Selected Paper/ Paper Seleccionado
Theorizing Diaspora from Within: Migrant Imagination is as much about Belonging as it is about Movement
Abstract (English)
This paper engages with the question, `how do migrant subjectivities shape migrant trajectories and influence the very taxonomy of migration? Engaging in a theoretical discussion on the terminologies by which migration is labelled and understood, this study emphasizes on the agency of migrants whose imaginations map the world of their movements, memories and ethnographic belonging to their current home/native as well as host/ local societies, cultures and countries. Dwelling on migrant subjectivities that arise out of internal as well as international migration; entail their lived experiences and; determine the choices that define their memory-making, settling down, inclusion and exclusion trajectories, this study brings into perspective case studies from Jewish migrants in Buenos Aires, Argentina and West-Africans as well as internal migrants from the states of north-east in Delhi, India. States have demonstrated a sustained monopoly of control over national and international migrants. Powerful sovereign states continue to claim the prerogative to admit, restrict and define mobility within their borders and esternally (Sinha 2022), but migrant trajectories illustrate that neither internal displacement (Cernea 1997) nor international mobility is a passive fallout of state action (de Genova, N. 2017). For the first part of the study, on the basis of my primary research and ethnography, I analyze how Jewish migrant families in Buenos Aires associated with, claimed their identity and mobilized their belonging to contribute to the conservation of Argentine national heritage of Tango. My second case study unfolds to reflect upon the dynamics of internal and external migration in Delhi. On the basis of a shared memory, political ethnography and participatory interactions with the West African migrants and North-east Indian communities in Delhi, I interpret available literature and data sources to demonstrate how people and citizens not only replicate state-inspired models of inclusion and exclusion, but reshape these by countering the overt as well as covert methods and models of ‘othering’. I argue that such a growing citizen/local–migrant dynamics typically unfolds in an ethnographic time and space of migration hubs, which become the interface of everyday encounters between diverse communities and groups. Thus, migrants co-create place and identity, rather than simply adapting to them (Sinha 2022). Migration and the migrant emic is as much about belonging, survival, solidarity memory, resistance, and imagination (Luthra Sinha 2024) as it is about movement.Keywords (Ingles)
Migrant belonging, Migration Emic, Imagination, Diasporas, otheringpresenters
Bobby Luthra Sinha
Nationality: India
Residence: India
Centre for Asian, African, and Latin American Studies (CAALAS), Institute of Social Sciences (ISS), Delhi, India
Presence:Face to Face/ On Site