1st Edition
Home, Belonging and Memory in Migration Leaving and Living
This volume explores ideas of home, belonging and memory in migration through the social realities of leaving and living. It discusses themes and issues such as locating migrant subjectivities and belonging; sociability and wellbeing; the making of a village; bondage and seasonality; dislocation and domestic labour; women and work; gender and religion; Bhojpuri folksongs; folk music; experience; and the city to analyse the social and cultural dynamics of internal migration in India in historical perspectives. Departing from the dominant understanding of migration as an aberration impelled by economic factors, the book focuses on the centrality of migration in the making of society. Based on case studies from an array of geo-cultural regions from across India, the volume views migrants as active agents with their own determinations of selfhood and location.
Part of the series Migrations in South Asia, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of migration studies, refugee studies, gender studies, development studies, social work, political economy, social history, political studies, social and cultural anthropology, exclusion studies, sociology, and South Asian Studies.
1. Introduction: Locating Subjectivities and Belonging in Migration
Sadan and Pushpendra
Part I: Labouring to Freedom
2. The Aspiration of a ‘Civilised’, ‘Human’ and ‘Dignified’ Life: An Enquiry into Sociability, Sociality and Wellbeing of Migrants in an Indian Coalfield
Dhiraj Kumar Nite
3. Migration and the Making of a Village
Pushpendra
4. ‘Freedom Talk of Ploughmen’: Bondage and Seasonal Migration in East Central India
Sohini Sengupta
Part II: Engendering Migration
5. Gender and Migration: A Contemporary View
Samita Sen
6. Home Away from Home? Belonging and Dislocation among Migrant Domestic Workers
Anindita Chatterjee
7. Migration, Gender, and Religion: A Study of Malabar Migration and Gendered Christian Identity in Girideepam (1961–1971)
Sharon Rose
Part III: Migration, Memory and Longing
8. Making Sense of Migration: Reflections on the Contexts and Contents of Bhojpuri Women’s Folksongs
Asha Singh
9. The Idea of Home in a World of Circulation: Steam, Women, and Migration through Bhojpuri Folksongs
Nitin Sinha
10. Jaun-Yeun: Simultaneous Engagement of Konkani Migrants
Amita Bhide and Kalyani Vartak
11. Migration and Music: Incarnations of Biraha
Praveen Kumar Jha
Part IV: Negotiating the City Space
12. The Purusharthi Refugee: Sindhi Migrants in Jaipur’s Walled City
Garima Dhabhai
13. ‘Once a Migrant, Always a Migrant’? Negotiating Home and Belongingness in the City of Kolkata
Swati Mantri
14. Figure of the Migrant as Other: Experiences, Memory and the Politics of Belonging
Sadan
Index
Biography
Sadan is Associate Professor at the Centre for Social Studies, Surat, Gujarat, India.
Pushpendra is Professor and Chairperson at the Patna Centre of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bihar, India.
