Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the story of transimperial and transnational circulations of South Asian doctors between South Asia, East Africa, North America, and Europe.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the story of transimperial and transnational circulations of South Asian doctors between South Asia, East Africa, North America, and Europe. This paper focuses on the relationships between mobile South Asian doctors, their professional work, and their wider networks. It investigates their multi-stage and multi-directional migrations across the colonial and post-colonial divide. The contributions of these doctors to 'building the Empire' and post-colonial global networks from a southern and often ambivalent - 'subaltern' - perspective will be analysed. They could draw on their transferable skills, as well as their membership - even if marginalized - to a global medical fraternity to adjust to the profound changes in the period of decolonization in South Asia and East Africa between 1947 and 1963. In this prolonged process their migratory and circulatory trajectories changed, often relating to both new opportunities as well as new obstacles, such as non-recognition of their qualifications. Thus, their 'connected histories' and 'intersecting local contexts' highlight the ambiguities of global subaltern elites in the twentieth century.