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This is the first book to investigate how migrants and migrant rights activists work together to generate new forms of citizenship identities through the use of language. It begins with an overview of the important connection between language and the materiality of migration and discusses how the research on language in the context of migrant activism can advance one's understanding of belonging, of what it means to be a legitimate member of a community. The book then looks at the acts of citizenship in more detail, showing that not only the visible but also the audible presence of noncitizens is constitutive of struggles for citizenship. In conclusion, it reflects on the insights obtained from the study on multilingual migrant activism. The book is an original take on citizenship and community from the perspective of translation, and an alluring amalgamation of theory and detailed empirical analysis based on ethnographic case studies of Japan.

Narendra Modi’s energetic personal diplomacy and promise to make India a ‘leading power’, made soon after his landslide election victory in May 2014, surprised many analysts. Most had predicted that his government would concentrate on domestic issues, on the growth and development demanded by Indian voters, and that he lacked necessary experience in international relations. Instead, Modi’s time in office saw a concerted attempt to reinvent Indian foreign policy by replacing inherited understandings of its place in the world with one drawn largely from Hindu nationalist ideology. This book explores the drivers of this reinvention, arguing it arose from a combination of elite conviction and electoral calculation, and the impact it had on India’s international relations under Modi. It examines how Hindu nationalists understand the world and India’s place and role within it, as well as what we know about Modi’s thought and political style. It addresses, in turn, his government’s attempt to present India as a ‘world guru’ with teachings draw from its rich civilizational inheritance, its attempt to further regional prosperity and connectivity in South Asia, and its efforts to address national security vulnerabilities and manage relations with the major powers.

Are the sovereign states of Southeast Asia responsible actors that care and provide for their own as well as their neighbours? Do they act hospitably towards each other? This book examines an embryonic ‘ethos’ of intraregional responsibility among Southeast Asian countries. Unevenly distributed and more apparent in some states than others, the ethic has been expressed as acts of hospitality shown to victims of earthquakes, typhoons and other natural disasters, and increasingly in conflict situations. This sovereign responsibility to provide, or the ‘R2Provide’ as this book calls it, has manifested as forms of assistance – mediated through ASEAN but also bilaterally – given to neighbours coping with economic difficulties, problems of militancy and terrorism and the like. But unlike the global norm of the responsibility to protect (R2P), the R2Provide is noninterventionist in practice. More indirectly, it has also materialised as a mutual reliance by regional states on pacific and increasingly rules-based approaches to manage and, where feasible, resolve their disputes with one another. The contention is not that Southeast Asians have never, whether by commission or omission, behaved irresponsibly or unethically – the region’s belated and deficient response to the Rohingya refugee crisis is but one of many tragic examples – but that they are misrepresented as void of responsible conduct. By way of Emmanuel Levinas’ concept of ‘responsibility for the other’, the book provides an ethical-theoretical explanation for the R2Provide and sovereign responsibility in Southeast Asia.

Major powers have immense resources at their disposal, while minor powers are assumed to avoid wars and power politics due to structural and material constraints. This provokes the question why do some minor powers nonetheless decide to militarily engage their vastly stronger opponents, particularly major powers? Inspired by several theoretical insights, this book proposes a more complex framework of minor powers in interstate asymmetric conflict. It analyses five conditions highlighted by previous studies: domestic crisis, foreign support, window of opportunity, anomalous beliefs, and regime stability. The theoretical framework works well with a mixed-methods approach, a medium-N research design (Qualitative Comparative Analysis), and three case studies: Iraq (1990), Moldova (1992), and Serbia (1999). The book finds that by looking through the lenses of multiple theories, one can observe a more nuanced relationship how different conditions interact in impacting minor powers’ decisions. Ultimately, minor powers militarily engage major powers when facing a more important domestic crisis and when they also believe that they have a window of opportunity or support from another major power in order to constrain major powers’ capability and resolve. Looking at the current conflict in Syria, there are important policy implications given the observation that minor powers do and will continue to challenge major powers in the future.