WINTER SCHOOL IN MIGRATION STUDIES
PROGRAM
23-27 Jan. 2023
23rd January, 2023
Morning session (10-12)
Introduction
1. Presentation of the winter school by the course coordinators
2. A. K. M. Ahsan Ullah (Geography, U Brunei Darussalam, Brunei)
Title: Introduction to migration studies
Afternoon Session (1-4pm)
EU-India comparison on borders, mobility and citizenship
1. Rafella Puggioni (Political science, LUISS University, Italy/JGU, India)
Title: Evading immobility: COVID-19 and the creative citizen in Europe
Abstract: COVID-19 pandemic has made governments introduce (mobility) restrictions that
put our daily lives on hold. In the European Union (EU), mobility restrictions were imposed
virtually everywhere. Rather than focussing on restrictions, my intervention focuses on
counter-practices, that is, how people have countered traumatic experiences associated with
COVID-19 — that is unfreedom and immobility — through creative daily practices. A
scrutiny of people’s daily behaviour helps shed light on the actions, re-actions or in-actions
that people adopted in response to governmental policies. What will ultimately emerge is the
figure of the ‘creative citizen’, that is not the ‘docile body’ that accepts passively any
governmental restrictions but the dynamic and creative citizen who makes use of all the
available (mobility) gaps to re-organizing life inside and outside their home, re-arranging
social life, and finding ways to inventing new modalities of public protests.
2. Salah Punathil (Sociology, U Hyderabad, India/U Gottingen, Germany)
Title: Migration and precarious citizenship in India
Abstract: A new National Register of Citizens in 2019 saw the listing of 1.9 million people as
illegal migrants in India’s northeast state of Assam before the Citizenship (Amendment) Act
was passed in the same year.. Going beyond the predominant notion that illegal migrants
acquire documentary citizenship through fraudulent means after crossing the porous border
between India and Bangladesh, this study reveals a reverse scenario: those living with
citizenship rights and in a regular social world are subjected to the gradual process of
detection, detention and ‘deportability’ in India. The paper argues that the major consequence
of this state-driven ‘migrant illegality’ in the last two decades has been the creation of national
borders among families, unsettling intimate relations and shared spaces and rendering mixed
families of suspected migrants to extreme suffering.
24th January, 2023
Morning Session (10-12)
Migration research and methodologies
3. Iduraya Rajan (Demography, IIMAD, India)
Title: Quantitative methods & migration surveys: the Kerala Migration Survey
Abstract: The first Kerala Migration Survey started in 1998 as a part of understanding the
impact of migration on individuals, households, the economy, and society using a stratified
multistage random sampling technique. Over the period of the last 25 years, our sample size
has increased from 10000 in 1998 to 15000 in 2008 and 20000 in 2023. The estimates
produced through this survey have become an important source for the Government of
Kerala for its policy-making decisions regarding migration governance, particularly return
migration during the COVID-19 crisis.
4. Christine Moliner (Anthropology, JGU, India)
Title: Qualitative methods and ethical challenges in migration research
Abstract: There is a general consensus that migration is a long-term trend of contemporary
societies. We need appropriate methodological tools to study it, and alongside quantitative
methods that have for long dominated the field, qualitative ones are equally important, and
particularly well suited to understand migrants’ experience and perspective. I will introduce
some of the key issues, techniques and challenges of qualitative migration research,
particularly the ethical challenges involved in investigating vulnerable groups, such as
undocumented migrants.
Afternoon Session (1-4pm)
The history & present challenges of mobility in South Asia
5. Anjali Roy (Cultural studies, IIT Kharagpur, India)
Title- Internal Migratory Flows After the Partition of India
Abstract: After the partition of 1947, the Indian subcontinent witnessed one of the largest and
rapid involuntary migrations in human history with approximately 14.5 million people
migrating across the borders on west and the east. Despite the availability of quantitative
data, the short term or long term impact of these internal and international mass migrations
within and outside India has not been analyzed in depth in either migration or partition
studies. This presentation aims to draw on diverse disciplinary tools to compile historical
data at a disaggregated level to provide a detailed picture of migratory flows of specific
ethnolinguistic (Multanis, Derawals, Potoharis, Bannuwals, Hyderabadi and Shikarpuri
Sindhis, and non-bhadralok East Bengalis) groups to different parts of India after partition. It
is based on interviews conducted with migrants in different parts of India as part of an
ongoing research project.
