Graphic Migrations

Precarity and Gender in India and the Diaspora

In Graphic Migrations, Kavita Daiya provides a literary and cultural archive of refugee stories and experiences to respond to the question “What is created?” after decolonization and the 1947 Partition of India. She explores how stories of Partition migrations shape the political and cultural imagination of secularism and gendered citizenship for South Asians in India and the United States.

Daiya analyzes literature, Bollywood films, Margaret Bourke-White’s photography, digital media, and print culture to show how they memorialize or erase refugee experiences. She also engages oral testimonies of Partition refugees from Hong Kong, South Asia, and North America that address the nation-state, ethnic discrimination, and religious difference. Employing both Critical Refugee Studies and Feminist Postcolonial Studies frameworks, Daiya traces the cultural, affective, and political legacies of the Partition migrations for South Asia and South Asian America.

The precarity generated by modern migration and illuminated in public culture prompts a rethinking of how dominant media represents gendered migrants and refugees. Graphic Migrations demands that we redraw the boundaries of how we tell the story of modern world history, and of how we confront the intricately interwoven, intimate production of statelessness and citizenship across the world’s communities.