Philanthropy,Remittances and Identity: The Case of London-based Sri Lankans

Abstract

Although expatriate remittances are a major topic of study in the world of development, relatively little research has taken place on the motives and meanings of international remittances. This article examines Sri Lankan expatriates in the United Kingdom. It focuses on charitable and philanthropic activities and argues that these can only be understood within the context of the personal histories of the donors.

Keywords

Expatriates remittances charity identity Sri Lanka

Introduction

Remittances are seen as an increasingly important element in the development process.¹

As defined by the World Bank (2015), remittances are the sum of workers’ remittances, compensation of employees and migrants’ transfers.

At a global level, the World Bank (WB) estimates that the total value of remittances from migrants amounts to $414 billion, a figure which dwarfs official development assistance to the developing world. In the early years of the 21st century, a flurry of interest in the developmental potential of migrant remittances perhaps overestimated their significance and potential, but even though later observers have been less optimistic, remittances remain an extremely important element in the development process. Not surprisingly, this has led to a vast academic and policy literature debating the degree to which such remittances are conducive to development in the receiving countries.²

Perhaps the best discussions of this debate are to be found in de Haas (2005, 2010) and Malambo and Ratha (2005).

But at the same time, remarkably little is known about the nature of these transfers, the motives that lie behind them and the meanings they have for those who engage in such transfers.

For Sri Lanka, remittances are a major element of foreign exchange earnings. Estimates vary between $4.6 billion and $6 billion per year, roughly 8 per cent of the GDP and greater than the total value of Sri Lanka’s foreign exchange reserves. The vast bulk of these remittances comes from short-term labour migrants, mainly to the Middle East. This has grown rapidly over the last few decades and for 2016 the WB estimates the total as being over $3 billion. But as well as this, remittances from Sri Lankans living in other parts of the world, notably Europe and North America, are also important. The WB estimates that around $504 million is transferred from the United Kingdom and $300 million from Italy to Sri Lanka each year.

One element of remittances consists of gifts—charitable and philanthropic transfers—and this is the topic of the present article. It is a product of a research project concerned with the role, both actual and potential, of charity and philanthropy in supporting development in Sri Lanka.³

The research project, ‘Charity, Philanthropy and Development in Colombo’, was funded by the UK’s Department for International Development through the Economic and Social Research Council. In Colombo, we were associated with the Centre for Poverty Analysis although it was not involved in the work in the United Kingdom. The authors would like to thank their co-researchers, Professor Osella and Dr Widger, for their help and advice.

The focus of our research was on Sri Lankan charitable and philanthropic activities, and thus most of our research was based in Colombo. But we also carried out less intensive research both in the Gulf (Professor Osella) and in London (Professor Stirrat and Ms Kabir) with the aim of understanding the processes underlying the charitable activities of expatriate Sri Lankans.

The field research in London took place in the last quarter of 2013 and was conducted by both authors, usually working together. We used pre-existing contacts as one starting point for our research but also received crucial assistance from International Alert who put us in touch with a wider range of contacts. From these, we ‘snowballed’ our original set of contacts providing further contacts and information about events. This was by no means a perfect research model but given the time and resources available was probably the best we could do.⁴

In all we conducted 24 interviews, usually with individuals but at times with small groups. In addition, we attended various events organised by expatriate Sri Lankans.

It also led to some major biases in our coverage of Sri Lankans in London. So our coverage of the Tamil population of London, by far the largest group of Sri Lankans, is very weak. Our only defence here is that it seems much more research has been and is being done amongst Tamils and much less on Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Muslim migrants to Europe.⁵

On Europe, this literature includes Erdal (2006), Hess and Korf (2014), Orjuela (2008) and McDowell (1996). An exception concerns the Sinhalese community in Italy, see Brown (2011, 2014, 2016), Nare (2010), Pathirage and Collyer (2011) and Henayaka-Lochbihler and Lambusta (2004). On Canada, see Cheran (2007) and Hyndman (2003) amongst others. Much of the literature on Sri Lankan Tamils in the United Kingdom focuses in one way or another on religion and identity. See, for instance, David (2007, 2008, 2012), Jones (2015, 2016) and Maunaguru (2015). Collyer and Ansar (2009) discuss returnees to Sri Lanka whilst there is a sizeable literature on migrants to the Gulf. See, for instance, Gamburd (1995, 2000).

