Living the Way the World Does: Global Indians in the Remaking of Kolkata

Abstract

The transnational activities of migrants continue to gain attention from scholars, national governments, international institutions, and social movements. The migration–development nexus is of special interest and includes the various ways in which both recent and more established diasporas engage in reshaping their former homes. This article considers the proliferation of gated communities and ethnic enclaves meant to house (primarily elite) return migrants in several cities of the Global South using the case of luxury condominium developments in the Indian city of Kolkata. These buildings are marketed equally to overseas Indians as second homes and to locals who wish to inhabit a transnational, cosmopolitan lifestyle in these spaces. The analysis interrogates the figure of the global Indian—a character central to the design and marketing of these developments—in terms of how it has been mythologized, monopolized, and deployed to help reshape the city. Interviews with apartment owners—both local and nonresident—from one of the most prominent of these international-style projects in Kolkata highlight the disjuncture between the assumed lifestyle of transnational migrants and the buildings meant to house them. The findings suggest that we need to think more carefully and critically about what kinds of changes are made possible by either the involvement or the invocation of wealthy overseas communities in development within their former countries.

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