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VOL. 7, ISSUE 4 (2025)
Dwelling in transit: Temporalities of home, identity and belongingness among Bengali migrant children in Ernakulam, Kerala
Authors
Madhuwanti Mitro
Abstract
Internal migration from West Bengal to Kerala represents one of the
most significant contemporary migration corridors within India, driven largely
by the search for improved employment opportunities. While internal migration
rates continue to rise, most social science scholarship has focused
predominantly on adult labour migration, often neglecting the experiences of
children. This study addresses that gap by exploring the everyday lives of
Bengali migrant children aged 6 to 16 living in Ernakulam district, Kerala. It
investigates how children navigate spatial identities, reimagine the notion of
‘home’, and adapt to unfamiliar cultural contexts within neighbourhoods and institutional
settings. Adopting a multi-sited ethnographic methodology, the research draws
on child-led mapping, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and
creative methods such as play, audio recordings, and storytelling. These
approaches foreground children’s perspectives, enabling a nuanced understanding
of how they interpret and inhabit their worlds. The findings reveal that the
children construct 'home' as a temporally and emotionally layered concept,
grounded in memory and aspiration. Through bilingual play, mimicry, and
affective storytelling, they negotiate exclusion and assert belonging. Their
narratives exemplify cultural hybridity, emotional resilience, and the
strategic enactment of identity across different spaces. By centring children's
voices, this study contributes to the growing field of migrant childhood
studies, challenging deficit-based narratives of migrant children as passive
dependents. Instead, it positions them as active meaning-makers whose lived
experiences reframe conventional understandings of migration, identity, and
belonging in the Global South.
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Pages:54-59
How to cite this article:
Madhuwanti Mitro "Dwelling in transit: Temporalities of home, identity and belongingness among Bengali migrant children in Ernakulam, Kerala". International Journal of Educational Research and Development, Vol 7, Issue 4, 2025, Pages 54-59
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