The article starts with a short presentation of the history of Sri Lankan migration to the United Kingdom. It then moves on to present a picture of contemporary forms of charitable and philanthropic action amongst Sri Lankans (and people of Sri Lankan descent) in London. This, in turn, raises two main issues: first, how charity relates to other forms of transfer (remittances) to Sri Lanka, and second, the meanings these acts have for the people involved. The overall themes that emerge from our work in London are, first, that charity and philanthropy cannot be divorced from other forms of transfers (of money, things or effort). At a broad level, the forms of what might be called charitable actions depends on two main factors: the point at which individuals and groups had come to the United Kingdom, and second (and obviously related) the changing political context of Sri Lanka. However, what is perhaps more significant is the highly personalised nature of charitable actions. The character, form and nature of charitable donations and remittances depend upon the particular personal experience of the expatriate donor.

A (Very) Short History of Sri Lankan Migration to the United Kingdom⁶
6
This section basically follows the periodicisation used by writers such as Deegalle (2013) and van Hear (2013); van Hear is the most detailed but it is primarily concerned with Tamils.

Sri Lankans have been coming to the United Kingdom since the nineteenth century.⁷

Perhaps the most famous is Ananda Coomaraswamy who was not only educated in the United Kingdom but lived in the country for 11 years in the early twentieth century.

Most came for higher education, especially in law and medicine; a few settled down. By 1949, there were sufficient Sri Lankans in the United Kingdom to support the formation of the Sri Lankan Women’s Association in the UK (SLWAUK), the subject of one of the few academic studies of middle-class professional Sri Lankan migrants to the United Kingdom (Jazeel 2006).

Precise figures of the numbers involved are not easily available. According to Siddhisena and White (1999; quoted in van Hear 2013: 242), the total number of Sri Lankans reported in the 1951 UK census was under 6,500 but over the next 40 years, the total rose to almost 40,000 (Deegalle 2013). By 2001, the UK census reported that there were 67,832 Sri Lankan residents in the United Kingdom (Deegalle 2013). From then onwards, UK national census figures do not distinguish Sri Lankans as a separate category but Deegalle quotes the Labour Force Survey of 2006 which claimed that there were approximately 102,950 Sri Lankan-born immigrants in the United Kingdom.

From the 1960s onwards, many of these immigrants were Tamil professionals who saw little future for themselves in an increasingly Sinhala-dominated country, but there were also Sinhalese professionals seeking opportunities in the United Kingdom. After 1983, a new wave of migrants fleeing the effects of the war in the north and east of Sri Lanka came to Britain but there were also considerable numbers of Sinhalese escaping state persecution in the aftermath of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna insurrection of the early 1990s. Between 1985 and 2003, there were over 50,000 asylum applications to the United Kingdom from Sri Lankans (van Heer 2014: 241), the vast majority Tamils. With much more difficult application processes imposed by the UK government (coupled with a pause in the conflict after 2002), the number of asylum seekers fell in the present century with minor peaks in the last stages of the conflict. More recently, there has been some movement of Tamils who had obtained citizenship in the European Community (EC) into the United Kingdom (Lindley and van Hear 2007).

Thus, there is considerable uncertainty as to the number of expatriate Sri Lankans and people who claim Sri Lankan ancestry presently in the United Kingdom. The WB estimates that in 2013 there was a total of 134,000 Sri Lankans in the United Kingdom, but this excludes those who have adopted UK citizenship and UK citizens with a Sri Lankan heritage. What is clear is that the overwhelming majority of Sri Lankans (and people of Sri Lankan descent) in the United Kingdom are Tamils.⁸

This is true for Europe as a whole. The only European country where Sinhalese migrants outnumber Tamils is Italy. See Henayaka-Lochbihler and Lambusta (2004).

Estimates from Sri Lankans residents in the United Kingdom vary widely but perhaps between 200,000 and 250,000 is a safe figure, mostly concentrated in London, the South-East of England and to a lesser extent the Midlands. Numbers of Sinhalese are also unclear: perhaps 50,000, again concentrated in London and the South-East although it seems in different neighbourhoods from the Tamils. Finally there are Muslims who form a much smaller group of immigrants, informants giving estimates of between 20,000 and 30,000.

Ethnicity is only one axis against which one can view the Sri Lankan population of the United Kingdom. Another, in some ways as significant, is class. As has already been noted, the migrants of the 1950s and 1960s were generally middle-class professionals and there has been a continuing stream of professionals into the country. As far as the Sinhalese are concerned, it would seem that many migrants have continued to come from this sort of class background although there are others in lower status occupations, for instance, working in and running restaurants or small shops. Some are students who have remained in the United Kingdom after training. Only a few, arriving mainly in the 1990s, were fleeing persecution.

