Community, Memory, and Migration in a Globalizing World

Goans have long been a mobile community, but the story of their migrations has not been told until now. Using rarely-consulted archives across the world, as well as interviews with nearly 300 people of Goan origin, this book tells the fascinating story of how and why Goans went to East Africa and then on to Canada, the UK or to other parts of India. Goans helped to shape the contours of empires and the modern world. This study of globalization from below illuminates how Goans established communities in East Africa, and explores their experience of migration as well as their memories, and how these influenced their individual and collective identities. This is a connected history that juxtaposes and bridges the tensions between a structural, external account from a global perspective, and a personal, experiential, internal approach that reveals the thoughts, perceptions and memories of the migrants themselves. Its analyses of general phenomena of migration processes and of economic, social, cultural, and political developments are relevant beyond the specific case of the Goans. Providing novel insights into multi-stage migration movements in a long-term historical perspective, this book is a major contribution to scholarship in this field.