[month] [year]

Ayesha Pattnaik

On 14 August, the first session of HSRC talks series for Monsoon 2024 began with a talk by Ayesha Pattnaik, D.Phil student from the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford. Ayesha Pattnaik gave a talk on Concealed Claims, Contested Citizens: Experiences of India’s Internal Migrant Worker.  Here is the summary of her talk:

When India’s internal migrant workers migrate from their rural domiciles to distant urban destinations within India, they are left undocumented in the cities they work in with limited access to welfare schemes and labour laws. However, interstate migration is an important livelihood strategy for rural households across India to resist financial insecurity and climate shocks. In her talk, Ayesha explores, through her recent experiences in the field, what makes circular interstate migration viable to workers despite its risks, and the various factors shaping migrants’ vulnerability and resilience at both the source and destination. She shared the unique situation of employer and migrant employee relations alongside NGO and migrant avoidance based on preliminary findings from her ongoing multi-sited ethnography conducted over the past one year with workers from the state of Odisha who migrate to Ernakulam in Kerala for informal work. Her work focuses primarily on socio-legal and ethnographic approaches to studying such intersecting vulnerabilities of migration, informality, and citizenship. 

Ayesha Pattnaik’s doctoral research is on – internal migrant workers’ experiences of migration and access to law within India through a multi-sited ethnography with workers from Odisha migrating to Kerala.  

 

 

 

August 2024