Exile and Memory-Making in the Age of Digitalization. Glimpses from a Case-Study on Sri-Lankan Tamil Refugee Women in Germany

The conditions of exile and diasporic existence have undergone a sea change in the past four decades for refugees and migrants from the island state of Sri Lanka in terms of communication. Whereas the refugee women who arrived in Germany in the 1980s were confronted with snail mail, postal correspondence, and expensive telephonic conversations with their loved ones, either left behind in war-torn Sri Lanka or in other destinations of refuge, the primary mode of communication and exchange of information for those who arrived after the turn of the century  has been the internet accompanied by intense coordination with those in exile, especially in other European countries, in North America, as well as those in Sri Lanka. Based on excerpts from an ethnographic study, this lecture poses a few questions regarding the tenuous and partly tenebrous relationship between communities-in-exile and their valiant, yet unfulfilled and thereby futile attempts at fighting for and creating a new nation-state. What is the nature of digital participation of a diaspora community and how does this compare to long distance nationalism as described by Benedict Anderson? Can political participation of a community-in-exile from afar be a legitimate substitute and be considered an act of democracy? Or is it a case of pulling the strings outside the territorial boundaries of a nation-state, or worded in a more circumspect manner and cautiously, an attempt at creating and carving a nation-state within another? Citizenship as a status in the country of residence seems to be viewed by my research subjects in a pragmatic manner with continued emotional moorings in Sri Lanka. In fact, transnational elections were conducted world-wide in January 2010 for a nation-state, Tamil Eelam, yet to be formed. Citizenship is indeed an act and an ongoing practice, enacted as a performance with protests marches on the one hand, and communicating in the common language Tamil as a symbolic site of belonging on the other hand. The creation of new memories to fall back on and take recourse to is an intrinsic aspect of memory-making in the diaspora which takes on a new life in the digitally connected age. The purpose is not to find simple answers or simplistic solutions to the queries raised and the questions posed. Instead, the role of memory-making is explored with reference to concrete, transient, and symbolic sites of memory.