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Immigrant protests in Toronto: diaspora and Sri Lanka's civil war

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 17; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13621025.2013.780739

1469-3593

Ishan Ashutosh,

Migration and Labor Dynamics

Abstract As Sri Lanka's civil war escalated in the spring of 2009, protests led by the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora in Toronto appealed for an immediate ceasefire agreement between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Held simultaneously in Chennai, London, and Oslo, the protests called for an end to the hostilities in Sri Lanka as well as recognition of the legitimacy of Tamil Eelam, a separate nation state for Tamils in Sri Lanka. Based on interviews and media coverage in Toronto, this article investigates how these ‘immigrant protests’ constituted ‘transnational acts of citizenship’. I examine the Toronto protests through three acts in the protest that challenged the exclusions of national citizenship by moving from Toronto's streets, statist discourses of Canadian citizenship, and the violence of war in Sri Lanka. Although these transnational acts of citizenship were rendered inaudible in public culture, the article concludes by exploring the possibilities of citizenship and belonging in the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora following the defeat of the LTTE. Keywords: citizenshipdiasporaTamil EelamTorontoSri Lanka Notes 1. Estimates of Toronto's Sri Lankan Tamil population have widely varied. In the 2006 Census (Statistics Canada 2006 Statistics Canada, 2006. Census of Population, Statistics Canada catalogue no. 97-562-XCB2006006 (Toronto, Code535) [online]. Available from: http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/tbt/Rp-eng.cfm?TABID = 1&LANG = E&APATH = 3&DETAIL = 0&DIM = 0&FL = A&FREE = 0&GC = 01&GK = 1&GRP = 1&PID = 92333&PRID = 0&PTYPE = 88971,97154&S = 0&SHOWALL = 0&SUB = 0&Temporal = 2006&THEME = 80&VID = 0&VNAMEE = &VNAMEF = (http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/tbt/Rp-eng.cfm?TABID=1&LANG=E&APATH=3&DETAIL=0&DIM=0&FL=A&FREE=0&GC=01&GK=1&GRP=1&PID=92333&PRID=0&PTYPE=88971,97154&S=0&SHOWALL=0&SUB=0&Temporal=2006&THEME=80&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=) [Accessed 28 December 2011] [Google Scholar]), 29,245 persons in Toronto reported ‘Tamil’ as their ethnic origin, 80,615 as ‘Sri Lankan’, and 3360 as ‘Sinhalese’. Other estimates, based on interviews with the Tamil community, place the Sri Lankan Tamil population in Canada at over 200,000 and with 90% living in Toronto (Sandercock et al. 2004 Sandercock, L., Dickout, L. and Winkler, T. 2004. The quest for an inclusive city: an exploration of Sri Lankan Tamil experience of integration in Toronto and Vancouver. Research on immigration and integration in the metropolis, : 04–12. [Google Scholar]). During the Tamil protests, Toronto's Tamil population became a point of contention in the coverage in Toronto Star (English 2009 English, K., 2009. The truth about Tamil Statistics [online]. Toronto Star, 3 April. Available from: http://www.thestar.com/article/613815 [Accessed 28 December 2011] [Google Scholar]). 2. Eezham is an alternative spelling for Eelam.