Podcast
The Migration Oxford podcast is created by Migration Oxford. Its aim is to bring together researchers and other observers to address the major migration issues of our time, both in UK and internationally, inform and influence public debate and policy considerations, and to connect with people who want to engage more deeply with issues of human movement. For more information see the Migration Oxford webpage.
For several decades, researchers based at the University of Oxford have been addressing one of the most compelling human stories; why and how people move. Combining the expertise of the Centre on Migration Policy and Society, the Refugee Studies Centre, Border Criminologies in the Department of Law, the Transport Studies Unit in the School of Geography and the Environment, and scholars working on migration and mobility from across divisions and departments, the University has one the largest concentrations of migration researchers in the world. We all come together at Migration Oxford.
What does migration have to do with missionary work? We explore how Baptist and Presbyterian missionary work as socioreligious institutions have impacted and influenced mobility in Northeast India, both pre- and post-colonialism. What does migration have to do with missionary work? How do socioreligious collective institutions (Baptist and Presbyterian missionary work) and indigenous religious cosmologies impinge on the youth of Northeast India? As they leave home and embark on arduous journeys in search of employment and education in different parts of India, we discuss how migration is experienced not just as a singular or individual experience but also as a relational experience as identities of young migrant students are mediated by community-based organisations which represent and look out for them in Delhi. What role does religio-cultural groups play in supporting migrant youth? How do relationships and friendships amongst young individuals emerge within collective spaces?
In this episode of The Migration Oxford Podcast, we question how the term ‘migrant’ gets recast in light of changing sociopolitical dynamics in Northeast India. Examining contested land claims, histories of militarization and entangled ethnic and clan relationalities, we explore the impact of missionary interventions and the struggles for citizenship in the context of Mizoram, Nagaland, and Assam.
We welcome experts Dr. Zarzosanga Pachuau, Government Serchhip College, Mizoram; Dr. Tiatemsu Longkumer, Anthropology Department of the Royal Thimphu College, Bhutan; and Shivangi Kaushik, PhD candidate at Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford. Colonial and post-independence cartographic redrawing of the region continues to mediate movements of communities and individuals both within the Northeast and beyond. As individuals who have lived their lives in the region, they seek to connect mobilisations of identities back home and the entangled histories and movements that can be drawn from Mizoram, Nagaland and Assam.