Election Study: The Figure of the Migrant in the Electoral Time – Three Reports on the Assam, Bihar and West Bengal Parliamentary Elections (forthcoming on Frontpage) 3. A final version of the article entitled 'Practices, Contingencies, and the Politics of Local: An Overview from Assam' was presented at the sixth annual research and orientation workshop in November.
Research activities by the Distinguished Chair in Migration and Forced Migration Studies
12. ix) “Everyday State”, lecture at the Young South Asia Scholars Meet, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, 3 June 2021 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTmtJUhZ0O0 and https ://youtu .be/LuKikwrH3dk .. i) “The Democratic Road to Authoritarianism: Authoritarian Power and Populist Resistance”. International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies, Volume 2, No. 2, 2021. ii) “The Labor Burden of the Covid-19 Epidemic and Internal Migrant Workers: The Case of India”, Migrant Worlds, no. 1, 2021. iii) “Refugees and Migrants as Economic and Political Subjects”, Policies and Practices 121 (Calcutta Research Group, November 2021) . iv) 'Layers of Solidarity' in Samir Kumar Das and Ranabir Samaddar, 'Two Essays on the Ethics and Practices of Care and Solidarity', Policies and Practices 123 (Calcutta Research Group, November 2021) .. i) “Statelessness is a condition of existence” (translated into German by the IWM Editorial Board), IWM Post, December 2021 - https://www.iwm.at/publication/iwmpost-article/staatenlos- und-entrechtet .. ii) “Six Markers of the Postcolonial Fate of the Refugee Convention 1951", FluchtforschungsBlog, 21 December 2021 - https://blog.fluchtforschung.net/six-markers-of-the-postcolonial-destiny-of-the-refugee-convention-of-1951/.
Publications by other researchers
Publications: Books and Report
In addition, The Telegraph has a review of Ranabir Samaddar's latest book A Pandemic and the Politics of Life by Harsh Mander, August 13 ii) Ankur Tamuli Phukan, Rajat Kanti Sur, Priyankar Dey, Anamika Priyadarshini, Gopal Krishna, Abdullah Rehman, Migrants in Election Times: Assam Bihar and West Bengal, Assembly Election Report (Cover, 2022). iii) Rajat Roy ed. Reflection of epidemiological times (forthcoming). vii) Paula Banerjee ed., On the Margins of Protection (Orient BlackSwan sent the contract, forthcoming). The book launch for 'Migrants in Electoral Times: Assam Bihar and West Bengal, Assembly Elections Report' in association with Frontpage Publications Limited was held on 22nd April 2022 (initially planned to be held on 4th March 2022 was postponed due to delay in publication procedure) .
Other creative activities by the researchers
13. ii) Ankur Tamuli Phukan, Rajat Kanti Sur, Priyankar Dey, Anamika Priyadarshini, Gopal Krishna, Abdullah Rehman, Migrants in Electoral Times: Assam Bihar and West Bengal, Assembly Elections Report (FrontPage, 2022). iii) Rajat Roy red.
VISITING FELLOWSHIPS
The research topics, abstracts, full papers and reports of the two visiting fellows can be found here. Ranabir Samaddar, as one of the project leaders of the Europe-Asia Research Platform on Forced Migration, was a guest of the Institute at the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna from February 1 to March 31, 2022. He worked on the project Cooperation as a solution for Migrant Vulnerability: A Study on Cooperative of sex workers in Kolkata.
MEDIA SEGMENT
Short-term Media Fellowships
A book chapter provisionally titled "Layers of Solidarity" and "universalism of the specific" through review of the writings of B.R. Rajat Kanti Sur was a junior visiting researcher at the Institute for Humanities in Vienna from 1 to 31 March 2022 under the Europe-Asia Research Platform on Forced Migration. Shatabdi Das was a junior visiting researcher at the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna under the Europe -Asia Research Platform on Forced Migration from April 1-30, 2022.
