'It's nice to be a little bit Indian': Identity Performativities of Indian Young Women in Diasporic Private, Public, and Online Spaces

This research investigates the processes of identity construction for first and second generation Indian young women living in the city of Brisbane, Australia, through a focus on their performativities within private, public, and online spaces. Situating the research within the recent ‘turn’ to emotion, embodiment and affect in the subdiscipline of young people’s geographies, the analysis tracks the emotional geographies of the young women. This is achieved by exploring the interconnections between emotions and space, and the young women’s feelings of being Indian and/or Australian at different times and in different places. Previous research of the Indian diaspora in Australia has concentrated on those living in Sydney and Melbourne, but little attention has been paid to young Indian migrants, especially young women, living in Brisbane. It is important, therefore, to shift the focus to Brisbane where the Indian diaspora is growing. The research adopts participatory methodologies, including PhotoVoice, to explore the processes through which first and second generation Indian young women negotiate their identities within different geographical and online locations. The locations include the private spaces of the home, public spaces in Australia, India, and overseas, and online spaces, such as Facebook, Instagram and online dating websites. The participatory research reveals the negotiations of the young women’s identities, which are influenced by their internalised understandings of what it means to be a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Indian girl in the diaspora. These understandings often translate into a shifting of performativities through multiple public and private spaces. The findings from this research illustrate the ways in which Indian young women in the diaspora exercise their own agency to resist or conform to the dominant discourses in the diaspora of how they should behave. The research also provides deeper insights into the emotional geographies of young women living in the Indian diaspora.This thesis is embargoed until July 2019.Submitted in the fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of the Sunshine Coast, 2018