Paper short abstract:

This paper looks into the everybday meaning of BRICS for South African Indians and the newly arrived Indians in South Africa. The paper draws on the ethnographic fieldwork done in the Vanderbijlpark industrial cluster in Gauteng province where Arcelor Mittal steel plant is located.

Paper long abstract:

As Europe and the United States look to the rest of the world for new market spaces, production inputs and strategic alliances, notions of BRICS, IBSA and G-20 have gained considerable currency among the global policymakers, scholars and businessmen. What do these mean hegemonically and practically for the ordinary people? How do they derive everyday meanings of changing global orders? My paper looks at the old and new trajectories of travel and migration from India to South Africa, which I consider necessarily embedded within broader political economy. In doing so, the focus of my analysis is the changing rhetoric about being Indian and being South African Indian, including the nuances of ethnicity, religion, languages and nationalisms involved in constructing such identities, and the way they relate to the channels of economic diplomacy deployed bilaterally and multilaterally. Drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork in the Vanderbijlpark industrial cluster of Gauteng province where Arcelor-Mittal steel plant is located, and aided by historical archives, policy analyses, and interviews with diplomats and ordinary citizens, this paper examines what BRICS means for Indians and South Africans beyond the strict denominations of trade and international relations.