Most of the papers presented at a workshop held at Sussex in January 2001 and some contributed articles; previously published.

Migration is at the heart of Asian history. For centuries migrants have tracked the routes and seas of their ancestors - merchants, pilgrims, soldiers and sailors - along the Silk Road and across the Indian Ocean and the China Sea. Over the last 150 years, however, migration within Asia and beyond has been greater than at any other time in history. Sunil S. Amrith's engaging and deeply informative book crosses a vast terrain, from the Middle East to India and China, tracing the history of modern migration. Animated by the voices of Asian migrants, it tells the stories of those forced to flee from war and revolution, and those who left their homes and their families in search of a better life. These stories of Asian diasporas can be joyful or poignant, but they all speak of an engagement with new landscapes and new peoples.

This comprehensive history of modern South Asia explores the historical development of the Subcontinent from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the present day from local and regional, as opposed to European, perspectives. Michael Mann charts the role of emerging states within the Mughal Empire, the gradual British colonial expansion in the political setting of the Subcontinent and shows how the modern state formation usually associated with Western Europe can be seen in some regions of India, linking Europe and South Asia together as part of a shared world history. This book looks beyond the Subcontinent’s post-colonial history to consider the political, economic, social and cultural development of Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as Sri Lanka and Nepal, and to examine how these developments impacted the region’s citizens. South Asia’s Modern History begins with a general introduction which provides a geographical, environmental and historiographical overview. This is followed by thematic chapters which discuss Empire Building and State Formation, Agriculture and Agro-Economy, Silviculture and Scientific Forestry, Migration, Circulation and Diaspora, Industrialisation and Urbanisation and Knowledge, Science, Technology and Power, demonstrating common themes across the decades and centuries. This book will be perfect for all students of South Asian history.

South Asia Migration Report 2020 documents key themes of exploitation and entrepreneurship of migrants from the region. This volume: • Includes dedicated fieldwork from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal; • Analyses the impact of South-Asia-migrant-established businesses; • Examines legal and legislative recourse against exploitation in destination countries; • Factors in how migration as a phenomenon negotiates with gender, environment and even healthcare. This book will be indispensable for scholars and researchers of economics, development studies, migration and diaspora studies, gender studies, labour studies and sociology. It will also be useful to policymakers, think tanks and government institutions working in the area.

This book teases out the reasons for, and the socio-economic impacts of, different types of migration on contemporary rural households and individuals. The author creatively depicts the dynamic microcosm of one village in the North Indian Kumaun Himalayas, near the border with Chinese Tibet, giving voice to the life stories of a range of migrants. Through this ethnography, migration is revealed as a fundamental part of the multifaceted 21st-century changes which the village is experiencing. From elderly women, to unemployed men, young farm women and local children, the book demonstrates how village life is continually constituted socially and economically by overlapping migration patterns – including outmigration, return migration, in-migration and even non-migration. Extending the argument, the author demonstrates that the village microcosm is linked to many other villages which are microcosms in their own right as well as in relation to the main village across a spatial hierarchy. The theoretical implications of the study are teased out to inform our understanding of rural-urban migration trends and impacts more generally, and as such the book will be of interest to researchers of the South Asian region but also of internal migration in the global context.

The articles in this volume build up ethnographic analysis complementary to the historiography of South Asian Islam, which has explored the emergence of reformism in the context of specific political and religious circumstances of nineteenth century British India. Taking up diverse popular and scholarly debates as well as everyday religious practices, this volume also breaks away from the dominant trend of mainstream ethnographic work, which celebrates sufi-inspired forms of Islam as tolerant, plural, authentic and so on, pitted against a 'reformist' Islam. Urging a more nuanced examination of all forms of reformism and their reception in practice, the contributions here powerfully demonstrate the historical and geographical specificities of reform projects. In doing so, they challenge prevailing perspectives in which substantially different traditions of reform are lumped together into one reified category (often carelessly shorthanded as 'wah'habism') and branded as extremist - if not altogether demonised as terrorist.

Rural life in Southeast Asia is being transformed by new and intensifying processes of migration and mobility. Migration out of rural areas creates new forms of class mobility, familial relations, production processes and income. Migration into rural areas creates a new and sometimes marginalized workforce, contestation over resource access, and the juxtaposition of culturally different groups. At the same time, everyday mobility stretches the spatial boundaries of village and family life. The bounded space of the village is no longer adequate to understand the dynamics that are driving (and resulting from) rural social change. This collection of original studies explores the cultural, economic and environmental dimensions of intensifying migration and mobility in rural Southeast Asia at multiple scales. Diverse processes are explored including rural-urban flows, rural-rural movement, everyday mobilities, and international migrations into regional and global labour markets. Drawing on fieldwork in six countries across the region, these essays also explore what migration means for our understanding of class, citizenship, gender and the state in a rapidly changing part of the world. This book was based on two parts of a special issue of Critical Asian Studies.