Paper short abstract:

Cultural and social spheres in South Asia have crossed the national borders, although the partition of India brought identities divided by the nation-states. We can find transborder spaces in the life of South Asian migrants, which can beyond their identities brought by the nation-states categories.

Paper long abstract:

In the tension of international relations, there have been difficulties to look into transnational extent of cultural and social practices in South Asia. In the northwest of Indian subcontinent, the nation-states border has separated Punjab region. The border had to be crossed by refugees from both sides because of the partition of India/Pakistan. Their nationalism was linked with religious identities and strengthened through the India/Pakistan wars in which Punjab became the battlefield.

Now people living in both sides of the border have almost no connection each other. However, we can find a cultural sphere shared by the people crossing the border, although it is not focused that the common cultural and social base seen in both sides of Punjab in the context of international relations.

When we shed a light to South Asian migrants overseas, it is found that they have spaces to build a relation to people from other countries who have common cultural and social base. They realize that their cultural sphere can be shared each other beyond national border. Looking at a case of Punjabi migrants, also we can see they have experiences sharing cultural and social practices with the migrants from other side of Punjab. In this paper we discuss on transborder spaces from a case study of Punjabi migrants in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada. This paper examines experiences of South Asian Migrants, which have possibility to re-create the cultural and social identities beyond division by the nation-states border.