Amongst the Tamils, however, professionals form a minority. Certainly there are Tamil doctors and lawyers practicing in the United Kingdom whilst others have come to the United Kingdom as students and later gained professional positions. But the majority of those fleeing the war and its aftermath have been non-professionals. The stereotypical Tamil immigrant as described by Daniel and Thangaraja (1995) started out working in petrol stations, the more successful moving into the management and at times ownership of such ventures. Others moved into petty trading, working in restaurants and running small shops. In South-East England, a very large number of petrol stations are staffed by Tamils (occasionally Sinhalese) although the ownership of these undertakings is often unclear. It also has to be mentioned that there are a number of extremely wealthy Tamil businessmen who originated in Sri Lanka, two of whom run successful international communications firms.

Charity and Immigrant Society

Middle-class Giving

In his article on the SLWAUK, Jazeel points out that besides providing a support network for Sri Lankan women in the United Kingdom, and generally working to further the status of Sri Lankan women, the organisation also had a strong charitable element. He remarks on the humanitarian and welfare aspects of the organisation from the 1950s and 1960s onwards and the establishment of the Laurel Casinader Educational Scheme to support educational scholarships for girls and young women in Sri Lanka. Money was raised through various social events which also supplied the ‘glue’ holding the society together.

Besides the SLWAUK, and perhaps more important, was the establishment of a string of old pupil associations (OPAs), the products of particular elite schools (e.g., Royal College; St Thomas’s; Kandy Girls High School) forming societies and associations. These again were social and networking organisations but also raised funds (mainly it seems through dinner dances) to assist their old schools and their students. It is said that in the early days (i.e., the 1960s), these charitable activities were orientated towards supporting retired teachers but later moved on to more general support for schools through financial assistance to building projects, libraries and laboratory equipment as well as scholarships and general assistance to poor students.

In 1989, six of the OPAs came together to establish an annual Festival of Cricket. This grew rapidly: by 2013, there were 28 OPAs participating in the festival. Again, charitable activities are only part of the rationale behind their formation and continuing existence. They act as social networks of support especially through frequent dinner dances and lunches which also generate charitable funds.

All these organisations appear to share a set of common features. First, ethnicity does not appear to be an issue (although more will be said about that later). Members of all Sri Lankan communities belong to the various organisations. Linked to this is a conscious repudiation of party politics and a claim to political neutrality. Third, they support both Sri Lankan and British charities, the Festival of Cricket giving assistance to cancer charities in both countries. And finally, they are overwhelmingly middle class.

In some ways, charitable action is secondary to their role as social groupings and provides a veneer which covers (perhaps) more mundane interests such as engaging in a nostalgia for ‘home’ whilst at the same time assisting Sri Lankans to integrate with (or at least attune themselves) to British society. A glance at the programme for the Festival of Cricket reads rather like the programme for a local British country fair complete with picnics, food stalls and music, although with a Sri Lankan air to them.

As well as the OPAs, there are also a series of professional organisations. The oldest of these, the Sri Lanka Medical and Dental Association in the UK (SLMDAUK), was founded in 1982 (the dentists being added later) and now claims 450 members. More recently established organisations include the Association of Sri Lankan Lawyers, established in 2003, and the Society of Sri Lankan Engineers and Scientists, established in 2007. In addition, there is an overarching umbrella organisation, the Association of Professional Sri Lankans in the UK founded in 2004.

These professional organisations are all involved in various forms of charitable work aimed at Sri Lanka, the best established being the SLMDAUK which provides support for medical training, as well as providing networking facilities for Sri Lankans within the United Kingdom. However, unlike the OPAs, they are much more closely related to political developments in Sri Lanka. All are overwhelmingly Sinhalese in terms of membership and are closely associated with the official government of Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan High Commissioner in the United Kingdom is a central figure in at least two of these organisations.⁹

We tried and failed on a number of occasions to arrange an interview with the Sri Lankan High Commissioner in London.

Their establishment and their role have to be seen in part as a reaction to increasing numbers of Tamil migrants to the United Kingdom and the concomitant growth of support for Tamil separatism in Sri Lanka.

Not all organisations founded in the late twentieth century were centred on schools or shared professional interests. An organisation called Hela Sarana was founded in 1996 by a group of Sri Lankan professionals with the express purpose of supporting charitable activities in Sri Lanka, particularly health, education and the general ‘quality of life’ of poor Sri Lankans. Again, this organisation appears to be overwhelmingly dominated by Sinhalese and focuses its activities in non-Tamil areas of Sri Lanka. Another such organisation is the Meththa Foundation established in 1995 with the aim of supporting disabled people in Sri Lanka. This is much less Sinhalese dominated and works in both the north and south of Sri Lanka, concentrating in particular on the supply of artificial limbs to victims of the war.

