Asian origin. Their food habits, culture and physical appearance is found much closer resemblance with them and they have no cultural or social resemblance with the rest of the Indians which is of Dravidian or Aryan descent. Northeast people have a unique way of life and they are different from the host culture in terms of food, habits, facial features, language, etc. and often they are confronted from the dominated culture milieu.
As mentioned earlier, migration is for better prospect and when people migrate into the multi- race society, they are likely to face various challenges and opportunities. This research will try to explore and study to delineate the patterns of Northeast migration to global cities. The paper also seeks to study how Northeast people negotiate in order to retain their ethnic identity in the diaspora region.
Conference
International Conference on "Global Migration: Rethinking Skills, Knowledge and Culture"