ABOUT
IIHS Urbanisation journal, in collaboration with Publics@IIHS, brings to you a panel discussion featuring the contributors of its latest Special Issue, ‘The Future of Urbanisation: Migration Policies in the Post-pandemic World’.
This panel will critically reflect on mainstream academic and policy discourses on migration, urbanisation and development. The panellists will discuss how migration and urbanisation policies can better complement one another in the Indian context, particularly in the areas of governance, federalism, labour, social protection, food security, housing and gender. Given increasing inequalities, the speakers will reflect on making urbanisation processes more inclusive for internal migrants, and on the urgent need to integrate the issue of migration in development and urbanisation policies in a post-pandemic world.
SPEAKERS
Moderator:
Neethi P
Senior Researcher, IIHS
Editorial Collective Member, Urbanisation
Neethi P is a senior researcher at IIHS. Neethi’s teaching and research majorly focuses on urban informality, women’s work, and alternative labour movements. She is the advisory member to the Karnataka Labour Policy Committee. She is the author of Globalization Lived Locally: A Labour Geography Perspective, published by Oxford University Press in 2016. She has recently co-authored Urban Undesirables: City Transition and Street-based Sex Work in Bangalore under Cambridge University Press in 2022. She is the Asia representative of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Labour Movements, RC 44. Apart from Urbanisation, she serves on the editorial board of Global Labour Journal and the international advisory board of Antipode.
Panellists:
S Irudaya Rajan
Chair, The International Institute of Migration and Development, Thiruvananthapuram
S Irudaya Rajan is Chair of the International Institute of Migration and Development, India and also chair of the World Bank KNOMAD (the Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development) working group on internal migration and urbanization. He is the editor of two Routledge Series – India Migration Report (since 2010) and South Asia Migration Report (since 2017) and Founding Editor in Chief, Migration and Development (Sage). He has coordinated nine large-scale migration surveys in Kerala since 1998 (with K C Zachariah), Goa (2008), Punjab (2009), Tamil Nadu (2015), and instrumental for Gujarat (2011), Jharkhand (2023) and Odisha (2023).
Amrita Datta
Assistant Professor of Development Studies
Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad
Amrita Datta is currently an Assistant Professor of Development Studies at the Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH). Amrita’s research interests are in the areas of migration and mobilities, agrarian change and rural development, village and longitudinal studies, women’s work, and gender and development. Based on empirical research, Amrita’s book, Migration and Development in India: The Bihar Experience (Routledge, 2023), studies out-migration from rural Bihar in the context of neoliberal economic development in India. Amrita has published in several edited volumes and journals such as the Journal of Development Studies, Journal of Gender Studies, Children’s Geographies, Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, Indian Journal of Labour Economics and the Economic and Political Weekly. Amrita has a PhD in Development Studies from the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Harshita Sinha
PhD Researcher, Department of International Development, London School of Economics
Harshita Sinha is a PhD candidate in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics. Her doctoral research focuses on internal migrant workers’ access to welfare and social rights in the Indian informal economy. She looks at the intersection of citizenship, social protection, digital governance and informal migration regimes in urban destination states. She curated Voices of Informality, a knowledge platform that aims to bring forth grassroots stories on informality for practice-based action. She was previously awarded the LSE Life Research Prize, 2019 and the India Migration Fellowship, 2021. Her work on informality and migration has been published in Sage, India Development Review, IndiaSpend, and Wire, among others.
Kuldeepsingh Rajput
Senior Research Fellow, The International Institute of Migration and Development, Thiruvananthapuram
Kuldeepsingh Rajput is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Institute of Migration and Development (Kerala). He is the Founder and CEO of RUBAL Foundation (Maharashtra) and collaborates with a diverse set of stakeholders both within government departments and with civil society partners. He is also associated with the Centre for Youth Development and Activities as a Consultant for their projects on migrant workers. He has an enriching experience spanning over fifteen years in fields of academic, research and practice. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology, and his thesis attempts to examine the poly-victimisation and hidden vulnerabilities amongst the young migrant construction workers. His articles are published in Indian Express, The Hindu and reputed peer-reviewed journals.
Amita Bhide
Professor and Dean, School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai
Amita Bhide currently works as a Professor and Dean in the School of Habitat Studies at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Her recent work at the School of Habitat Studies has been on urban governance reforms, housing, informality, water-sanitation and land issues. Participatory, engendered local governance is a key area of her interest. She also heads the M East Ward Social and Economic Transformation Program, an action research project that seeks to create a model of inclusive urban development in M East Ward, the poorest municipal ward in Mumbai. She has been deeply involved in issues related to urban poor communities, community organization, housing rights movements and advocacy groups and has undertaken research projects linked to these subjects. She is the recipient of the Inaugural fellowship of the India China Institute on New School University, New York from 2006-08. She is currently a member of the High-Level Committee on Urban Planning, Capacity Building of the Government of India.
Chinmay Tumbe
Associate Professor, Economics Area, IIM Ahmedabad
Chinmay Tumbe loves to laugh and learn. He is a faculty member in the Economics Area of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and the author of India Moving: A History of Migration (2018) and The Age of Pandemics, 1817-1920: How they shaped India and the world (2020).
Past Events
29 September 2023
Webinar | Future of Peer Review & Transdisciplinary Conversations in the Global South
As part of Peer Review Week 2023, Urbanisation journal presents a panel discussion on the year’s theme of ‘Peer Review and the Future of Publishing’.
Peer review has undergone a sea change, from impacts on selection of peer reviewers, to the move towards open peer review models, and the increasing and varied adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in scholarship. The panel discusses these aspects of peer review in the context of transdisciplinary conversations and scholarship from the global South.