Sri Lankan Migrants to Australasia: From Indo to Pacific

This article examines what the geopolitical term 'Indo-Pacific' means for people in South Asia who have moved to Australia or New Zealand, thereby crossing multiple borders between the Indosphere and the Pacific region, which the geopolitical term 'Indo-Pacific' presents as linked. Seeking to understand how these migrants' imaginations of Indo-Pacific borders are constructed, 49 interviews were conducted with Sri Lankan forced and voluntary migrants in Australia and New Zealand. The findings show that the respondents perceived these two spheres not only as territorial, physical and legal entities but also as ideological and cultural opposites affecting their own border crossing. Thus, the geostrategic concept of the Indo-Pacific appears to be mainly an artificial category used and enforced by state-centric and global geopolitical agendas. It is not a directly relevant concept underpinning manifestations of new forms of identity construction among South Asian people migrating within the Indo-Pacific region.