In Missing, Sunaina Marr Maira explores how young South Asian Muslim immigrants living in the United States experienced and understood national belonging (or exclusion) at a particular moment in the history of U.S. imperialism: in the years immediately following September 11, 2001. Drawing on ethnographic research in a New England high school, Maira investigates the cultural dimensions of citizenship for South Asian Muslim students and their relationship to the state in the everyday contexts of education, labor, leisure, dissent, betrayal, and loss. The narratives of the mostly working-class youth she focuses on demonstrate how cultural citizenship is produced in school, at home, at work, and in popular culture. Maira examines how young South Asian Muslims made sense of the political and historical forces shaping their lives and developed their own forms of political critique and modes of dissent, which she links both to their experiences following September 11, 2001, and to a longer history of regimes of surveillance and repression in the United States.
Bringing grounded ethnographic analysis to the critique of U.S. empire, Maira teases out the ways that imperial power affects the everyday lives of young immigrants in the United States. She illuminates the paradoxes of national belonging, exclusion, alienation, and political expression facing a generation of Muslim youth coming of age at this particular moment. She also sheds new light on larger questions about civil rights, globalization, and U.S. foreign policy. Maira demonstrates that a particular subjectivity, the "imperial feeling" of the present historical moment, is linked not just to issues of war and terrorism but also to migration and work, popular culture and global media, family and belonging.
Industry Reviews
"This timely, illuminating, and politically engaged book looks at the lives of young South Asian immigrants in the United States ten years after the attacks in New York and Washington... Since 9/11, much analysis of young people and their place in the new world order has focused on culture and identity. This book addresses this balance, showing clearly how the events of 9/11 cannot be understood without being placed in their historical context and without being linked to other forms of American imperialism and displays of power. In this it succeeds admirably and uses this small group of young people in New Jersey to draw profound conclusions about identity, citizenship, and transnationalism." - Heather Montgomery, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute "Sunaina Marr Maira has authored one of the most important books of our time. Missing is a carefully researched and beautifully written account of the experiences, ideas, and opinions of South Asian Muslim immigrant children in the United States who find themselves deemed enemies of the state through no fault of their own in the aftermath of 9/11. Through a deft blend of ethnography and cultural critique, Maira demonstrates how the expanding reach and power of the nation-state overseas leads to new forms of disciplinary control at home: in schools, workplaces, media imagery, and immigration law." - George Lipsitz, author of Footsteps in the Dark: The Hidden Histories of Popular Music "How is national belonging experienced by South Asian teenagers in post-9/11 America? In a deeply thoughtful and compassionate ethnography, Sunaina Marr Maira explores this question, providing one of the most compelling analyses of citizenship in contemporary America. She introduces us to young people who worry about deportation, racism, and the challenges of schooling in another language, but who also possess an acute analysis of imperialism and are capable of forging a transnational community united as much by Bollywood as by their sudden elevation to Public Enemy Number 1. Maira's stunning achievement is to give vivid content to state power, providing an up close and personal look at how it is lived and resisted by those whom we relentlessly evict from political community." - Sherene H. Razack, author of Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims from Western Law and Politics
