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Kinship,
Entrepreneurship and the Transnational circulation of assets
- Principal
Investigators
- Dr.
Roger Ballard
- Department
of Religions
- University
of Manchester
- Oxford
Road
- Manchester
M13 9PL
-
- Dr.
Katy Gardner
- School
of African and Asian Studies
- University
of Sussex
- Falmer
- Brighton
BN1 9QN
-
- Contact
- Dr
Roger Ballard
- Tel:
0161 275 3605
- Fax:
0161 275 3613
- Email:
r.ballard@man.ac.uk
- http://www.art.man.ac.uk/casas
-
- Duration
of Research
- September
1999 - 31 March 2002
-
Aims
and objectives
Focused
on three of the most salient components of Britain's South Asian population
– Mirpuris from Pakistan, Jullunduri Sikhs from India, and Sylhetis
from Bangladesh – this project has two central aims. Firstly, to
explore why each of these communities has followed – and is continuing
to follow – such a distinctive pattern of migration and family reunion;
and secondly, to establish why the Jullunduris have pressed their way
upwards through the employment market, the housing market, and the educational
system very much more rapidly than either the Mirpuris or the Sylhetis.
With
this in mind the project has three immediate objectives:
- To
explore the qualitative differences in the social, cultural and economic
resources on which the members of each group has drawn as in the process
of establishing ethnic colonies in Britain.
- To
examine the parallels and the differences in the ways in which each
group has used the resources of their extended kinship networks to
strategically recycle their human and financial assets on a global
scale.
- To
analyse the way in which these entrepreneurial strategies have affected
– and have in turn been affected by – differential patterns
of income-generation, investment and educational achievement at both
ends of the migratory chain.
Methodology/study
design
Since
the two investigators are no strangers to the field, their most immediate
aim will be to deepen and to update their knowledge base, and to do so
no less in quantitative than qualitative terms. Once this data is aboard,
they will set about constructing an analytical model with which to account
for the radical differences which are currently emerging between these
three otherwise far from dissimilar transnational communities.
Academic
and Policy implications
Apart
from its contribution to theoretical discussions in academic contexts,
the project will also have some much more immediate practical applications.
These will include:
- A
much more sharply informed understanding of why it is that some sections
of Britain's minority population currently appear to be much more
'deprived' than others.
- Perspectives
on the ways in which members of such groups might be encouraged to
make more effective use of their cultural capital, so enabling them
to emulate achievements of their more successful peers.
- Indications
as to the basis on which sending communities in the subcontinent might
seek to make more effective use of the resources available within
tier transnational diasporas.
- As
a source of well informed ethnographic insights of relevance to all
those engaged in delivering public services to members of Britain's
Mirpuri, Sylheti and Jullunduri populatiosn.
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