BOOKS

This volume contains the collection of papers is about youth and migration and the attendant identity changes that take place as a result of their relocation. Their importance lay in this historical juncture in which they are written viz. the first decade of the 21st century. More than 100 years ago in the beginning of the 20th century the circumstances under which people of Indian and Chinese origin migrated were significantly different. Under colonialism they were exported, often against their will, as indentured labour to replace the more exploitative situation of slavery. In the beginning of the 21st century many are beginning to migrate voluntarily - armed with qualifications and experiences that are more self-fulfilling than what their forbears had to encounter. Ironically, few ever return to their ancestral homelands because the social change that they underwent during the colonial and post-colonial eras have made them more adaptive to western value systems. While they maintained their ethnic and linguistic boundaries for almost two centuries through racial discrimination and policies that marginalised them, in another hundred years from now their integration into social and economic systems that are more liberal in orientation will make interesting comparison.