6. Shirin Sultana Lira (Programme manager, Embassy of Switzerland,
Bangladesh)
Title: Climate change induced migration
25th January, 2023
Morning Session (10-12)
Migration governance
7. Professor Shahidul Haque (International relations, North South U,
Bangladesh)
Title: International migration and global governance: progress, issues and future
Abstract: Today, there is global recognition that migration is inevitable, essential and if
governed properly could be beneficial for all. Despite cross border mobility and the
international nature of migration, states tend to manage migration unilaterally. Till 2018,
there was no UN institutions responsible for guiding the governance of international
migration. There is a dichotomy that Global Governance of migration is a necessity but at a
near-impossibility to implement. The session will focus on the governance aspects and
challenges of international migration. It will look at various initiatives, actors, and
institutions dealing with the management of migration especially at the global UN level. In
the process, it will extensively analyze the formations of Global Compact on Migration.
Afternoon Session (1-4pm)
Regional cultures of migration (1): India (Punjab & Kerala)
8. Stephen Taylor (Sociology, U Northumbria / SOAS, UK)
Title: Migration, Transnationalism and Inclusive Development in India: Punjab and Kerala
Abstract: The relationship between international migration and global development is a key
area of global, national and regional policy making and migration and development
governance, as well as a focus of academic research, throughout the world. Transnational
migrants are now clearly seen as crucial development agents within sending societies. This is
particularly the case in India, which is famously the largest foreign remittance receiving
country in the world. Intense and increasing scrutiny and legislation is being applied to the
remittances, investments, philanthropic donations, knowledge, skills and social, religious and
cultural capital transmitted ‘home’ by Indian diasporic communities. Drawing upon original,
empirical research conducted between 2011 and 2020, I assess the extent to which the often
heralded diasporic remittances and philanthropy ‘trickle down’ to benefit everyone within the
states of Punjab and Kerala. More specifically though, I focus upon the relationship between
overseas migration and the (re)production of enduring, yet dynamic, caste inequalities and I
will question whether Indian migrant transnationalism leads to inclusive forms of
development.
9. Satwinder Bains (Cultural studies, U Fraser Valley, Canada)
Title: Hybridity of the Punjabi Sikh Canadian Diaspora
Abstract: Early migration to Canada (est. 1903) has been both exhilarating and disappointing
because it had partially been fuelled by the need to escape second class citizenship in India
under the Raj and to find new economic frontiers. In direct contrast to these desires, Canada
presented a hostile and unfriendly environment as it relied on cheap oriental labour to build
the new province’s infrastructures and resource sectors, without accruing any benefits.
However, almost 120 years later, the economic successes, political trials, and social
tribulations of a hybrid Punjabi Sikh community are only recently being recorded as critically
important not only to the Canadian record, but also as a global influence.
26th January, 2023
Morning Session (10-12)
Migration and gender
10. William Paul Simmons (Political sciences, USA)
Title: Problematizing narratives about forced migration and gender in South Asia
Afternoon Session (1-4pm)
Cultures of migration: Nepal and Bangladesh
11. Tristan Bruslé (Geography, CNRS, France)
Title: Risks at a time of mass international labor migration: How do Nepalese cope?
Abstract: As Nepal has entered the “migration age” and is fully integrated into the global
labor market, remittance dependence induces high macroeconomic and microeconomic risks.
Risk, as a social construct (Beck; Douglas, Widasky), is part of any migration experience and
concerns first and foremost migrants and their families but is also taken into account by
institutions as a factor that should be controlled. I also consider that labor migration is, at the
same time, an answer to risks (not being able to raise one's family according to one's
ambitions; remaining in poverty; etc.) and creates new risks that families have to deal with.
I plan to answer a few questions about the perception of risk concerning international
migration: how is risk a factor integrated in migration decision-making? How is it taken into
account by individuals, families and the Nepalese State? What are the strategies to limit or
cope with risks?
12. Mohammad Jalal Uddin Sikder (Sociology, Bangladesh)
Title: Uneven Geography of Migration and Remittances: A Case of Bangladesh
Abstract: Bangladesh is becoming one of the main countries from which people migrate
internationally. More than ten million Bangladeshis left the country as temporary workers
between 1976 and 2022, with the majority going to the Middle East and Southeast Asia,
according to data from the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET),
Government of Bangladesh. Every year, between 200,000 and 250,000 Bangladeshis leave
their nation in search of employment abroad. Remittances are one of the primary ways that
migration can affect the social and economic developments in the migrants' areas of origin.
As a result, migration is a crucial component of many Bangladeshi households' livelihood
strategies. Remittances are crucial for persons in difficult economic situations as well as for
the Bangladesh economy as a whole. However, one might be tempted to present an overly
optimistic account of the social effects of migration and remittances and draw the conclusion
that everyone who takes part—individual migrants as well as migrant households—benefits
equally from the experience of migration and/or relocation and the resources it generates.
