Dr. Aminur Rahim: Difference between revisions

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.