Diasporic encounters, sacred journeys: Ritual, normativity and the religious imagination among international Asian migrant women

Johnson, Mark; Werbner, Pnina

Abstract

This issue highlights recent ethnographic work that discloses migrant women's creative engagements with the people and landscapes in the places they migrate to. We challenge a dominant view that construes women international migrants from Asia as docile bodies shaped and constrained by their transnational (re)productive labours. And we reject simplistic contemporary formulations of transnational migration that posit a singular, homogeneous ‘transnational social field’. Three key processes, relatively ignored and under theorised are interrogated: diaspora formation, ritual performance and changing normativities. A focus on diaspora encourages us to move beyond a political and economic analysis to consider cultural practices, continuities and discontinuities in migrants' relationships with the people and places they travel to, as well as those left behind. A focus on ritual emphasises the significance of religious performance in the making of place and convivial sociality. A focus on normativity foregrounds the ways that people's affective relationships are performatively reworked and transgressed within and across discrepant diasporic spaces.

Citation

Johnson, M., & Werbner, P. (2010). Diasporic encounters, sacred journeys: Ritual, normativity and the religious imagination among international Asian migrant women. The Asia Pacific journal of anthropology, 11(3-4), 205-218. https://doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2010.517510

• Journal Article Type: Editorial
• Publication Date: Sep 1, 2010
• Deposit Date: Jan 12, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 23, 2017
• Journal: Asia Pacific journal of anthropology
• Print ISSN: 1444-2213
• Electronic ISSN: 1740-9314
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 3-4
• Article Number: PII 930084310
• Pages: 205-218
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2010.517510
• Keywords: Diaspora; Gender; Migration; Normativity; Religion; Ritual; Performance; Performativity
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/384048
• Publisher URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14442213.2010.517510
• Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Asia Pacific journal of anthropology on 24 Nov 2010, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14442213.2010.517510