Media Workshop
Media Reader
TEACHERS’ ONLINE ORIENTATION COURSE AND WORKSHOP
Teachers’ Online Orientation Course
The classes were held every Saturday and Sunday (16 classes in 7 weeks) and were taught by a group of prominent researchers and experts in the field, including Ayse Caglar, IWM, Vienna, Amena Mohsin, Dhaka University, Bangladesh, Darshana Mini, University of Wisconsin, USA, Hari Sharma, Social Science Baha, Nepal, Paula Banerjee, University of Calcutta, India &. Sudeep Basu, Ananya Chatterjee, Suchismita Majumdar as participants in the Teachers' Online Orientation Course titled Reading Refugees, Reading Migration, were engaged as educational resource designers for migrants, refugees, children and disabled people.
Teachers’ Workshop
Migration, women, cultural production, violence, pandemic, education, migrant children, mobility, group discussions on syllabi and submission of draft syllabi, film screening and discussion, include some of the themes of the. As part of the program, a round table discussion (in online mode) took place on January 13, 2022. The 'second' two-day teacher workshop was a follow-up to the two-day teacher workshop on research methodology and syllabus creation, held in December 2021, organized by CRG and IWM with participants from across India and virtual panelists from Europe, Australia and other parts of Asia (see report here: http://www.mcrg.ac.in/IWM_Migration/Report%20Teachers'%20Workshop.pdf), following the Online Orientation Course in Migration Studies and Pedagogy for College and University Teachers held July-August 2021.
Youth Meet 2022 on Ethics of Solidarity, Care and Protection, Darjeeling, India
Two fellows joined the event under the BABSEACLE scholarship from the 'Beyond Refuge' summer school organized in collaboration with CRG in August 2021. Four fellows joined the event under the CRG-IWM scholarship for participants from Europe. The final meeting was concluded with a ceremonial lecture and the presentation of highlights from the meeting.
REFUGEE WATCH AND REFUGEE WATCH ONLINE
The event was meant to be a platform for voices to be heard and therefore an equal representation of women's voices was pre-arranged for the event, with almost fifty percent of our guests being women. The focus of the sessions was relating ourselves to the issues of working in solidarity and how layered solidarity is in reality in its operational mechanisms. The editorial team met for an evaluation and planning meeting on December 24 to decide on the course of the blog in 2022.
PREPARATORY AND FOLLOW-UP PROGRAMMES/MEETINGS
The editorial team of the Refugee Watch has planned two special issues for 2022: one reflecting on the uncertainties of 'Afghan Futures' in the wake of the regime change and the subsequent humanitarian crisis in the country, and the other to mark the 75 years of the Indian nationhood and the event of partition that ushered in a new trajectory of mobility in South Asia. The editors have already started to commission special articles by experts in the field for both editions. In order to have better synergy between the Refugee Watch journal and the Refugee Watch Online, it was decided that authors who contribute to the journal (from issue no. 57) will be requested to also submit short pieces for the blog.
Advisory Committee Meeting
Regional Dialogue on Conflict and Migration
PUBLIC LECTURES
PARTICIPATION IN WORKSHOPS AND CONFERENCES
Public lecture on “Perspectives on Human Mobility: Normative and Policy”, Achin Chakraborty, Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata, 28 October 2021, Swabhumi, Kolkata.
PREPARATION OF AUDIO-VISUAL MATERIALS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES
Video Lecture Series titled A CRG Series in the Corona Time: Six Lectures on Migrants and Refugees
Third documentary film in the CRG series, Calcutta a Migrant City
Podcasts on Disaster, Displacement and the State
TRANSLATION IN REGIONAL LANGUAGES
However, work has resumed again and both volumes are expected in March 2022. The work of translating Manjira Saha's labor train (a collection of newspaper articles and journal entries by the author reflecting on the returned migrant workers, the circularity of their precariousness, ethnographic accounts of young migrant workers from chars and borderlands) into English by Purna Banerjee, Presidency University, has been underway and is expected to be completed early next year. The book 'Borders of an Epidemic' edited by Ranabir Samaddar has been translated into Bengali with the title.
