Life on the Outside: Tamil Diaspora and Long Distance Nationalism

Paperback. English. Pluto Pres. 1999. 203pp.

In good condition.

This study of the Tamil diaspora is one of the first full ethnographic studies of a post-colonial migrant community, and a major contribution to the study of migration, globalisation, identity politics and ‘long distance’ nationalism from an anthropological perspective.

Fuglerud’s study traces the history of Tamil migration, from the arrival of the economic migrants of the 1960s to the ‘asylum seekers’ of the mid 1980s onwards. He draws unnerving parallels between the status of the Tamil community in Sri Lanka, as a beleaguered and persecuted minority waging a war of liberation, and as a displaced, marginalised and excluded refugee community.