0608, 2019

Results & Trends IX: Religious Discrimination in India

By Caroline Osella|August 6, 2019|project outputs, project results and findings, Uncategorized|327 comments

3 periods of Kerala fieldwork over 2 years. 84 respondents. Mixed ages, provenance, community and class, different migration destinations. Special focus on Mavelikkara, Calicut & Mattancherry.  Respondents split by gender.  A mix of retired, returned, current migrants. In the free-flow of participant observation and 84 unstructured interviews, I heard some frightened voices and many despairing ones, when respondents spoke about India. One of the themes that came up in many

Read More

1006, 2019

Results & Trends VII: Infrastructure (as predicted)

By Caroline Osella|June 10, 2019|project outputs, project results and findings, Uncategorised, Uncategorized|16 comments

3 periods of Kerala fieldwork over 2 years. 84 respondents. Mixed ages, provenance, community and class, different migration destinations. A straight 50/50 split between those who felt that Gulf migration was “only for the money” and those who felt that lifestyle and other factors were also important in their decision to go and to stay. The next few posts will pull out the major factors which emerged from the 84 free-form

Read More

0606, 2019

Results & Trends V: Is It All About the Money?

By Caroline Osella|June 6, 2019|project outputs, project results and findings, Uncategorized|0 comments

3 periods of Kerala fieldwork over 2 years. 84 respondents. Mixed ages, provenance, community and class, different migration destinations. Special focus on Mavelikkara, Calicut & Mattancherry   Respondents split by gender         A mix of retired, returned, current migrants Their response to my key question: is Gulf migration only about the money? You’ll be thinking I’ve made this up – such a neat result. Split straight down

Read More

2304, 2019

Results and Trends IV: The difference that Religious Community Can Make?

By Caroline Osella|April 23, 2019|project outputs, project results and findings, Uncategorized|1 comments

Mavelikkara is a Hindu and Christian area; I met almost none of Alappuzha district’s 10% population who are Muslims during my 1990s fieldworks. (To round this out, I am beginning to make connections in the nearby market town of Kayamkulam, as I continue my return visits to Travancore). Calicut is a town with a strong Muslim community (40%) and it borders onto the district of Malappuram, where Muslims make up

Read More

1604, 2019

Results and Trends II: the Gulf as continuing aspiration

By Caroline Osella|April 16, 2019|project outputs, project results and findings, Uncategorized|0 comments

In Calicut, many people describe Gulf migration as continuing to be a normalised part of life, expecting it to continue, although the benefits are not as strong as they once were. Gulf wages have dipped relative to Kerala; costs of living have soared in the Gulf. The older generation recount spectacular gains and startling differences between Kerala and the Gulf which the post 1990s generation have not seen. But because

Read More

1304, 2019

Results and Trends I: Mavelikkara, Calicut and Mattancherry

By Caroline Osella|April 13, 2019|project outputs, project results and findings, Uncategorized|16 comments

Throughout the 1990s, I worked in a rural paddy-growing area near Mavelikkara town, and wrote about some of the ways in which Gulf migration was shifting the social landscape. Some families from Hindu lower castes were achieving significant social mobility through remittances; their success was having a wider effect upon longstanding caste hierarchies. In the old agrarian economy, caste status and wealth had been tightly connected, with landowning Syrian Christian,

Read More

1811, 2017

The Gulf in Malayalam movies –

By Caroline Osella|November 18, 2017|Media, Uncategorized|17 comments

I’m in UAE right now and off to Kerala tomorrow.  On the plane, I watched two Malayalam movies.  It’s not unusual that both referenced migration. This movie (Marubhumiyile aana (2017)- elephant of the desert) was especially interesting, with its rich roll-out of several Gulf stereotypes, a hybrid protagonist who has an Arab father, and a Malayali mother, and its Arabic catch-phrase  –  Mafi fulus, mafi mushqil (no money no problem). Something I’ll be

Read More