Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia

"‬This book tells an extraordinary story,‭ ‬which has been very little studied.‭ ‬It is about what Sunil Amrith calls‭ “‬Asia’s age of migration‭”‬ in the late‭ ‬19th and early‭ ‬20th century,‭ ‬when‭ ‬27‭ ‬million Indians and almost‭ ‬20‭ ‬million Chinese emigrated to Southeast Asia.‭ ‬These patterns of migration were very different from the much more familiar Atlantic migrations.‭ ‬Many of the migrants were undocumented and literally nameless.‭ ‬Amrith quotes a remark by an earlier demographer:‭ “‬Migration is the result of an idea‭ – ‬an idea of what lies somewhere else.‭”‬ This book really was a revelation to me.‬ It shows the scale of migration within Asia over the past‭ ‬150‭ ‬years and the extent to which modern Asia,‭ ‬including the great successes of Asian economies,‭ ‬has been shaped by migration.‭ ‬It is a very different pattern of migration,‭ ‬of circular and short-term migration,‭ ‬of what Amrith calls sojourning,‭ ‬which hasn’t really been studied until now.‭ ‬And also it was a revelation about the possibilities of finding archives of migrants who were nameless and often illiterate but who nonetheless shaped the countries to which they moved. I think it makes one conceive of both China and India,‭ ‬as well as Southeast Asian countries,‭ ‬as transnational societies in a way that hasn’t really been studied in great detail.‭ ‬And the diasporas of both India and China are hugely important in the world economy."