Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

Being an immigrant from South India to North America is not only just a physical shift, but an incessant voyage to identifying and disidentifying with oneself. I am no more (East) Indian in the new place, neither have become (fully) Canadian, as perceived by people in Canada. There is a bridge of colonialism - ceased but existing; dilapidated, but strong – that connect the Indian in me with Canada - well not so exactly with Canada, but with Aboriginals in Canada. I identify myself with Indigenous Canadians through this post-colonial connection. The survival of an immigrant in Canada is slowly constructed through colonial disdains manifested in many ways. This paper shares autoethnographic reflections on survival in Canada as an immigrant, post-colonial connections, and withering identity.