Covid-19: Redrawn Borders, Redefined Lives – A Report

 On 8th July 2020, the Calcutta Research Group (CRG), in collaboration with the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung   and Institute of Human Sciences, Vienna, organised a webinar which sought to address the sudden visibility of India’s migrant workers and questions regarding borders, inequality, public health and care. Keeping in mind that the coronavirus pandemic has emerged not simply as a public health and economic crisis but also as one that has thrown migrant workers into deep turmoil, the webinar sought to interrogate issues of movement, sovereignty, governance, and borders between people, societies and states. Annesha Saha reports.

‘Oral Histories, Conflict and the Human Dimension’: A report

A short report by Nirajana Chakraborty on a webinar- “Mezzaterra: Conversations Sans Borders” with  Anam Zakaria, Oral Historian and Author, as the speaker,  organized by the Department of English, History and cultural Studies, Christ (Deemed to be University), Bannerghata Road Campus on 10^th June 2020. 

A conference on the State of the Global Protection System for Refugees and Migrants, 2018: Impressions and Outcomes

Aditi Mukherjee writes a report on the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group conference dealing with protection system for refugees and migrants, organised in Kolkata, India, in November 2018.

Fourth Annual Research and Orientation Workshop in Refugee and Migration Studies

Applications are invited for a Research and Orientation Workshop to be held in Kolkata from 25 November to 29 November 2019. The workshop will be organised by the Calcutta Research Group (CRG) in collaboration with the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. It will address issues of protection for refugees and migrants, gender, race, religion and other faultlines in the protection regime, neo-liberalism and migrant labour, statelessness, borderlands and the Indian and South Asian experiences in a global context.

The Forgotten but Ongoing ‘Migrant Crises’ in Northern France: Notes from a volunteering experience in June 2018

On a personal initiative, Neha Batra volunteered with a grassroots organisation in Calais, France for a month in June 2018. This field note, written immediately after returning from Calais,is based on informal conversations with fellow volunteers and migrants in Calais and Dunkirk as well as further reading.

‘There is a celebratory tone to all these human rights violations’: An Interview with Anuradha Bhasin

Anuradha Bhasin is Executive Editor, Kashmir Times. She is a writer and a peace activist involved in campaigns for human rights’ violation victims in Kashmir, crimes against women as well as India-Pakistan friendship. Apala Kundu of CRG interviewed her in June 2018. The following is excerpted from it. 

CRG-RWO discussion on Assam NRC

On 30th July 2018, the government of Assam , a state in the Indian North-Est, published a National Register of Citizens. Of its residents, 4,000,000 people and counting did not find their names on the Register.

Amid fears about the fate of these people, the real and increasing concern around statelessness, the modalities of having separate citizenship registers within a federal structure, and the history of the Assam Accord: CRG sought to lay bare the issues at stake in a roundtable discussion.

Prof. Ranabir Samaddar, Distinguished Chair, Migration and Forced Migration Studies, was joined in a roundtable discussion by eminent journalist Mr. Subir Bhaumik, and Prof. Samir Das, Professor of Political Science at the University of Calcutta. Mr. Rajat Ray, senior journalist, moderated the discussion.

Find the video here.

Mizoram Diary: Traversing the Frontiers

This paper is a researcher’s travelogue. It narrates Snehashish Mitra’s journey to some of the towns and markets along the Mizoram-Myanmar border. The stories, of travel through the hills and valleys and encounter with the people and commodities, depict the porosity of the Indo-Myanmar border. These stories also draw our attention to issues like cross border migration, overlapping ethnicities and the nature of frontier urbanization in Mizoram.

Understanding migrant resource flows and its relation to ‘development’ of migrant sending regions: Evidence from South India

In this piece, Sanam Roohi critically explores the notion and praxis/implications of migrant led development in the country of origin, in this context India. Going beyond the dominant discourse of studying this process through remittances, she argues there is need to delve deep into the multifarious ways a migrant is associated to the place of origin. A transnational perspective thus entails a grasp on the complexities of migrant resource flows and exchanges.

‘As Mizo as I could be’: Territorial gatekeepers and the social suffering of Chins in Aizawl.

Lallian Thangsing complicates the idea of being a Mizo (a native of the Indian state of Mizoram) with the aid of the displaced people, the Chins.