ABSTRACT
This chapter grows out of a multi-year ethnographic study of Indo-Trinidadian immigrants in the US and Canada. In our studies of migration and family life, we became interested in the construction of “Indo-Trinidadian” as an identity. This term emerged as a designation for people in the Indian diaspora who migrated to Trinidad in the 19th and 20th centuries in connection with indentureship. The term has formal and informal uses referring to ethnicity and nationality in official contexts, and to food, music, fashion, and the like in everyday life. As an identity, “Indo-Trinidadian” has a variety of cultural and political supports that operate both locally and transnationally. These supports become salient in new and complex ways for Indo-Trinidadians who make a second migration to North America. We argue that in Toronto and New York – major destinations for Indo-Trinidadian migrants – Indian identity becomes unsettled and problematic. In response, these migrants are called upon to do specific kinds of identity work to manage their identities as Indian, Trinidadian, and American or Canadian. Drawing upon our fieldwork, we describe several distinctive patterns that emerge as Indo-Trinidadians seek to work out places for themselves in their new cultural, political, and economic contexts.
