South Asia Unbound: Rethinking South Asian Migration and Diaspora

Our first panel of speakers sheds light on the impact of the erection of “national” borders, on who gets defined as citizen or migrant, and the complex relationship between states and their diaspora.

Short and long-distance migration has been a common feature of life in South Asia for millennia, so much so that the subcontinent is often identified with and through its diaspora, one of the biggest in the world.

How and why did people move in and out of South Asia? Why did they choose not to? At a time when migration is at the forefront of the global political, economic and social agendas, there’s a crucial need to answer these questions.

New International Histories of South Asia (NIHSA) is a multi-disciplinary network of scholars who focus on the histories of South Asia in and outside of its geographic borders, all committed to sharing these insights with the wider public.

Find out more information and register for this event.

Speakers:

Professor Jayita Sarkar (Boston University), “Frontiers to Battlefields to Borderlands: The Connected Partitions in the Rohingya Question, 1942-1952”

Kalyani Ramnath (Harvard University), “Other Partitions: Law and Displacement in Postwar South and Southeast Asia”

Dr Antia Mato Bouzas (London Metropolitan University), “The Pakistani Gulf: Migration to the Gulf and the Development of Pakistan’s State Project”

Chair:

Dr Swapna Kona Nayudu (National University of Singapore / Harvard Asia Research Center)