Navigating ties amid divides: South Asian panethnic identification and belonging

Abstract

This dissertation examines how South Asian identity is constructed, expressed, and negotiated within Canada’s multicultural and racialized context, with a specific focus on the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Drawing on forty-five in-depth interviews with participants of South Asian ancestry from eight national origins (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives), the study investigates how South Asian identity is understood, how ethnic and panethnic identifications are lived, and how homeland politics shape intergroup relations within the diaspora. Findings reveal differences across generations, ethnic groups, and subgroup size in how members of the South Asian diaspora engage with diasporic politics and construct and negotiate boundaries of ethnic and panethnic (South Asian) identity. While first-generation participants often maintained transnational engagement, second-generation participants often relied on their first-generation family members for sources of information. Access to information about transnational issues also varied by subgroup size, which in turn influenced the strength of participants’ connections to homeland issues. Historical conflicts such as India–Pakistan rivalries and the Khalistan movement persisted symbolically and particularly within certain spaces such as religious institutions or online platforms. Yet, participants often practiced ethical detachment or strategic silence to preserve community harmony. Situating these processes within the current Canadian context, this research demonstrates how South Asian identity functions simultaneously as an assigned and asserted category defined by state multiculturalism yet continually reinterpreted by individuals in everyday life. Participants described multiculturalism as offering both recognition and restriction, producing visibility without full inclusion. They strategically drew on varying labels such as South Asian, Desi, and Brown to navigate belonging, solidarity and racial visibility within their everyday practices of identity expression, transnational connections, and social engagement with those within and outside of the diaspora. In doing so, members of the diaspora work to construct and legitimize the identities that they claim to be a part of. Integrating theories of panethnicity and boundary work with postcolonial, diasporic, and racial formation theory, this research demonstrates how South Asian panethnicity in Canada is a negotiated, relational, and context-dependent practice of belonging, sustained through shared racialization yet marked by internal diversity and geopolitical memory.