Claiming Citizenship

Dr. Prema Kurien is Professor of Sociology at Syracuse University. She is a scholar of international migration, race, ethnicity, and religion. She adopts a transnational approach in her work and has also done research in India, to show how a variety of global factors, including developments in the country of origin, play a profound role in shaping community structures, cultures, and activism profiles of immigrants and even the second generation. Her work has been recognized with two career awards, three book awards, and three article awards, and she has received postdoctoral fellowships and grants from a wide variety of sources.

Prema Kurien has written an enlightening book full of rich material on how Indian and South Asian activists become politically engaged in the United States. Providing careful, insightful, and in-depth analysis, Claiming Citizenship sheds new light on the role of religious, caste, and racial differences as well as transnational connections in immigrant and second-generation political mobilization.

• Preface Introduction: Race, Religion, and the Political Formation of Indian AmericansChapter 1: Race, Transnationalism, and Mobilization: Early Indian AmericansChapter 2: Religion and Transnationalism: The Rise of Intra-Ethnic DivisionsChapter 3: Ethnic versus Pan-Ethnic Activism: Indian versus South Asian Groups Chapter 4: Enacting Cultural Citizenship: Majority versus Minority Religious Status and Contemporary Mobilization around Domestic IssuesChapter 5: Enacting Transnational Citizenship: Majority versus Minority Religious Status and Contemporary Mobilization around India-Centered IssuesChapter 6: Race, Religion, Generation, and Activism around U.S. Partisan Politics Conclusion: Claiming Citizenship: Race, Religion and Political Mobilization Appendix A: Indian American Organizations StudiedReferencesEndnotes