For at least the past decade, debates over the concept of diaspora have chastened its once celebratory invocations. Diaspora once sounded the clarion call for new formulations of space and identity in the social sciences and humanities. Today, its insurrectional cartography has been broken down to the point where diaspora’s evocative spatialities have been lost. The concept now lies bordered by the very boundaries of which it once confronted, and in its most imaginative articulations, strove to transgress. This talk aims to revitalize diaspora’s conceptual promise by turning to four geographies: inter-and trans-regional spaces, diasporic infrastructure, convergences in the city, and homeland-diaspora space frictions. As Dr. Ashutosh discusses with reference to the diversity of South Asian diasporas, these three geographies have the capacity to overturn the contemporary borders that tend to dominate research on migration.



Dr. Ishan Ashutosh is Assistant Professor of Geography at Indiana University-Bloomington. As a critical human geographer, Dr. Ashutosh’s work encompasses the study of migration, the politics of race and ethnicity from an international and comparative perspective, and urban studies. His research examines the multiple and contested representations of South Asia through projects situated at the intersection of migration and area studies. The first research project focuses on the transnational politics of South Asian diasporas in multiple urban centres in the United States and Canada. His second research project examines the constructions of South Asia in the social sciences as a site of knowledge production from within the discipline of geography and as Cold War area studies. Dr. Ashutosh holds a PhD in Geography from Syracuse University, a Master's degree in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and a BA in History from the State University of New York at Buffalo.