[Commlist] Call for Papers: Migrant Workers, Cultural (Re)Production, and the Culture Industry in South Asia

Call for Papers: Migrant Workers, Cultural (Re)Production, and the 
Culture Industry in South Asia

*An International Conference*

*Organized by*

*The Cultural Studies Cell*

*School of Arts and Humanities, Christ University, Bangalore*

**in collaboration with*
*

*The Department of Sociology, Tezpur University, Assam*

*
*

*Conference Dates: 17 & 18 Oct 2022*

Thinking about culture is overwhelmingly spatially fixed in the context 
of migration. Thus, studies at the intersection of migration and culture 
are concerned with the many ways in which cultures are affected and 
transformed both at the source and the destination. This has been 
largely true across disciplines but especially so in anthropology, 
cultural studies, literary studies, history, sociology, and allied 
fields. Theoretical concepts and frameworks such as multiculturalism, 
liminality, acculturation, assimilation, roots, etc. assume a stable and 
fairly clearly demarcated territories at various scales (city, nation, 
regions, etc.) where people are separated along the lines of hosts and 
outsiders. Notions of belongingness and identity are a consequence of 
such assumptions in scholarship, politics, and governance.

The first critical move this conference seeks to make is to *question 
this restrictive receptacle view of migration and culture* and calls for 
an alternative framework of investigating cultural transformations in 
the context of migration. It aims to do so by being attentive to the 
fact that migration is a flow, a phenomenon with entropy constitutive of 
the phenomenon. Rootedness and by extension uprootedness are strong 
concepts to think about migration, however such an approach limits our 
understanding of migration as both product of and contributor to 
cultural dispersion. Instead of viewing culture as being accumulative 
within territories and boundaries, we propose that it be seen as being 
inherently on the move and transgressive of geo-political boundaries, 
through multiple flows such as those of capital, technology, languages, 
and people themselves.

Workers on the move are figures of defiance as they are in motion. They 
may be made subjects in the form of lascars, slaves, indentured workers, 
or walking during a nationwide lockdown during the pandemic; they carry 
rebellion, form collectives, and demand autonomy and liberation not only 
where their ‘source’ or ‘destination’ are but in the course of moving 
itself.

The subsequent critical move the conference makes is to identify the 
culture industry as an important field in which the subjectivities of 
the migrant workers find articulation. There is an interesting dialectic 
at play between migrant workers and the culture industry especially as 
cultural production, circulation, and consumption are increasingly 
becoming digital. In a way, migrant workers are creating cultural 
artefacts as they are moving. They are also using digital technologies 
and social and mass media to bring to the surface the struggles they 
have to face. One of the prime examples is the way technology was used 
during the 2020 lockdown in India when migrant workers had to walk 
thousands of miles to get back ‘home’. The cultural archive that was 
created during this period beckons urgent critical engagement. Another 
aspect is the way the mainstream culture industry appropriates cultural 
identities and expressions of migrant workers sublating them into large 
scale production of cultural commodities (cinema, music, etc.).

This conference is an invitation to reflect upon such dialectics of 
cultural production and consumption through a focus on migration. We 
invite papers addressing these issues from various theoretical and 
empirical perspectives and locations. We are especially interested in 
papers from South Asia and other regions of the Global South.

*Indicative themes include (but are not limited to):*

Migrants’ agency in media production and consumption

Migrants, music & film cultures

Migration and transformations in the urban cultural landscape

Popular media forms addressing issues around migration

Migrants, Cultural Representation, and Intersectional Identities

Global diasporas and cultural forms

*Contact Info: *Please submit an abstract (300 words) and a 
short-bio (50-100 words) (tomithilesh.kumar /at/ christuniversity.in) 
<mailto:(mithilesh.kumar /at/ christuniversity.in)>; 
(rashmi.sawhney /at/ christuniversity.in) 
<mailto:(rashmi.sawhney /at/ christuniversity.in)>; (amiyadas /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(amiyadas /at/ gmail.com)>

*Submission deadline of abstracts: 15 August 2022*

*Selected participants will be informed by August 31, 2022*

*Please Note*:

Selected participants will need to share a draft of the paper and a copy 
of their tickets by 30th September 2022 to confirm/secure their 
participation in the Conference.

*The conference will be held on 17 & 18 October 2022 at the Tezpur 
University, Assam. Participants will be required to make their own 
arrangements for travel. Accommodation and food will be arranged by the 
organisers.*

*Registration Fees: *Participants from the Global South: 15 USD/INR1200; 
Participants from North America, Europe, Australia: 1500 USD/8000 INR

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