This presentation assumes a more cautious assessment of how remittances affect the homes
of migrants. The paper makes the case that not all migrant households receive the social and
economic benefits of remittances equally, drawing on evidence from a recently finished
ethnographic study on migrant homes throughout Bangladesh. In terms of earning money and
gaining advantages from remittances, certain households gained more than others. The
failure of some migrant households to gain (or to benefit the least) from remittance money is
attributed to a variety of issues, some specific to the individual households, and others
external.
27th January, 2023
Morning Session (10-12)
Human (in) security and undocumented migration
13. Dr. Furrukh Khan (Postcolonial studies, LUMS, Pakistan)
Title: Undocumented Migrations: Criminality, Agency, and the Postcolonial Condition
Abstract: Migration from less/Least Developed Countries (LDCs) could easily be substituted
to and called Least Desirable Countries as far as the intended destination countries are
concerned. People wanting to change either their economic or social standing through
migration or escaping religious, ethnic or gender persecution get pigeonholed into
‘opportunists’ at best and ‘criminals’ at worst. The formal hierarchy of regular migration is
almost exclusively focused on brain-drain phenomena; those with ‘less desirable skills’ fail
to find a place at the proverbial migration table. One of the ways in which people try to
circumvent formal migration is to pursue their aspirations through ‘undocumented’ route. I,
along with another researcher, carried out fieldwork in Punjab in a village called Chot
Dheeran, District Mandi Bahauddin, just before the onset of the Covid Pandemic. The
findings from this fieldwork exercise were stories of remarkable resilience, economic
exploitation, perilous journey and uncertain future. My presentation will draw on my own
fieldwork as well as other written, oral and visual work in this field.
Students-led discussion
Afternoon Session (1-4pm)
Religion and migration
14. John Clammer (Sociology, JGU, India)
Title: “Migration and Religious Identity in South Asia”?
Abstract: The mechanisms that trigger migration are important if the movement of peoples is
to be understood. Historically in South Asia religion has been a major factor in stimulating
the movement of both ideas and people, and this phenomenon continues today in other
forms: the out migration of Jews and Parsis, the appearance in India of new religious groups
such as the Japanese Buddhist Soka Gakkai, and the in-flow of Muslim refugees in Northeast
India and now Rohingya from Myanmar. This segment will explore these forms of
movement and their political, cultural and economic consequences.
15. Mathieu Claveyrolas (Ethnology, CNRS, France)
Title: What migration does to Hinduism: issues from two case studies (Mauritius and NYC)
Abstract: I will firstly provide a brief presentation of the links between migration and
religion. Between countries of origin and host countries, religion has often been considered
as one of the privileged means to perpetuate cultural roots (of origin) but also to negotiate
with the new environment (on the spot). Secondly, a discussion of such debates will be
applied to the case of Hinduism. How has a tradition often perceived as consubstantial with
the Indian territory, unfit for migration, been able to develop and adapt to diverse and
massive migrations? Finally, I will focus on two case studies, Mauritian Hinduism and the
Hinduism of Guyanese twice-migrants in New York City. The aim is to defocus the analysis
of migrant Hinduism by considering the major influence of the local context of rooting.
SPEAKERS’ BIOS
1. Satwinder Bains - Director of the South Asian Studies Institute at the
University of the Fraser Valley and Associate Professor in Social Cultural Media
Studies, College of Arts. Dr. Bains’ critical analysis of India’s multilingual policy
and planning has fueled her interest to study the impact of language, culture and
identity on South Asian Canadian migration, settlement, and integration. Her
research includes and intersects cross-cultural education with a focus on anti-racist
curriculum implementation; race, racism, and ethnicity; identity politics; Sikh
feminist ideology; migration and the South Asian Canadian Diaspora and Punjabi
Canadian cultural historiography.
2. Tristan Bruslé- A geographer at the CNRS (France). He is interested
in international labour migration, urbanisation and relations to space. He
particularly focuses on case studies from Nepal.
3. John Clammer - Professor of Sociology at the Jindal School of
Liberal Arts and Humanities (O.P. Jindal Global University).
He has previously taught at a number of universities around the world, including the
United Nations University, Sophia University Tokyo, the National University of
Singapore and the University of Hull (U.K.) and has been a visiting professor at
Oxford, Weimar, Kent, Buenos Aires, Handong (South Korea), Pondicherry,
Warwick and the Australian National University. Among his relevant publications
is the book Diaspora and Belief: Globalization, Religion and Identity in
Postcolonial Asia.