From Sri Lankan Professionals to Tamil Workers

Most of the support for the OPAs and events such as the Festival of Cricket comes from an ageing population of expatriate professionals and, to a lesser extent, their professionally trained offspring and more recent professional arrivals. But from the 1980s onwards as increasing numbers of relatively young and non-professional immigrants and asylum seekers arrived in the country, and as relations between the Sinhalese state and Tamil separatists became more and more violent, so the face of charity in the United Kingdom also changed.¹⁰

Perhaps the best literature on charity and remittances amongst Tamil expatriate groups is concerned with Europe and Canada. On Europe, see, for instance, Brun and van Heer (2012), Erdal (2006), Hess and Korf (2014) and Orjuella (2008). On Canada, see Cheran (2007), Hyndman (2003) and Wayland (2004).

One aspect of this was the establishment of a series of charities aimed at the amelioration of suffering in conflict zones. Associations such as the Arobanam Children Fund (established in 1992) and the Amparai District Vipulananda Rehabilitation Organisation (founded in 2001) channelled donations to support children’s homes in Tamil areas of Sri Lanka. How far these organisations were able to maintain a politically neutral stance is unclear: certainly pro-LTTE organisations became increasingly important in organising what could broadly be called ‘charitable activities’. So organisations such as the Tamil Relief Organisation (TRO) and linked bodies such as The Economic Consultancy House (TECH) were active in raising money from the new wave of immigrants (as well as trying—with less success we are told—to pressurise older established immigrants).¹¹

There was also an organisation called the Tamil Eelam Economic Development Organisation UK, presumably pro-LTTE and reportedly active in raising donations for charitable work in Sri Lanka.

As far as the Festival of Cricket was concerned, the major change came in 2005 with the withdrawal of Tamil schools (although not individual Tamils) from the tournament reportedly under duress from the LTTE, although individual OPAs continued to be important and continued to support their schools in the north and east of Sri Lanka.¹²

The year 2005 also saw the establishment of the British Tamils Cricket League, although it is not clear whether these two events are linked.

For the majority of new arrivals, the OPAs and professional associations were largely irrelevant to their lives, and their involvement in organisations became much more ethnically based. New arrivals who did take part in these OPAs were mainly those sent to the United Kingdom for education or to gain professional qualifications.

The experience of the Sri Lankan civil war also created new, non-ethnically based organisations. One of these was the UK Sri Lanka Trauma Group (UKSLTG) set up in 1996 as a response to traumas induced by the civil war in Sri Lanka. The UKSLTG in many ways continues an older tradition which attempts to be blind to ethnic difference. It includes not only Sinhalese and Tamil members but also a considerable number of UK citizens who do not have a Sri Lankan background.

The 2004 Tsunami and its Aftermath: Sinhalese in the United Kingdom

The 2004 tsunami generated a whole new range of organisations in the United Kingdom devoted to ‘helping’ Sri Lanka. Most of these were formed by people with no direct connection with Sri Lanka but many were founded by first- or second-generation Sri Lankans. Most were very small: a family or group of friends collecting money or goods from the local area. And most were directly related to areas with which they had kinship ties. Much of the assistance took the form of goods especially clothes, but later money became more important, and this was related in turn to a rise in volunteer involvement.¹³

Examples of such small charitable organisations include Ghekko, founded in 2005 by a small group of second-generation university students, and Help Lanka, founded by a long-term Sinhalese resident.

One of the features of the first wave of Sri Lankan migrants to the United Kingdom was the infrequency with which they returned to Sri Lanka. But as airfares fell, so increasingly Sri Lankans in the United Kingdom (especially the Sinhalese who could return relatively easily) began to visit the country on a regular basis. At first, this does not seem to have been associated with charitable or voluntary activities, but after the tsunami, charity and visiting Sri Lanka became, at least for a time, intricately related. Sri Lankans resident in the United Kingdom would visit Sri Lanka with goods and money to distribute to the victims of the tsunami, frequently on an ad hoc basis. A few established organisations which cross cut the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka took a long-term view of what their relationship might be but most were concerned with short-term direct humanitarian assistance. What remains unclear is how far tsunami-related charity from UK-based Sri Lankans was channelled through UK charities, for instance, the member organisations of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) and how much went through smaller Sri Lankan-controlled organisations.

Charity aimed at tsunami relief intersected with another new feature of charitable activities orientated towards Sri Lanka: the increasing importance of second-generation immigrants and new ways of thinking about what they were attempting to achieve through charitable activities.

