Devi Nayar

This multi-sited study examines how circular migration causes changes in the social and built environments in the home region creating new forms of cosmopolitanisms from below. I focus on an emerging new Gulf based cosmopolitanism, that emerged in the Indian state of Kerala in the 1970s. Produced by Kerala’s migrants who participated in circular migration with the Gulf countries, this cosmopolitanism altered the state’s social and built environment. It is a lived and spatial experience through everyday practices, lifestyle, consumption habits and built spaces that migrants adopted from the Gulf to be socially distinct in their hometowns. I ask: how does circular migration change the social life and built environment of the home region? How does social hierarchy, distinction, and changing character of migrant families and communities manifest in spatial design and usage of built environments? Through the Kerala case, I study the rapid socio-cultural and spatial transformations in Kerala since the 1970s. By combining ethnography through spatial settings, I connect issues of class, gender, and social mobility at every level of space from home to public space across Kerala. While scholars study migrants in host countries, this study looks at migrants’ engagement with their homelands during their return journey.