4. Mathew Claveryrolas - Research fellow at CNRS (France), member of the
Centre for South Asian Studies (EHESS/Paris), CERIAS (UQAM, Montréal) and
fellow of the Institut Convergences Migrations (France).
An anthropologist of Hinduism, he is particularly interested in the practices of
devotees. After a first stage of his research in Banaras (India) where he worked on
the monograph of a Hindu temple (2003) and on other religious territories, he
turned to Creole Hinduism, particularly in Mauritius, which he studied (2016) from
different angles (temples, villages, castes, patrimonialization, life stories). For the
past few years, he has been working on a third project focused on Hinduism in the
context of contemporary migration, in New York.
5. Furrukh Khan - Associate professor in the department of Humanities and
Social Sciences, serving as the Director of the English Program at Lahore
University of Management Sciences. He has a B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan
University, USA, an M.A. and Ph.D. in Postcolonial Studies from University of
Kent at Canterbury, UK. His research interests are Violence and Migration, Oral
History, Human Rights and is a documentary filmmaker. He was a Visiting
Fulbright Scholar at University of Texas at Austin in 2011. Other awards include:
British Academy/ESRC Visiting Fellowships for South Asia and the Middle East,
Asian Scholarship Foundation’s Asia Fellowship and Social Science Research
Council’s South Asia Regional Fellowship. He recently concluded an ERASMUS+
International Credit Mobility Program at Middlesex University.
6. Christine Moliner - Associate prof. at OP Jindal Global University, co-
director of the Center for Migration and Mobility Studies, associate researcher at
CSH (Delhi) & fellow of the Institut Convergences Migrations (Paris).
At the intersection of the anthropology of religion and secularity, migration studies
and South Asian studies, her work focuses on transnational mobility from East and
West Punjab, particularly undocumented migration, and on Sikh minority status and
identity politics both in India and in the Diaspora.
7- Salah Punathil - Sociologist at the Centre for Regional Studies, University of
Hyderabad, India. Currently, he is a DAAD Guest Professor at CeMIS, University
of Gottingen, Germany. Salah has completed his Post-Doctoral Fellowship (2018-
2020) at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity,
Gottingen, Germany. His research interests include ethnic violence, migration and
borderlands, citizenship, Muslims in South Asia and the inter- section of archives
and ethnography. His book ‘Interrogating Communalism: Violence, Citizenship and
Minorities in South India’ (Routledge 2019) examines conflict and violence among
religious minorities and the implication on the idea of citizenship. He has published
articles in journals such as Citizenship Studies, History and Anthropology, South
Asia Research and Contributions to Indian Sociology. Salah’s current research
focuses on the migration from the present day Bangladesh region to North East
India and the crisis of citizenship and ethnic violence in contemporary times.
8. Raffaela Puggioni - Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at LUISS, Rome, Italy
and Associate Professor at Jindal Global University. Her research expertise cuts
across the field of international relations theory, migration studies, citizenship studies
and resistance studies. Her work has been published in the Journal of Refugee
Studies, Political Studies, Citizenship Studies, Third World Quarterly, Global
Society, Journal of Borderlands Studies and Politics. Her book, Rethinking
International Protection: The Sovereign, the State, the Refugee has been published
with Palgrave.
9. Irudaya Rajan - Chair of the International Institute for Migration and
Development, India and of the KNOMAD (The Global Knowledge Partnership on
Migration and Development) World Bank working group on internal migration and
urbanization. He has been the editor of the annual series India Migration Report
since 2010 and South Asia Migration Report since 2017, both published by
Routledge and founding editor in Chief, Migration and Development.
10. Anjali Roy - Professor in the Department of Humanities of Social Sciences at
the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. She works on fiction, film and
performance traditions of India, diasporas, oral histories and Partition of 1947. She is
the author of Memories and Postmemories of the Partition of India (Routledge 2019),
Imperialism and Sikh Migration: the Komagata Maru Incident (Routledge 2017),
Cinema of Enchantment: Perso-Arabic Genealogies of the Hindi Masala Film
(Orient Blackswan 2015) and Bhangra Moves: From Ludhiana to London and
Beyond (Aldershot: Ashgate 2010). She has edited Imagining Punjab, Punjabi and
Punjabiat in the Transnational Era (London: Routledge 2015) and The Magic of
Bollywood: At Home and Abroad (Delhi: Sage 2012). In addition, she has published
more than 100 essays in literary, film and cultural studies. She is currently engaged in
a project on folk artists in the time of coronavirus and another on the socio-cultural
impact of internal migratory flows after the Partition of India.
