A conversation with Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil on documenting the cultural imaginaries of Kerala and the Gulf through migrants’ literary and visual records of their transnational lives and aspirations.

https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/ mohamed-shafeeq-karinkurayil-kerala-gulf-migrant-archives

Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast from Himal Southasian, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode, Shwetha Srikanthan speaks to Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil about his new book The Gulf Migrant Archives in Kerala: Reading Borders and Belonging(Oxford University Press, June 2024)

The realities of Gulf migration from Kerala is not lost on anyone. But the discourse around the cultural dimension of labour migration remains invisible. In analysing the cultural records of Gulf migrants from Malayalam literature and visual culture, Karinkurayil’s pioneering book is an effort to salvage the migrant archive in Kerala. 

The book draws from a variety of sources to re-centre migration as a lived experience that cannot be reduced to the economic role of the migrant alone or the passivity they have been accorded as victims of unjust labour conditions. In doing so, Karinkurayil highlights migrant creativity and narratives of migrants’ own condition as an attempt to factor them into the homeland from which they are away.

This episode is now available on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4i9kQc6Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3Fj3bAfYoutube: https://youtu.be/rnHmmrOIpS4

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