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Dr. Aminur Rahim is Professor in Development Studies at the University of Fort Hare, Eastern Cape, South Africa. He has taught at the University of Zimbabwe, Harare, York University Toronto and the Gaffargaon College in Bangladesh. He is the author of the book Politics and National Formations in Bangladesh and has published articles on education and the formation of class, the sociology of education, identity politics, and multiculturalism and ethnicity. His forthcoming book entitled “Rights to Food in Africa: Learning from Asian experiences” will be published in 2014 by Xlibris, a Penguin Random House Company. Professor Rahim holds a BA Hon, MA(University of Waterloo), and PhD (University of Toronto). His research interests include Decolonisation and Human Development, Nation and Political Formations, Theories of Development, State, Education and Development, Research Methodology, Race and Ethnicity in Canada and the United States, South Asia, East Asia

On January 20, 2014, Professor Rahim presented a lecture on The Bangladeshi and the Chinese Diaspora in Canada: A Comparative Perspective.

Summary:

Globalization, caused by imperialism, trade or labor migration, has originated the influx of settlers from the South to the North. Such influx is, both involuntary and voluntary, a response to political, social and economic insecurities in the homeland. The Canadian government has developed a flexible immigration policy that is in tune with meeting the increasing labor demands in local conditions, encouraged by the various immigrants in the building of Diaspora communities. Unlike the immigrant community, the Diaspora is a discrete community in space with a strong sense of cohesion. The purpose of this paper is to explore how Bangladeshis and Chinese immigrants’ have managed to maintain their transnational, hyphenated and diasporic identities against the constant motion of interpretation and re-interpretation through the struggle for community space and community representation. From this perspective, migratory souls have multiple identities and multiple homes –borderless beings. Living away from home does not mean longing for the ancestral lands has diminished; rather, diasporic cultural development often compensates through social coherence. By looking at various socio-cultural mechanisms of identity formation, this paper argues that immigrants’ identity is not fixed; rather, it is always in a state flux.  To explicate this hypothesis, a comparison of the Bangladeshi and the Chinese communities will be made to demonstrate whether there is a common strand (trend) between the experience of two communities or not.