11. Ambassador Shahidul Haque is currently occupying the ICCR Bangabandhu
Chair at the University of Delhi, India. He is also the Professorial Fellow at the North
South University, Bangladesh and a Senior Advisor on Migration and Humanitarian
Policy of IOM, Dhaka. Ambassador Haque served as the Foreign Secretary of
Bangladesh from January 2013 to December 2019, and has led the Bangladesh
delegation to the negotiation with Myanmar associated with the Rohingya issue.
From 2001 to 2007, Mr. Haque served as the Regional Representative of the UN,
IOM for South Asia (Dhaka) and the Middle East (Cairo). He also served as the IOM
Director for Migration Policy and Global Relation Division based in Geneva from
2009 to 2012. Mr. Haque pursued his graduate studies in International Relations and
Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University,
USA (1988). He has co-authored a book titled “Migration Myth in Policy and
Practice” (Springer, 2020). He has also written book chapters and articles on the
Rohingya issue, migration, climate change, human trafficking, and vaccine
diplomacy published in various journals home and abroad.
12. Dr. William Paul Simmons is Professor of Gender & Women's Studies and
Director of the Human Rights Practice program at the University of Arizona. He has
more than 25 years of experience as a human rights educator and researcher,
receiving numerous awards for his teaching, research, community service, and
diversity initiatives. He has served as a consultant in The Gambia, Senegal, Niger,
Ghana, Nigeria, Mozambique, Bangladesh, China, Mexico and the United States.
His research is highly interdisciplinary and draws upon many different
methodologies, to advance human rights for marginalized populations. His books
include Joyful Human Rights (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), Human
Rights Law and the Marginalized Other (Cambridge UP, 2011), and Binational
Human Rights: The U.S.-Mexico Experience (Penn 2014). His articles have
appeared in such journals as: Perspectives on Politics, DuBois Review, Journal of
Human Rights, International Journal of Feminist Politics, International Migration
Review, Violence Against Women, Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal,
The Journal of International Human Rights, Social Science Quarterly, and
Philosophy and Social Criticism. For the past three years he has been working with
a team of researchers from Bangladesh and the US on resilience and post-traumatic
growth among Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
13. Dr. AKM Ahsan Ullah is an Associate Professor in Geography, Environment
and Development at the University of Brunei Darussalam (UBD). Ullah’s research
portfolio includes stints at the Southeast Asian Research Centre (SEARC), Hong
Kong; IPH, University of Ottawa, McMaster University; Saint Mary’s University,
and Dalhousie University, Canada; the American University in Cairo (AUC); City
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong and Asian Institute of Technology (AIT),
Thailand. In his home country Bangladesh, he was the Research Coordinator of Plan
International, an international organization focusing on child and rural development.
His research areas include population migration, human rights, development,
environment and health policy. His works appeared in most prominent outlets in the
areas of his interests. Dr Ullah has contributed 50 articles to refereed journals and at
least 40 chapters in a number of books and published 15 books.
14. Dr. Mohammad Jalal Uddin Sikder is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at
the Department of Political Science and Sociology, North South University (NSU),
Bangladesh. Prior to joining NSU, he worked as an Associate Professor at the
Department of Development Studies, Daffodil International University (DIU) and
General Education Department (GED), University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh
(ULAB). He also engaged as an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Refugee and
Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU), a research centre which conducts
research on refugees, internally displaced persons, stateless people, labour migrants
and diaspora communities. He is the author of various books and articles that have
been published by reputable international publishers. He had also been involved in a
number of studies under the Migration out of Poverty RPC and Development
Research Centre (DRC), University of Sussex, UK. Sikder was a recipient of the
NTS-Asia Research Fellowship from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
15. Ms. Shirin Lira is an experienced legal and development professional, who has
been working in the field of human rights, justice, peace building and conflict
resolution, gender equality, social inclusion, migration and development, climate
change and environmental justice for last 15 years and strongly committed to make
changes in the life of poor, women and disadvantaged groups in the society. At
present she is working at the Embassy of Switzerland and leading the portfolio of
Climate Change and Environment. She led UKAID funded Labour and Climate
Induced Migration Programme to increase protection of labour and climate migrants
through improved transparency, accountability, and system change. She has worked
with several international and national organisations, including British Council,
Palladium, UNDP, DAI, Maxwell Stamp, Oxfam, International Working Group for
Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA)...in different capacities and engagements. She has also
been an Adjunct Faculty member of the department of Law and Justice in
Jahangirnagar University and School of Law, BRAC University. She was awarded
the prestigious Chevening Scholarship in the field of Human Rights and Rule of Law
and completed her specialized Master of Laws (LL.M) in Human Rights, Conflict
and Justice from School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of
London.
