From Oslo with love : remittances, resistance and staying Tamil in Oslo and Batticaloa

Abstract

This thesis examines how the transnational social space between Oslo in Norway and Batticaloa in Sri Lanka is used as a tool for resistance and reinforcement from below, concluding that it both constructs and deconstructs the Tamil nation, and alters social structures such as gender and class in the home and host societies. Among Sri Lankan Tamils both at home and abroad, transnational networks and the information and goods travelling through them play an important role in building nationalistic ideologies. A shared Tamil identity has emerged, spanning state borders. Tamils from the East and the North have been united under the social construct of Tamilness. Financial and social remittances are used to both alter and reinforce dominant social structures, such as gender and class hierarchies, which in turn contribute the construct of the "nation"