RESOURCES (ACTIVITIES OR RESOURCES INDIRECTLY CONTRIBUTING TO THE PROJECT AND PROJECT PARTNERS)
WEBSITE
Timely publication of the Bengali and Hindi translations of the two CRG publications from last year, Borders of an Epidemic and Burdens of an Epidemic, has hit a snag due to renewed Covid19 shutdowns and restrictions early this year. Prasit Das translates the book 'Pradip Kumar Bose ed., Refugees in West Bengal: Institutional Processes and Contested Identities (Kolkata: Calcutta Research Group, 2000)', originally published in English, into Bengali. Utsa Sarmin edits the podcast series on the theme of Disaster, Displacement and the State and translates her work from English to Bengali.
LIBRARY AND RESOURCE CENTRE
CRG's Living Archive on Migrant Labour, developed in collaboration with the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, has made an important contribution to its research programme. Rajat Kanti Sur works as a documentation officer and assists the CRG librarian in collecting and organizing study materials (such as newspapers, pamphlets, books, etc.) on Assam and the electoral study of Bengal. She is working on documentation and archival materials, monographs and images, compiling an index of reference sources and copyright restrictions on the Bangladesh Liberation War for CRG's Library Resource Center as part of her project on the annual Migration and Forced Migration Studies Program, with a particular focus on South Asia and its Eurasian dimension.
OTHER RESOURCES
Rajat Kanti Sur works on the media fellowship program and workshop and overall coordination of the publication and editing of the proposed media handbook, coordinating the Bangladeshi publications under IWM.
RISKS (INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL)
The practice of working from home, which has been adopted for the better part of the last six months, has made communication a daunting task and the Forced Migration Service has had to work hard to coordinate with each other and with other colleagues and participants in the various programmes. The usual field visit during the workshop had to be abandoned due to the same risk. Election study researchers, for example, have had to be cautious about field visits for this reason.
INSIGHTS FROM PROJECT EVALUATIONS (EXAMPLES OF GOOD PRACTICE AND EXPERIENCED CHALLENGES)
The Forced Migration Desk used a variety of virtual communication methods to coordinate with the scientists involved in research projects, as well as with the participants and auxiliaries of CRG's various events. Regular circulars and communiqués were sent to the participants and auxiliaries of each workshop and conference to ensure a hassle-free experience. CRG worked with a professional travel agent to manage the extensive logistics of the Winter Workshop.
SUMMARIES
A professional studio set-up and a team of experts were hired to conduct the hybrid sessions at this year's winter workshop. By running the program in the last semester of 2021, the organization has been able to continue with its old collaborators while forming new partnerships in the South Asian region and beyond. Various publications were published or are underway to facilitate the effective dissemination of knowledge and information about the precarious life world of migrants and refugees.
ANNEXURE
- List of Public Sessions in Winter Workshop & Conference 2021 15 November 2021
- List of Publications: Books, Reports & Articles
- Website Screenshots
- Photos of Workshops and other Events
Production of Statelessness in Europe” by Elspeth Guild, Queen Mary University of London, UK Chair: Paula Banerjee, University of Calcutta & CRG, India. Speakers: Fahmi Panimbang, Solidar Suisse, Indonesia; Liza Schuster, City, University of London, UK; Reza Hussaini, City, University of London, UK. Discussants: Oishik Sircar, Jindal Global Law School, India and Ridwanul Hoque, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
16:15-17:15: Jayanta Dasgupta Memorial Lecture: "Migrants, Migrant Economy, and the Philippines" by Walden Bello, State University of New York at Binghamton, USA. List of publications: Books, reports and articles. iv) Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay, Paula Banerjee and Ranabir Samaddar eds., India's Migrant Workers and the Pandemic (Social Science Press, 2022).
