Re-negotiating identity and reconciling cultural ambiguity in the Indian immigrant community in Sydney, Australia

Immigration in many ways represents a metamorphosis, change in families, social and political status and tensions between the traditional norms and values of a culture with the social and cultural expectations of the host country. The deterritorialised identities of the immigrants, in this case, the Indian diaspora in Australia, face what calls "a generalised condition of homelessness" that requires the negotiation of multiple identities across a variety of cultural settings. The 'imagined new world' of these immigrants are constructed from memory and represents a journey where they experience and express their nostalgia in various forms. This paper examines the intersections between ethnicity and identity as it is played out in the arena of the family, religion, education and other social and cultural contexts.