GRFDT

Tracing the Indian Diaspora in Cyberspace

Tracing the Indian Diaspora in Cyberspace

by 

Dr Eric Leclerc

Associate Professor (HDR) in geography at the University of Rouen and a member of the ERIAC EA 4307 (Interdisciplinary Research Team on Cultural Areas)

20 December 2013, CSSS II, JNU

As part of the e-atlas diaspora, my research is a first quantitative exploration of the presence of the Indian diaspora in cyberspace. The problematic is organized around three axes: first a definition of the Indian diaspora itself, as expressed on the Web and not by the Indian government; secondly a geolocation of the Indian diaspora in cyberspace compared with its spatial distribution; thirdly a temporal approach to identify events that encourages its appearance in the global cyberspace. From the analysis of the corpus gathered (1089 sites), it is clear that a variety of identity claims are expressed on the Web. The structure of the Indian diaspora in cyberspace highlights subnational groups, which qualitative analyses  have already identified, but unrelated to the websites of the Indian government. Other emerging identities, religious, professional and especially a supra-national South Asian identity also can be identified. The second finding is the discrepancy between global distribution of the diaspora and its expression on the web, where the United States then dominates and the Gulf States are absent. Beyond an explanation of the uneven access to ICTs, or by the digital divide, inequalities in cyberspace must identify the mediators of that presence. In the U.S., all the components of the Indian diaspora do not have the same visibility whereas access to ICT is similar. The third axis is still under construction, since processing temporal information is very difficult on the Web, the variability of cyberspace enter in conflict with longitudinal studies.

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Dr Eric Leclerc is Associate Professor (HDR) in geography at the University of Rouen and a member of the ERIAC EA 4307 (Interdisciplinary Research Team on Cultural Areas). His current research focuses on changes of mobility and relationships to space induced by ICT from the case study of Indian software professionals. He has worked on several international projects in Africa (Mauritania, Mali), and in India where he headed for two years the team "Regional dynamics in South Asia and international relations" at the Centre de Sciences Humaines (New Dehi – MAEE).  He has recently published International and transnational political actors. Cases studies from the Indian diaspora, 2011, Delhi: Manohar - Centre de Sciences Humaines, 245 p..

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