ABSTRACT
A migrant is defined by the lack of embeddedness, by an uprooted personhood. In the discourse on migration in south Asian milieu, this absence of spatial embedding ironically gets translated as a self which is bereft of its subjectivities and experiences. He or she remains an economic unit, a population that requires technologies of governance and a social being relevant merely for the health of the society. However, in all these three spheres (i.e., economy, polity, and society), a migrant is engaged only when he/she is a commensurate figure. Experiences and subjectivities which are incommensurable are irrelevant and largely ignored in this discourse. Drawing insights from different disciplinary directions, this chapter explores few facets and circuits of subjectivities in and through which the figure of migrant surfaces. Riding upon the cultural memory of migration, here, the journey commences from Mithila (a geo-cultural region in the north eastern Bihar) and culminates at the city of Surat (Gujarat), criss-crossing, in between, a wide range of geo-cultural coordinates and metaphors which may help throw some fresh provocations for the study of migration in general and the figure of a migrant in particular.
