Book Launch – Indian Migration and Empire: A Colonial Genealogy of the Modern State
Co-sponsored by the Centre for Feminist Research:
Book Launch
Indian Migration and Empire: A Colonial Genealogy of the Modern State
(Duke University Press 2018)
by Radhika Mongia
Presented by Another Story Bookshop
Date: Thursday September 13th, 2018
Time: 7pm
Location: The Theatre Centre, 1115 Queen St West
Accessibility information: Fully wheelchair accessible; barrier free washrooms;
main entrance down a ramp straight from Queen Street. FREE event. Refreshments provided.
Link to the event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/241346993177418/
Copies of the book available for purchase!
Featuring a panel discussion with Radhika Mongia (York University), Bhavani Raman (University of Toronto), Nandita Sharma (University of Hawaii) & Alissa Trotz (University of Toronto)
How did states come to monopolize control over migration? What do the processes that produced this monopoly tell us about the modern state? In Indian Migration and Empire, Radhika Mongia provocatively argues that the formation of colonial migration regulations was dependent upon, accompanied by, and generative of profound changes in normative conceptions of the modern state. Focused on state regulation of colonial Indian migration between 1834 and 1917, Mongia illuminates the genesis of central techniques of migration control. She shows how important elements of current migration regimes, including the notion of state sovereignty as embodying the authority to control migration, the distinction between free and forced migration, the emergence of passports, the formation of migration bureaucracies, and the incorporation of kinship relations into migration logics, are the product of complex debates that attended colonial migrations.
By charting how state control of migration was critical to the transformation of a world dominated by empire-states into a world dominated by nation-states, Mongia challenges positions that posit a stark distinction between the colonial state and the modern state to trace aspects of their entanglements.
Radhika Mongia is Associate Professor of Sociology at York University.
Co-sponsored by: York Centre for Asian Research, Centre for Feminist Research, Centre for Refugee Studies, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, Graduate Program in Sociology, and the Institute for Feminist Legal Studies (Osgoode Hall Law School).
