With the Asian economic upsurge in the recent decades, diasporas have emerged as significant agencies of the cultural diplomacy of respective nation states. Two of the most significant diasporic communities, the Indians and the Chinese, have long histories of migration to different corners of the world with considerable visibilities in different geo-political demographies. They have created many different local sites of interaction between themselves and with the host communities, particularly in Southeast Asia. The emerging concepts of ‘knowledge economy’, ‘global capitalism’, new trends of entrepreneurship, and a gradual shift of the economic power to the East has brought about a revision of relationships between homeland, diasporas and the different host nation-states.

This interdisciplinary collection of essays offers a window onto the overseas Indian and Chinese communities in Asia. Contributors discuss the interactive role of the cultural and religious ‘other’, the diasporic absorption of local beliefs and customs, and the practical business networks and operational mechanisms unique to these communities.

Growing out of an international workshop organized by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore and the Centre of Asian Studies at the University of Hong Kong, this volume explores material, cultural and imaginative features of the immigrant communities and brings together these two important communities within a comparative framework, and offers an example for further cross-disciplinary comparative study of this type.