Malaiyaka Tamil Youth in Sri Lanka: Values, Aspirations, and the Forming of a New Elite

Abstract

Radek Novotný Malaiyaka Tamil Youth in Sri Lanka: Values, Aspirations, and the Forming of a New Elite Malaiyaka Tamils are a minority and lowest-status group within the society of Sri Lanka. A majority of them were brought by the British colonialists from India to work on their coffee, later tea plantations in the course of the 19th and 20th century. They were deprived of their basic civil rights in 1940's. However, the Malaiyaka Tamils have been undergoing a process of considerable social-economic changes over the last three decades, which was launched especially by the attainment of citizenship, growth of educational opportunities, and growth of civic and political awareness. The young Malaiyaka Tamils have an opportunity to become the first relatively well-educated generation and new elite of their ethnic group. This work attempts to analyse the prospects of the Malaiyaka Tamils youth's upward social mobility process by investigating their aspirations, values, and attitudes. I conducted field research in the so-called Hill Country of Sri Lanka, and I collected data by using methods, especially, of semi-structured interviews and questionnaire survey. We can assume that the target population will undergo a process of structural upward social mobility, and will become the new social- economic...

Radek Novotný Malaiyaka Tamil Youth in Sri Lanka: Values, Aspirations, and the Forming of a New Elite Malaiyaka Tamils are a minority and lowest-status group within the society of Sri Lanka. A majority of them were brought by the British colonialists from India to work on their coffee, later tea plantations in the course of the 19th and 20th century. They were deprived of their basic civil rights in 1940's. However, the Malaiyaka Tamils have been undergoing a process of considerable social-economic changes over the last three decades, which was launched especially by the attainment of citizenship, growth of educational opportunities, and growth of civic and political awareness. The young Malaiyaka Tamils have an opportunity to become the first relatively well-educated generation and new elite of their ethnic group. This work attempts to analyse the prospects of the Malaiyaka Tamils youth's upward social mobility process by investigating their aspirations, values, and attitudes. I conducted field research in the so-called Hill Country of Sri Lanka, and I collected data by using methods, especially, of semi-structured interviews and questionnaire survey. We can assume that the target population will undergo a process of structural upward social mobility, and will become the new social- economic...