Home, Belonging and Memory in Migration: Leaving and Living (Migrations in South Asia)

313 Pages·2021·9.064 MB·English

by  Sadan Jha (editor), Pushpendra Kumar Singh (editor)

Home, Belonging and Memory in
Migration
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 folk-
songs; 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 stud-
ies, development studies, social work, political economy, social history,
political studies, social and cultural anthropology, exclusion studies, sociol-
ogy, and South Asian Studies.
Sadan is Associate Professor at the Centre for Social Studies, Surat, Gujarat,
India.
Pushpendra is Professor and Chairperson at the Patna Centre of Tata Insti-
tute of Social Sciences, Bihar, India.
Migrations in South Asia
Series Editors: Pushpendra and Manish K Jha
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India
This series interrogates contemporary forms of migrations in the region
shaped by colonial pasts of several South Asian countries and present
global economic and political forces. The volumes in the series intersect
with various dimensions of migration such as gender, economic dispar-
ity, cross-border movements, citizenship, nativism, conflicts, identity, and
religion. They engage with labour processes, urbanisation, agrarian rela-
tions, climate change, displacement, neoliberal developmentalism, and
state policies. Using transdisciplinary perspectives, the series intervenes in
the socio-economic and cultural aspects of migration, histories, networks,
linkages, disruptions, social movements, mutations in social relations, new
technologies of migrants’ enumeration and surveillance, and changing par-
adigm of government and politics in the countries of South Asia. The series
also aims to study the dynamics of international migration in and out of
the region.
The series will provide a platform for scholars in the South Asia region
working on Migration Studies to share their work and create a vibrant
research collective, thereby enriching and diversifying the field. The books
in the series will be of interest to those in migration and refugee studies,
development studies, social work, political economy, political studies, soci-
ology, and social anthropology, gender studies, contemporary history, South
Asian Studies, and Global South studies.
Home, Belonging and Memory in Migration
Leaving and Living
Edited by Sadan and Pushpendra
For more information about this series, please visit: ww.routledge.com/
Migrations-in-South-Asia/book-series/MIGSA
Home, Belonging and Memory
in Migration
Leaving and Living
Edited by Sadan and Pushpendra
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Sadan Jha and Pushpendra
Kumar Singh; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Sadan Jha and Pushpendra Kumar Singh to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the
authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-032-04736-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-05783-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-19912-0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003199120
Typeset in Sabon
by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)
To those migrants who suffered and died while returning home
during the COVID-19 pandemic

Contents
List of figures ix
List of tables x
Acknowledgements xi
List of contributors xii
1 Introduction: locating subjectivities and belonging in migration 1
SADAN AND PUSHPENDRA
Part I
Labouring to freedom 27
2 The aspiration of a “civilised”, “human”, and “dignified”
life: an enquiry into sociability, sociality and wellbeing of
migrants in an Indian coalfield 29
DHIRAJ KUMAR NITE
3 Migration and the making of a village 59
PUSHPENDRA
4 “Freedom talk of ploughmen”: bondage and seasonal
migration in East-Central India 82
SOHINI SENGUPTA
Part II
Engendering migration 101
5 Gender and migration: a contemporary view 103
SAMITA SEN
6 Home away from home? Belonging and dislocation among
migrant domestic workers 121
ANINDITA CHATTERJEE
viii Contents
7 Migration, gender, and religion: a study of Malabar
migration and gendered Christian identity in Girideepam
(1961–71) 137
SHARON ROSE
PART III
Migration, memory and longing 151
8 Making sense of migration: reflections on the contexts and
contents of Bhojpuri women’s folksongs 153
ASHA SINGH
9 The idea of home in a world of circulation: steam, women,
and migration through Bhojpuri folksongs 172
NITIN SINHA
10 Jaun-Yeun: simultaneous engagement of Konkani migrants 194
AMITA BHIDE AND KALYANI VARTAK
11 Migration and music: incarnations of Birahā 213
PRAVEEN KUMAR JHA
PART IV
Negotiating the city space 231
12 The Purusharthi refugee: Sindhi migrants in Jaipur’s walled city 233
GARIMA DHABHAI
13 “Once a migrant, always a migrant”? Negotiating home
and belongingness in the city of Kolkata 248
SWATI MANTRI
14 The figure of the migrant as other: experiences, memory,
and the politics of belonging 268
SADAN
Index 290
Figures
10.1 Pandurang Sawant’s family genealogy 200
12.1 An ode to the purushartha in Jaipur’s Indira Bazar 236
12.2 Marble plaque narrating the history of the sculpture 237
12.3 Acts of labour 237
13.1 Inscription outside Shri Vishudanand Saraswati
Vidyalaya, a school in Kolkata, mentioning the name of
the Marwari donor and indicating he is “of Ratangarh”
(the donor’s place of origin in Rajasthan) 253
13.2 Inscriptions mentioning monetary donations outside
Marwari Relief Society, a hospital in Barabazaar, Kolkata 254
13.3 Inscription outside Mangal Matri Sadan, a hospital in
Barabazaar, Kolkata 255
14.1 Specimen of a letter written by migrant husband Durmil
Jha to Shree Champawati, published with a translation by
George A. Grierson in 1882 as first specimen of Maithili
prose writing 272