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Public Lecture by Dr. Caroline Osella, SOAS, University of London

January 27, 2016

5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Hillel House Multipurpose Room (101)

Sharon Kirk

"A Space of Possibilities: How Gulf Migration Impacts South Indian Muslim Family Life and Gendered Relationships.”
Migration is often seen as a social problem in itself, or as bringing problems: - whether by family separation, rising expectations and pressures around living standards and consumer cultures, erosion of secure cultural identities and so on.

I will speak about how some of these anxieties manifest in policy talk, and in Indian and Gulf media, but I will then go on to show how migrants negotiate their situation and make liveable lives, using material from long-term detailed case studies of families who are split across the Indian ocean. I will show that members of migrant families often put very high social and emotional value on the many spaces which migration opens up for them and carefully cultivate the changes it can open out towards, even as they also stay mindful of obligations and normative expectations and watchful for potential critique in the wider community. In many ways, migration is working to keep families together, even as it re-shapes households, relationships and lives.