Strategically “Out of Place”: Unemployed Migrants Mobilizing Rural and Urban Identities in North India

Andrew Deuchar

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2019, vol. 109, issue 5, 1379-1393

Abstract: Increasing numbers of young people are migrating across the Global South to pursue tertiary education and find employment. In north India, though, as elsewhere, migrants are often unable to realize the kind of social mobility to which they aspire. This article examines the ways in which educated yet unemployed male migrants perform identities to contend their marginality. Through a multisited ethnography, during which I accompanied participants to their rural villages as well as the regional city of Dehradun, I argue that young men strategically mobilize identities that register them as “out of place.” By drawing together critical migration studies and mobilities literatures, I show how young men perform rural identities in urban areas and urban identities in rural ones to realize status and respect. In a context of widespread unemployment and uncertainty, this is an important strategy through which migrants seek to position themselves as worthy youth with meaningful prospects, at the same time as they leave open the possibility of both rural and urban futures. Key Words: identities, India, migrants, mobilities, young men.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/24694452.2018.1541402 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:raagxx:v:109:y:2019:i:5:p:1379-1393

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/raag21

DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2018.1541402

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of the American Association of Geographers is currently edited by Jennifer Cassidento

More articles in Annals of the American Association of Geographers from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().