Nammakam, wasta and the cultivation of differential mobility capital between South India and the Gulf

IF 2.9 2区社会学 Q1 GEOGRAPHY

Mobilities Pub Date : 2023-02-11 DOI:10.1080/17450101.2023.2171803

Sanam Roohi

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引用次数: 1

Abstract

Abstract This ethnographic study, which draws from critical mobility studies and puts it in a productive conversation with migration infrastructures literature, foregrounds the cultivation of and access to differential mobility capital by Rayalaseema inhabitants chain migrating to Kuwait. By fostering embodied and affective relations of trust with different set of actors throughout the migration trajectory, temporary migrants instrumentalise namakkam (trust) and wasta (connections), in both the region of origin and destination, to build their highly variegated mobility capital. In this way, they sustain a transregional licit, if illegal, visa-centered migration infrastructure. Migrants use their mobility capital to buy visas, prolong their stay and embed themselves in the migrant lifeworld of Kuwait, but its full value is realizable back in their region of origin, the socio-economically intractable Rayalaseema, to attain upward social mobility. Requiring considerable social, economic and affective investments over a long period, mobility capital is highly uneven and asymmetrical and often reproduces gendered, caste-based and racialized hierarchies even as it becomes a vehicle for social and spatial mobility for some migrants.

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Nammakam, wasta和南印度和海湾地区差异流动资本的培育

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来源期刊

Mobilities Multiple-

CiteScore

5.40

自引率

17.90%

发文量

期刊介绍： Mobilities examines both the large-scale movements of people, objects, capital, and information across the world, as well as more local processes of daily transportation, movement through public and private spaces, and the travel of material things in everyday life. Recent developments in transportation and communications infrastructures, along with new social and cultural practices of mobility, present new challenges for the coordination and governance of mobilities and for the protection of mobility rights and access. This has elicited many new research methods and theories relevant for understanding the connections between diverse mobilities and immobilities.