Until the start of the present century, most charity was directed towards direct assistance to people and institutions in Sri Lanka. It was usually supportive of existing structures, for instance, elite schools, health provision or handouts to the poor. But the new generation of UK-born ‘Sri Lankans’, who were taken on holiday or for short periods to the country by their parents, began to develop other views as to what charity should support. Young Sinhalese began to visit Sri Lanka as volunteers, assisting in local level development activities and working with local Sri Lankan organisations. Charity became less about things and more about transfers of knowledge and skills. Brought up on the contemporary rhetoric of development, these new forms of charity became concerned not with relief but with empowerment, participation and gender issues. Put crudely, to couch the change in ‘development speak’, their view of charity moved from social protection to transformative development—at least in theory.

The 2004 Tsunami and its Aftermath: Tamils in the United Kingdom

Patterns of charitable actions amongst the Tamils appear to have followed much the same pattern of change since 2004—but with certain important differences.

As with the Sinhalese, the tsunami generated a host of small-scale individualistic efforts to channel assistance to kin (and others) in Sri Lanka. But it appears that the TRO and other related organisations attempted to control where and how the flows of relief were sent. So rather than a horde of small autonomous entities sending money and goods back to Sri Lanka there were relatively few channels through which charity flowed. And there was an attempt to ensure that resources avoided the main agencies, for instance, those in the DEC, which it was felt were controlled by the Sri Lankan state and directed towards Sinhala areas of the country.

Just as second-generation Sinhalese began to visit the country in increasing numbers so too did Tamils especially during the ceasefire period from 2002 onwards. These included not just UK-born visitors but also professional Tamils who had fled the country in the 1980s and 1990s, and many of them began to participate in short-term voluntary activities. For instance, doctors and other medical staff would provide a few weeks input into hospitals in the north; engineers would supply advice on buildings and lawyers would assist in legal cases. Much of this activity seems to have been under the aegis of the TRO, although by no means all.

After the conclusion of the war in 2009, the degree of control exercised by the TRO dropped massively, although it does seem that the remnants of the organisation continue to be active in the United Kingdom. Professionals continue to visit Sri Lanka on a short-term basis providing voluntary services. Younger Tamils (usually UK-born) are active in community-based activities providing voluntary assistance as well as financial resources, often in collaboration with local organisations. Some of these organisations, for instance, Serendip Children’s Home (founded in 2009) and Assist Resettlement and Renaissance (founded in 2012) focus on traditional forms of charity in the sense of providing humanitarian and educational relief for victims of the war. Others are more ambitious, for instance, Future for Jaffna. This was established in 2011 by a second-generation Sri Lankan Tamil primarily concerned not with relief but with encouraging entrepreneurial activities in the north of Sri Lanka. There also appears to be a considerable amount of assistance directed towards the reconstruction and new construction of Hindu temples in the north and north-east, although whether these funds come from UK-based temples or from wealthy individuals is not clear.

Final mention should be made of two sizeable foundations, the Lebara Trust and the Gnanam Foundation, both established by successful Tamil refugees who run communications companies based in the United Kingdom but active in other parts of the world, especially Africa. These foundations are very much CSR-style organisations and their charitable activities are not limited to Sri Lanka or the Tamil diaspora but support charitable ventures (especially education and health—including the rehabilitation of war wounded) in other countries where they have commercial interests.

The Overall Picture

The result then is that the contemporary picture of charitable activities amongst the Sri Lankan community in London is very mixed. On the one hand, there are the older forms of philanthropy which centre on charitable donations to schools and medical facilities. On the other are forms of charitable activity which aim not just to ameliorate existing conditions but on the transformation, albeit at a local level, of the structures which cause suffering and poverty. Factors such as class, ethnicity and whether people are first- or second-generation immigrants are crucial dimensions which determine what form of philanthropy particular individuals and groups engage in. But to understand this in more detail, we have to turn to the meanings which underlie charitable action and the unstable boundary between altruism and obligation.

The Meanings of Giving

Seeking to understand the motivations which drive charitable activities raises a host of issues. Giving is in itself a symbolic act and so too are the statements people make about their motives for giving. Here all we can do is indicate the broad parameters within which people understand and articulate their giving behaviour.

At the most general level, the people we talked with see giving as being part of what it means to be a decent human being: the question ‘why give’ is in some senses rather meaningless. For many, it is part of being Sri Lankan, charitable actions being presented as something they view as demarcating themselves from what they see as the more self-interested nature of British society.¹⁴

But according to the World Giving Index, the United Kingdom is a more ‘generous’ society than is Sri Lanka. See Charities Aid Foundation (2015).

