Paper short abstract:

This presentation aims to elucidate the situation of religious minority diaspora within globalization, based on network, belonging, and identity. This is a case study of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community mainly in Japan, based on cultural anthropological fieldwork from May 2012 to the present.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation aims to elucidate the situation of religious minority diaspora within globalization, based on the following characteristics: network, gender, generations, belonging, and identity. This is a case study of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community mainly in Japan, based on cultural anthropological fieldwork from May 2012 to the present.

Ahmadiyya, founded in 1889, was one of the religious reformist movements started in British India. It now has tens of millions adherents (called Ahmadis) worldwide, especially in Europe, North America, and West Africa. Because of Pakistan government's persecution, their Fourth Caliph seek asylum in the United Kingdom in 1984. Since then Ahmadiyya headquartered in London.

Ahmadis' distinguishing traits are extreme pacifism, high systematization, and adoption of the caliphate. Headquarter office supervise organizations scattered all over the world.

In this presentation, the Ahmadis are described as being prepared to negotiate peacefully with others to keep their identity and to create their own place to live, without infringement from any nation-state and with human rights. We show how they strive to express their religious identity and to maintain that identity in host societies, and how they develop the next generation's religious identity in diaspora.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is about Japan Islamic Trust with special reference to the 2011 Tohoku quake. JIT has many South Asian Muslims as active members. They volunteered in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture. As JIT is a part of global Muslim network, many Muslim NGOs and indivisual supported their activities by donation.

Paper long abstract:

Focusing on a Muslim NGO and volunteers, this paper demonstrates that we live in the global age of mutual support. JIT is based on Ohtsuka Masjid in Tokyo and has many South Asian Muslims as active members. They visited the affected areas many times in the aftermath of the 3/11 disaster. Without any paid staff, they continued relief operations and food distribution for four months. They visited Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture in particular. Due to the nuclear crisis, many transport operators refused to deliver relief goods to Iwaki. The city became isolated, and those left behind in Iwaki experienced great difficulties. Therefore, JIT was welcomed in Iwaki and many Japanese took part in their volunteer activities. Prior to the 2011 quake, JIT had already established a coordinated domestic network through the Afghanistan project. Many Japanese regularly send clothes for Afghan refugees from various places in Japan. Using this network, they have collected food, water, and other goods. JIT arranged a part of relief operation in collaboration with a Buddhist temple too. Muslim NGOs, such as Muslim Aid in the UK and the Zakat Foundation in the USA, entrusted their donations to JIT. The total amount of these donations reached 40 million yen, which made the organization's long-term relief operations financially possible. Case study of JIT demonstrates that Muslim NGOs and their activities are arenas that enable us to help each other.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how the returnee refugees reconnect themselves through memory with the network of people lost from their lives as they continue to live in India.

Paper long abstract:

Since the early 1980s the Bangladeshi government had started a Bengali resettlement programme in Chittagong Hill Tracts. This triggered a 'Bengali-Pahari' problem in the form of "majority-minority" discourse and resulted in large scale displacement of the indigenous communities in the CHT. After nearly 10 years of peace talks, the government of Bangladesh and Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS) signed the Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord (also known as 'Peace Accord') on December 2, 1997, which ended two decades of armed conflict. The Task Force on the CHT, formed after signing the Accord, admitted that by the end of 1999, about 128,000 families (approximately 500,000 people) were internally displaced and good number of them were forced to go to India. They used to stay in the six refugee camps in the Tripura province for more than twelve years though the history of being refugee started with the building of the Kaptai Dam in 1950 when nearly 1,00,000 frustrated indigenous people, mostly Chakma, went to Tripura and was staying there as refugee.

This paper aims to explore how the returnee refugees reconnect themselves—through memory—with the network of people lost from their lives as they continue to live in India. It also examines the way of resuming the lost network through everyday forms of communication and artefacts. Finally, the paper underscores the forms of networking based on fictive relationship with disconnected loved ones in foreign lands.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the diverse spatial categories of international migration in Pakistan and its implications for the national politics and foreign relations.

Paper long abstract:

Through a spatial explanation, by taking into account the historical and geographic dimensions of international migration in Pakistan, this study maps out varied nature of social networks that are maintained across border. These social networks have been temporally intensified as well as spatially extended in terms of hegemonic and political discourses mediated through social media in present times. Given the differential access, use, and impact of social media, these social networks are unfolded in complicated political processes in and outside Pakistan. Therefore, international relations and foreign policy of Pakistan can be analyzed in the context of such spatialized synchronization of global networks. The study also shows that there is a correlation between national politics and spatially marked social networks. Having said this, it explores some spatial categories of international migration and its implications for national politics and foreign relations of the country.

Paper short abstract:

Following massive ICT take up across Pakistan, this paper looks at the ways SMS texting, Facebook and Twitter, in particular, have impacted on the maintenance of global networks of Pakistani kin and friendship networks. The impact is not, however, uniform across all segments of the population.

Paper long abstract:

Following the explosion of ICT take up across Pakistan, this paper looks at the ways SMS texting, Facebook and Twitter, in particular, have impacted on the maintenance of global networks of Pakistani kin and friendship networks. The impact is not, however, uniform across all segments of the population. Working with rural Punjabis, urban academics and civil servants, I discuss the differential access of different groups and the consequences for attitudes and behaviours expressed. The well rehearsed tensions between the moderate, liberal sections of the country and the more conservative, religious groups provides an interesting context in which to study the consequences of social media use on different global networks. Rural landowners appear to have shifted some agricultural and economic practices as a result of social media usage, despite many of these being banned or blocked by local internet providers. Urban academics, with historically greater access to international information and exchange, do not demonstrate such radical shifts in expressions of gender expectations or political ideologies. The study employs a combination of formal social networks analysis, interviews and free listing, to generate sociograms and attitudinal consensus analysis within the key domains of economic activities, gender and political views.