Behind the Ties that Bind: Diaspora-making and Nation-building in China and India in Historical Perspective, 1850s-2010s

Abstract

Whereas the rare existing comparative studies of Chinese and Indian diaspora policies have focused on recent periods following economic restructuring in both countries, this article, using a historical perspective, looks at diaspora policies in both countries from the angle of conceptions of the nation. Comparing three specific periods – the early twentieth century, the period between the 1950s and the 1970s, and the period since the 1970s – the article argues that there was a similarity between China and India in terms of how conceptions of the nation expanded and contracted together with both domestic and international changes during these periods, in spite of differences in nationality laws. As such, it demonstrates that countries with nationality laws based on jus sanguinis are not necessarily always more inclusive towards diaspora populations than those with nationality laws based on jus soli. In both cases, there is a tension at work between a state-led paradigm that is territorial in nature and ethnic and cultural notions of nationhood.

Keywords:

• Diaspora policies
• China
• India
• nationalism
• transnationalism
• nationality laws
• huaqiao
• huaren
• NRI
• PIO

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the anonymous reviewers of Asian Studies Review for their insightful comments. The staff of the Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre in New Delhi provided data on its activities. Members of the Global Research Forum on Transnationalism and Diaspora offered relevant feedback at a seminar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in December 2012. Finally, the author extends thanks to the audience of the International Conference on the New Horizons of Diasporic Chinese Studies, held at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore in March 2014, for their suggestions for improvement. All errors remain my own.

Notes

1. “Global fora” include the Global Forum on Migration and Development, founded in 2007, and the Global Diaspora Forum, founded in 2011. An example of a “handbook” is Agunias and Newland (2012).

2. More specifically, it was a response to efforts at the naturalisation of Qing subjects in Dutch Java. See Shao (2009) and To (2014).