Most frequently giving is related to religion and is seen as fulfilling religious obligations. So Buddhists often present their activities in terms of the Buddhist prescription to give, whether to Sri Lanka or to the Theravada viharas (temples) in London. So, for instance, a woman called Menik gives to the Chiswick vihara in the form of traditional daanes (alms giving) but also supports her OPA and is starting up a small charity to provide a dialysis machine to a hospital in Kandy. Similarly, Hindus see donations to temples both in the United Kingdom and in Sri Lanka as charitable actions whilst Christian Sri Lankans support churches and Christian organisations in both countries. For Muslims, a major issue is where the proceeds of their charitable activities should be focused: on poor Muslims in Sri Lanka; on those based in the United Kingdom or on the wider global Islamic community.

One striking feature, especially amongst longer established expatriates and second-generation Sri Lankans is that their charitable activities are not limited to Sri Lanka. Many are also active in UK-orientated forms of giving. At an individual level, we met people who were active not only in supporting charitable actions in the United Kingdom, making donations to their local vihara but also participating in charitable activities run by their local churches. So Menik, mentioned in the last paragraph, also supports local charities in her local neighbourhood. One prominent figure in the expatriate scene, active in the SLMDAUK, the APSLUK and in the Meththa Foundation, is also active in his local YMCA. Similarly, as has already been noted, the proceeds from the Festival of Cricket are shared between UK and Sri Lankan charities. Thus, charity plays a role in both reaffirming linkages with Sri Lanka whilst at the same time acknowledging participation in British society.

At the same time, charitable actions are also seen in terms of social obligations. One recurring theme amongst our interviewees was that they were in some sense in debt. Amongst the older immigrants, the main stress was on what they owed their schools and the training they had received in Sri Lanka. This was most evident amongst the members of OPAs. Here, funds collected from social events were sent back to support old teachers, buy books and other school equipment and fund scholarships for poor students at particular schools. Similarly, the SLMDAUK provides books and equipment for Sri Lankan medical schools.

The situation is slightly different amongst more recent arrivals, especially Tamil refugees. Here, there is a more direct sense of obligation: as van Hear has pointed out, many of these people, including asylum seekers, have been financed by close kin and families in their travels to the United Kingdom. Furthermore, the costs of migration have increased over the last two decades and many families in Sri Lanka paid out relatively large sums to intermediaries who facilitated the refugees’ journeys.¹⁵

van Hear quotes the costs involved as rising from $5,000 in the 1990s to $15,000 by 2010 (van Hear 2013).

Here, rather than transfers of objects (books, medical equipment, etc.), cash is predominantly important. And rather than fulfilling a generalised obligation to a school or an institution, obligations of kinship and family membership are more significant.¹⁶

Lindley and van Hear mention a Tamil, moving from Germany to the United Kingdom, who as well as paying for his four sisters’ marriages, was planning to support the marriages of his cousins and nieces! (Lindley and van Hear 2007).

Amongst our interviewees, we came across no cases of regular transfers of cash to Sri Lanka.¹⁷

This appears to differentiate Sri Lankan expatriates in the United Kingdom from the stereotypical remitters of much of the literature on remittances.

Rather when cash was sent, it was for specific purposes: house building and marriages of close kin or medical expenses for aged parents. But this may well be the result of the nature of our sample and the under-representation in it of young first-generation Tamil immigrants.

This sense of obligation, the need to ‘repay’, morphs into what was in effect a system of taxation. There is a measure of evidence from London (and much clearer in the material from Norway and Canada) that contributions to the TRO, ostensible ‘gifts’, were, in practice, a form of taxation (Erdal 2006; Human Rights Watch n.d.). LTTE-linked organisations either demanded regular contributions in the United Kingdom or forced contributions from recipients of transfers in Sri Lanka.¹⁸

For a fascinating discussion of diaspora street gangs, see Orjuela (2011).

