Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World (Globalization in Everyday Life)

Challenging the commonly held perception that immigrants' lives are shaped exclusively by their sending and receiving countries, Here, There, and Elsewhere breaks new ground by showing how immigrants are vectors of globalization who both produce and experience the interconnectedness of societies—not only the societies of origin and destination, but also, the societies in places beyond. Tahseen Shams posits a new concept for thinking about these places that are neither the immigrants' homeland nor hostland—the "elsewhere." Drawing on rich ethnographic data, interviews, and analysis of the social media activities of South Asian Muslim Americans, Shams uncovers how different dimensions of the immigrants' ethnic and religious identities connect them to different elsewheres in places as far-ranging as the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. Yet not all places in the world are elsewheres. How a faraway foreign land becomes salient to the immigrant's sense of self depends on an interplay of global hierarchies, homeland politics, and hostland dynamics. Referencing today's 24-hour news cycle and the ways that social media connects diverse places and peoples at the touch of a screen, Shams traces how the homeland, hostland, and elsewhere combine to affect the ways in which immigrants and their descendants understand themselves and are understood by others. "With this book, Tahseen Shams is the first to theorize the idea of elsewhere, and in so doing fills a major gap in migration literature. Taking Islam as a lens through which to study connections between migrants from different homelands, she finds that many South Asian Muslim Americans engage in political and social activities that aim to bring changes to Middle Eastern "elsewhere." Moreover, they evaluate mainstream U.S. politics based on American politicians' positions on Muslim-related issues "elsewhere." Elsewhere introduces new questions for understanding any migrant community's political participation and sense of belonging"-- Provided by publisher Cover Contents Acknowledgments 1 SOCIETIES INTERCONNECTED 2 BEYOND HERE AND THERE: The Multicentered Relational Framework 3 GLOBAL DIMENSIONS OF HOMELAND TIES 4 THE GEOPOLITICS OF BEING “GOOD MUSLIMS” I N AMERICA 5 “MUSLIMS IN DANGER” BOTH HERE AND ELSEWHERE 6 TAKING PRECAUTIONS HERE FOR “MUSLIMS IN CONFLICT” ELSEWHERE 7 HERE, THERE, AND ELSEWHERE Notes References Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z