Clearly this raises issues of what is and is not ‘charity’. If one accepts the colloquial sense of charity as a disinterested act of altruism then clearly these forced, or at least strongly encouraged, contributions fail to match up to the ideal. This relates to a long-running distinction in the literature on remittances which contrasts ‘altruism’ with ‘self-interest’, or at least personal safety (Carling 2008; de Haas 2005; Fokkema, Cela and Ambrosetti 2013). Yet theoretically such a distinction is difficult to maintain, and as Mauss pointed out many years ago, there is no such thing as a ‘free’ gift, and all gifts are inherently ambiguous in terms of interest/disinterest. What appears to be voluntary may well be the result of internal pressures of guilt, shame and obligation, and such internal pressures can be just as demanding as the activities of the LTTE’s tax gatherers. Furthermore, acts of seeming pure uninterested charity can at the same time work to create and reinforce social relations and obligations. Similarly, religious giving by Buddhists, Christians and Muslims is both a matter of duty, of choice and associated with some sort of return. Gifts and other transfers are not unmotivated: they are ways of making statements about one’s sense of self and one’s relationship to wider social entities and networks. Rather than simple interested/disinterested or forced/unforced dichotomies, the situation is more complex and individual acts more ambivalent.

This, in turn, raises the vexed question of ‘identity’ and the degree to which transfers (including acts of charity) can be seen as an expression of identity. A common element in much of the literature on the Sri Lankan diaspora, especially the Tamil diaspora, is the changing nature of Tamil identity and its relationship to wider issues such as globalisation, transnational identities, an ‘identity crisis’ following the defeat of the LTTE and ways in which individuals have to deal with ‘multiple identities’ (Brun and van Hear 2012; George 2011; Hess and Korf 2014; O’Neill 2014; Orjuela 2008; Ratnapalan 2014). In terms of this approach, charitable acts and the changing landscape of charitable donations—indeed, any sort of transaction—become both a manifestation and constitutive of such identities.

Leaving aside issues concerning the degree to which many writers on identity reify what is ultimately a conceptual issue, what stands out to us is a tension between two very different forces, one from above attempting to impose a certain set of coherent and homogenous shared sensibilities and sense of being; the other from below building upon lived experience and personal social relationships to create a much more heterogeneous sense of self.

Pressure from above is most clearly seen in the context of Tamil diaspora politics. Here the LTTE (and other organisations) attempted to control the Tamil diaspora and create a common shared set of personal values amongst all Tamil émigrés. ‘Being Tamil’, the LTTE way is presented as central to any sense of self, and thus donations, ‘gifts’ to the cause, became an external expression of an internal state of being. In response, the Sri Lankan authorities, partly through the activities of the High Commission in London, sought to create alternative overarching organisations which stressed the Sri Lankan (and at times Sinhalese) nature of London-based émigrés.

Yet this is only one side of the story. The other consists of the individual personal experiences of both Tamils and Sinhalese in London and their relationship—real and imagined—with Sri Lanka. Such experiences, the subjectivities and sensitivities they generate, could be seen in terms of ‘identity’ but it seems to us that this is to impose a false sense of conformity on what is actually an extremely complex and ever-changing situation. Rather, the charitable behaviour of Sinhalese, Tamils and Sri Lankan Muslims in London are expressions of personal life histories and the particular social contexts and networks within which they live.

Charitable activities of Sri Lankans (and people of Sri Lankan descent) in London are highly personalised. So to take two examples, one woman long resident in the United Kingdom actively organises support for kidney dialysis machines in Sri Lanka because, she explained, her husband died of kidney-related ailments. Another woman reported that she and her husband became active supporters and organisers of a small group supporting heart surgery in Sri Lanka because of the treatment her late husband received for his heart condition in the United Kingdom.¹⁹

This organisation is now dominated by and run by non-Sri Lankans. There are a number of cases where charitable organisations founded by Sri Lankans have in effect been taken over by non-Sri Lankans.

The personalised nature of charity is also evident in the organisations established after the tsunami. One of these, established by a Sri Lankan long resident in Surrey, began as a means of supplying assistance to relatives in a village in southern Sri Lanka directly affected by the tsunami. At first, it was simply a matter of sending money to buy food and clothes but he then began to create a local organisation, consisting predominantly of non-Sri Lankans resident in his immediate locality, which raised money for the reconstruction of housing. His organisation became a formal UK-based charity which continues to exist, focuses on health and education, and has links with one of the major charitable organisations in Sri Lanka. His organisation also facilitated the creation of linkages between 30 schools in the United Kingdom and in Sri Lanka. But his organisation still focuses its work on the area he comes from and the personal relations he has with the beneficiaries. Indeed, his charitable work has become a personal mission and appears to have reinvigorated his relationship with Sri Lanka raising questions of how he sees himself and his relationship with both British and Sri Lankan society.²⁰

For an illuminating discussion of philanthropy and donors’ motives, see Ruwanpura and Hollenbach (2014).

The personalised nature of charity is also apparent in the ways in which it is often entwined with the micro-politics of the donor’s place of origin. Many of the acts of charity which followed the tsunami fed through family networks, and given the class origin of many of the benefactors appears to have reinforced relations of patronage and inequality amongst the beneficiaries. This was quite apparent in the case of one married couple who told us that they had sent money, clothes and foodstuffs to a relation who then passed it on to the labourers who worked for their wider family. Need was not of primary importance: social linkages of obligation and dependence were.²¹

This is reminiscent of ways in which Nigerian diaspora activities reinforce existing inequalities in Nigeria (Lampart 2012).

In another case, a Muslim based in the United Kingdom distributed zakat through his relations to those who had been, in effect, family retainers.

The situation is slightly different amongst second-generation Sri Lankans, especially those of Sinhalese descent. Here charity is again highly personalised but is not in the same way linked to place of origin and kinship relations. This younger generation tends to avoid charitable actions involving the transfer of goods or money but rather offers their expertise in supporting village-level ‘development’. In part, this is a conscious reaction (if nor rejection) of their parents’ charitable activities and what they view as the paternalistic nature of such donations. And this is related to what they see as discovering their ‘true’ heritage, not the middle-class Sri Lankan milieu from which their parents originated but a more ‘authentic’ Sri Lanka. Whilst the vision they have may be romantic, they are also aware that these activities benefit themselves at least as much as those they seek to help. So, for instance, a small group of London-based graduates are very conscious that what they are doing is primarily concerned with their own personal issues centred on ‘being British’—yet having a Sri Lankan heritage—rather than with those they are ostensibly assisting.²²

Unfortunately we have not been able to benefit from Richard Anthony’s 2012 doctoral thesis on ‘British-born Tamils: A Study of Young Tamil Londoners’.

In effect, their charitable activities are a form of self-discovery, experimenting with the boundaries of their sense of who they are.

There is also a certain tension as to how far charitable activities should be orientated towards Sri Lanka. This is particularly evident amongst second-generation Muslims and Tamils. So, for instance, one second-generation Muslim we interviewed stressed that for him, being Muslim was more important than being of Sri Lankan Muslim descent. Rather than support Sri Lankan Muslim charitable activities, he prefers to channel his giving through organisations such as Islamic Relief which gives to all Muslims. Similarly, there are tensions amongst young second-generation Tamils as to how far to stress the wider Tamil community or a narrower identification with Sri Lankan Tamils.²³

For a much fuller discussion of pan-Tamil identity, see Jones (2014).

And finally, as has already been mentioned, many people give to UK- as well as Sri Lanka-orientated charities. In the most extreme cases, there are Sri Lankan-born UK citizens who are active in charitable organisations which have no link with Sri Lanka.

Conclusion

The picture which emerges from our research in London indicates that charity amongst the Sri Lankan diaspora is a highly personalised matter. Why people give, when they give and who they give to is a precipitate of a series of factors including how long they have been in the United Kingdom, the conditions that led to them coming to the United Kingdom, their class position, their ethnicity but most importantly their own life experiences. The result is a highly fragmented situation with a plethora of small organisations and societies as well as individual linkages between the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka. And, of course, it is also highly politicised, the LTTE and linked organisations attempting to manage and control Tamil giving (much less so now); the Government of Sri Lanka trying at least to coordinate forms of charity which deny such separatist tendencies.

Central to these forms of giving are preoccupations with identity in a changing world. By giving and giving in particular ways, people make statements about what they are and, perhaps more important, what they would like to be. In such a world, distinctions between self-interest and altruism break down. Giving is both altruistic and self-interested. But, perhaps most important of all, in the end charity is about the giver not the receiver. Whatever the donor may say or think, it is not primarily concerned with impacts on the recipients but with impacts on the donors: on how through giving people can transform, reinforce and recreate their own sense of self.

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Philanthropy,Remittances and Identity: The Case of London-based Sri Lankans

Abstract

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

A (Very) Short History of Sri Lankan Migration to the United Kingdom 6 6 This section basically follows the periodicisation used by writers such as Deegalle (2013) and van Hear (2013); van Hear is the most detailed but it is primarily concerned with Tamils.

Charity and Immigrant Society

Middle-class Giving

From Sri Lankan Professionals to Tamil Workers

The 2004 Tsunami and its Aftermath: Sinhalese in the United Kingdom

The 2004 Tsunami and its Aftermath: Tamils in the United Kingdom

The Overall Picture

The Meanings of Giving

Conclusion

References

A (Very) Short History of Sri Lankan Migration to the United Kingdom⁶
6
This section basically follows the periodicisation used by writers such as Deegalle (2013) and van Hear (2013); van Hear is the most detailed but it is primarily concerned with Tamils.